After 12 years as a Microsoft partner, national integrator SMS Technology started selling Google Apps alongside Microsoft Business Productivity Online Suite.
CRN spoke to Paul Cooper, director of emerging solutions, and Gerard Roberts, national cloud manager, at SMS Technology, about life as a Google Apps partner and what reception the products have had with enterprise and government customers.
CRN: What is Google like to work with? Do you compete often with its direct sales team?
Paul Cooper: Our target marketplace is organisations with several thousand people and above. We don't compete in the small business or individual Google Apps marketplace, which has a huge amount of other channels and direct selling by Google.
Because we are more selected with the higher clients, we find we have very good responsiveness from Google. Where they are stretched is responding to a whole lot of requests to very small clients.
Gerard Roberts: Google Enterprise is a very small organisation and they rely on their partners to do the implementation and services work around that.
Their approach to the market is not a direct approach, it's very much partner-driven, but the exception there is for large clients that they see as a strategic opportunity. We do pitch Google Apps into smaller organisations but only when we are taking on a larger chunk of managed services and Google Apps is one component.
On it's own, we wouldn't consider engaging with a client that had less than a couple of thousand seats, it's not cost effective for us.
CRN: Are you replacing Microsoft Office and Exchange installations in your enterprise customers with Google Apps?
Roberts: Where we are seeing the most interest are from companies that don't have Microsoft. Some Microsoft customers are moving to Google Apps but in the main if they are a Microsoft customer they are more likely to move to Microsoft Online.
Lotus Notes and Groupwise [users] are going to take up [Google Apps] primarily and that's because they are not seeing Groupwise or Lotus Notes as being strategic for the future.
We didn't really play in the email or office collaboration space before our partnership with Google, and since then we've branched out to offer Microsoft's Online Services. We are a Microsoft Gold partner and have been for a number of years.
CRN: How has partnering with Google affected your relationship with Microsoft?
Cooper: I think there was initial trepidation from Microsoft and Google as to how a company such as ourselves could be good partners and not totally exclusive.
But I believe we've worked through that and the relationship with both companies is very positive. We are very skilled at putting in place Chinese walls where appropriate and I don't think anyone could accuse us of any information being misapplied or being directed from one organisation to another.
Both companies certainly have a preference for anyone dealing with them to be totally exclusive to their product set and that is something SMS simply will not do.
I wouldn't say that it's been without its testing moments, but I would say that's actually been healthy in building a pretty good relationship with both firms.
Roberts: Those discussions have been quite tricky at times. Ultimately both Microsoft and Google recognise there is value in having that independence.
I believe worked through that and the relationship with both companies is very positive.
We are very skilled at putting in place Chinese walls where appropriate and I don't think anyone could accuse us of any information being misapplied or being directed from one organisation to another.
Next page: Selling Google vs Microsoft
CRN: Are you selling less Microsoft products since you starting selling Google Apps?
Cooper: No. We are probably doing increasingly more business with Microsoft as well as with Google. The whole market has expanded in many ways.
Roberts: There is a broadening of our offerings at the Microsoft end while the Google side is relatively new and focused around a much smaller set of products. We are doing a lot more work with Microsoft - Sharepoint is becoming pretty big space for us, .Net development space is very big as will be the Azure platform when it launches in Australia.
CRN: Do you ever pitch Google Apps and Microsoft Exchange to the one customer?
Cooper: We won't do that. We would make a decision for the client and go in with one or the other. We wouldn't put ourselves in the position of doing a bakeoff.
Roberts: If we're engaging at a strategic level where we are helping them put their roadmap forward, then we would possibly encounter that situation. But I think if that would be the case we would be above the line and wouldn't be eligible to do the implementation.
It would be seen that we would have a conflict of interest in the decision.
CRN: I've heard that Microsoft will cut out the channel when it goes up against Google Apps because it can't compete with reseller margins. Is that true?
Roberts: I'm not saying that's completely true. We have seen situations where they have gone to market with other partners, sometimes ourselves, and we've competed against Google.
There is certainly a lot of downward pressure on cost. I think what will probably dictate how they approach that is whether that opportunity is seen as strategic for Microsoft.
When either of the organisations identify that this is a battle they want to fight then they pull out all the stops in terms of making resources available to partners or internally to their own consulting organisations.
Don't forget that Microsoft has it's own consulting arm as well.
Cooper: Both giants are trying to win market share.
CRN: What do you use internally?
Roberts: We use Microsoft internally. Some use Google Apps internally but the strategic platform is Microsoft.
CRN: Are there any plans to change that?
Cooper: It's open for discussion. We have a strategic group that looks at that. Gerard (Roberts) and I put a discussion through to our IT strategic committee on some futures but we are a company of 1500 people and we've come out of a very strong Microsoft internal platform base so we would need to consider the benefits of a future shift.
There are some costing benefits to moving to spam, virus filtering in the cloud and we went with a Google product for that.
Next page: How Google performs in the enterprise
CRN: Have you been happy with Google's products?
Cooper: I think the experience on the Postini side has been a very positive one.
Roberts: I'd certainly agree with that. It's more a question of perception rather than capability. A lot of people would be quite happy to move over to Google Apps but I think that's not the only consideration. Capability and functionality is only one part of the mix.
Cooper: Also, most of our staff work off site in client environments. The majority of those are Microsoft Office based environments.
While we could move let's say to Gmail as an email backbone with no problems at all, to move away from the Microsoft Office suite to the Google Apps suite and still have 100 percent full formatting capability, editing and so on with our client documents, at this stage it's still something to work through.
CRN: Are there any advantages to using a ground-up cloud application like Google Apps versus Microsoft which has a strong history on the desktop?
Cooper: Collaboration is a key one where the Google Apps product sets are just superb.
Roberts: When we are putting proposals together we often use Google Docs because you can have multiple people editing the same document at the same time.
So rather than having the merge problem when you're trying to bring different versions of the same document back together again, the Google Docs platform works very well.
There's a negative in that it's not a true file to file replacement for Office, so at some point you are going to break out of Google Docs back into the Microsoft platform to get the document quality or formatting that you would need for a formal proposal document, for example.
Cooper: That's [the situation] at the moment. Paul is close to the [Google R&D] pipeline and that situation is changing. At the moment, certainly you do lose some formatting, which is unacceptable at client sites.
For our head office staff that's a totally different thing. If we were a purely internally based organisation you'd probably make a shift much more readily but we have to consider our client environments first and foremost.
The other thing you're not emailing documents around the whole time, it's just a series of pointers. That just tremendously eases the whole version control and integration. They've done a great job with that.
CRN: I've heard Sharepoint described as "a poor man's document management system". Google Apps also seems to be a contender for that title too.
Cooper: Sharepoint is still one person editing one document at time, and loading it back up. That's still quite a different model to the Google Apps one.
Roberts: Traditional document management systems have come from relatively conventional processes. Now we're moving to the cloud a lot of the rationale for how they are designed and put together almost disappears.
You could argue for Google Apps being a new breed of document management systems but it does lack a lot of things that you might expect in terms of compliance, archiving, work flow. There's every possibility that those capabilities will be built into Google Apps but we're looking two years away at least.
The sweet spot really is small organisations that can just move straight onto Google Apps, Google Docs and Gmail and have a run-of-business platform available for next to nothing.
Cooper: If you were a small business starting up today you would probably say, "Why would I pick any other platform?" I know some small business out there, 10 person companies, and they run their entire business from Google Apps. And I think that's almost a no-brainer.
Roberts: Absolutely.
Cooper: But that's different to talking to a bank or a complex company with data servers in different countries. That becomes a much more complex decision-making process to say which parts of our business go into the cloud what are the best platforms.
Next page: Microsoft Office Online, the game changer
CRN: Microsoft seems to have been quite hesitant to move its software online and compete, don't you think?
Cooper: Google have taken a very open approach to their platform. The Data Liberation Front brand - it's a bit of a mantra within Google - says, "We will not lock you in". I think that gives people a lot of confidence about giving them a go.
If you take the Microsoft approach it has been very much one of, "We will make you comfortable in our world and provide you with high levels of functionality and we really won't care too much if you feel locked in or not".
Roberts: Absolutely. And you're right, Microsoft are going to be cannibalising their business when they launch their Office products online.
It's going to be a difficult decision to make about how hard they push on that, but at the moment they are not really competing in the same space as Google Apps. All they're offering is online Sharepoint and online Exchange.
So we would need to wait for the full release of their Office tools in a couple of months and then we're really going to see some competition with Google Apps.
CRN: Will the launch of Office Online make it harder for SMS Technology as a Google and Microsoft partner?
Roberts: No, in some respects it will make it easier for us because that will level the playing field. To be honest, we are not that interested whether a client goes with Microsoft or Google.
CRN: What impact do you think Telstra's T-Suite will have on the market?
Roberts: A lot of this is about accessibility and making things easier for customers. It's very straightforward to sign up for Google Apps but there's still the perception that you have to be a bit of a techie to do that.
T-Suite is a much easier entry point. They've done a very good job of integrating that with Microsoft provisioning, it all works pretty seamlessly. They've done a good job there.
CRN: And it will be pretty tempting for SMBs to add software to their phone bill.
Roberts: Absolutely, and for the smaller companies that's what's going to happen. For any company to make a move [away from their current operating environment] to Microsoft or Google they must have already decided that that's important to them.
For a lot of companies there is a lot of value and they can see that they can save money but it is not a priority for them yet.
Next page: Australian enterprises on storing data overseas
CRN: How do your Google customers deal with the fact that their data isn't stored in Australia?
Roberts: We are very open and honest [about where data is stored] and that is the main inhibitor to adoption to BPOS (Buinsess Productivity Online Services) or Google Apps. In my view the first vendor to release an Australian based data centre will clean up in the market.
We have a history of wanting things Australian and that's one of the main reasons that organisations don't make that move.
Cooper: I think it's fair to say that there is certainly a perception that the Patriot Act in the US is an inhibitor for Australian companies to have their data hosted in US data centres.
Google is sensitive to that and will talk to large organisations about how that might be allayed. The only thing they can't do - and no-one can - is host in Australia and that is a major inhibitor to cloud platforms.
Roberts: Google has many data centres that aren't in the US. That's all we can say about that.
I think there is a lot of fear, uncertainty and doubt about the Patriot Act because a lot of the countries that do have data centres - and whether they're Microsoft, Google or Salesforce doesn't make a difference - a lot of those countries are signatories to reciprocal agreements with the US.
So although the data is not being held in the US data centre they probably have signed off access rights to US security agencies.
CRN: How good is the security with Google Apps?
Roberts: Taking Google Apps as an example, the data is stored in a way that can't be reconstituted by a local operators.
They might be able to read the bytes but they wouldn't know what that relates to or who it belongs to and it probably wouldn't be a complete email anyway, it would be fragments. It's not to say that a clever guy can't spend a lot of time and money trying to piece things together, but it wouldn't be directly readable by a local operator.
I think the important point is that security is the major cloud vendors' business. If they don't have absolute 100 percent confidence from their clients about their data security, their business model evaporates.
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