Google Ramps Up SaaS Programs, Integrations, Doles Out Awards

Written by Lynn Haber
July 23, 2018

Google announced a range of sweeping new and enhanced programs for its partner ecosystem as thousands of its partners gather for Google Cloud Next '18 this week in San Francisco.

GOOGLE CLOUD NEXT — One of the top three behemoths for public cloud services, Google Monday announced a broad set of additions and enhancements to its Google Cloud partner ecosystem and program, ahead of the vendor’s annual partner summit, Google Cloud Next ’18, starting tomorrow in San Francisco.

Nan Boden, senior director, global technology partnerships, and Nina Harding, channel chief, global partner strategy and programs, outlined in a blog four buckets of news: new SaaS programs; new and expanded integrations; new and expanded specializations; and partner award winners.

As the vendor prepares to kick off its third annual Next conference, Google is sending a strong signal that it is committed to partners.

“They’re an indispensable part of our mission to bring the cloud to more business,” the partner-program executives wrote.

Taking a deeper dive into the announcements, which Google hopes will drive its partners into more deals with customers, the vendor rolled out a new set of programs to help partners take SaaS applications to customers, including:

A co-selling program that matches Google Cloud Platform (GCP) sales experts with SaaS partners to deliver GCP-run SaaS solutions to customers.
A new program that connects Google’s customer reliability engineering (GCRE) team with SaaS partners to keep their products up and running on Google Cloud.
A new way for partners to receive marketing development funds (MDF) from Google based on how much use of GCP they drive with their SaaS products.
A new online community that facilitates partner networking, broadcasts updates from Google Cloud, and is a place where partners can share best practices with other community members.

Google’s aforementioned new and expanded integrations include collaborations with VMware, Deloitte, SAP and Intel, to name a handful. More specifically:

Google’s partnership with Deloitte will to help SAP customers extend their cloud strategies into more use cases. Deloitte will offer a full suite of solutions for running SAP applications on GCP, including Deloitte invoice management solutions and the Deloitte visual-inspection system.
During the Next ’18 conference, Google will announce updates to its partnership with Cisco, including news in collaboration and AI, and a new developer challenge designed to drive innovation on hybrid solutions across the Cisco Container Platform and GCP.
Google is introducing new distributed ledger technology (DLT) solutions, with the goal of drumming up customer interest in exploring ways they might use DLT frameworks on GCP with launch partners that include Digital Asset and BlockApps, and try open-source integrations for Hyperledger Fabric and Ethereum later this year.
In collaboration with Intel and Appsbroker, Google will offer a new resource for high-performance cloud help. This new center of excellence will offer resources, tips and best practices to help customers migrate high-performance cloud computing workloads onto GCP.
Google is also announcing a new VMware plug-in. The VMware vRealize Orchestator allows customers to use GCP alongside their on-premises VMware environment.

Furthermore, Google announced 19 new partners in five new specializations: security, cloud migration, location-based services, enterprise collaboration and education.

Finally, the company congratulated its 2017 Partner Award winners (both technology and channel partners) across six categories: global; sales; services; product: customer success; specialization: customer success; and technology. Cisco, Accenture and SADA Systems were among the winners. See the full list here.