Google apps partner program viable for Aussie resellers

Cranswick told CRN, Google's offering $75 per seat per year software license and Apps Premier Edition isn't supported by advertising.

It also contains 25GB storage, security, email and telephone support with 99.9 percent uptime service level agreement (SLA) and single sign-on Application Programming Interface, (API), among others.

"Based on [what its offering] it raises some serious questions about channel partners taking it to market," said Cranswick.

"The perception that Google can only do search handle is wrong the vendor can offer a lot of software with an interesting cost model.

"[Majority of businesses] are SME they really don't want to be spending money on high margin software products and its applications can be customised. "

Cranswick said in global terms, Google claims that over 3,000 businesses are signing up for Google Apps every day and it also claims to serve over a million businesses (500,000 in Europe) with over 10 million active users, across a hundred countries.

In the Australasian market Google has been adopted by some educational institutions (University of Adelaide and the NSW Department of Education), and also with mid-sized and commercial businesses.

In terms of adoption trends, compared with the rest of the world, Australia and New Zealand are moving at an average pace - that is to say, neither ahead of the curve nor behind it.

Forecasting is always imprecise and inferences as to Google's larger SaaS strategy here are foggy. However, IBRS believes that Google is underpinning its channel sales strategy in the following way; By leveraging other Google services, integration points and development toolkits to build its own value-added services and associated business processes; Which in turn would complement Google Apps Premier, and which would provide higher margins to its own business.

Cranswick said it might take a couple of years for Google's channel initiative to take off.

"Look at how [previous vendor relationships] have been done before," he said.

 "Examine how Google Apps will fit within the reseller's customer base and how [they] can make it regional.

"Google have a brand association for those and can provide cheap effective software that works, rather than spending a lot of money on a product that promises lots of stuff."

However he warns resellers to keep in mind Google have two million apps business customers, where as Microsoft has 500 million.