90+ Partners Earn Google Cloud Partner Advantage Specialization

More than 90 partners now boast Google Cloud specializations as the company continues to take on Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure.

Google Cloud doesn’t boast the market share of its two main competitors, but the recent official launch of its Partner Advantage program aims to increase reach and revenue.

The leadup to the unveiling of the Google Cloud Partner Advantage Program entailed certifying a range of integrators, managed service providers, consultants and other partners to ensure their capabilities. Participants attained specializations in competencies including:

Google Cloud sees its specializations as proving partner proficiency and experience, the company notes on the partner website. Indeed, one of the aspects of specialization requires a business plan demonstrating partners’ plans to invest in their particular areas. It should come as no surprise, then, that earning Google Cloud specialization was – and is – no easy task.

“These partners demonstrated compelling customer success stories, a consistent practice, and passed a rigorous capability assessment,” Nina Harding, Google’s chief of global partner programs and strategy, wrote in a blog.

Maven Wave Partners, a Chicago-based IT solutions provider, is a Google Cloud premier partner with eight specializations under its belt.

Maven Wave Partners’ Jessica Wesley

“It’s reassuring for customers to know that the partner they chose to work with has the technical knowledge and proven success with other customers facing similar challenges,” Jessica Wesley, senior marketing director for Maven Wave, told Channel Futures. “[Our] multidisciplinary approach produces game-changing results for our clients who choose to take advantage of Google Cloud.”

“This achievement places us in a select pool of partners who specialize in data-driven marketing and harness cloud computing to generate meaningful marketing insights,” Ankur Jain, senior vice president, cloud platforms, for Merkle, said in a press release. “We continue to commit ourselves to achieving the best business results for our clients through data management, IT and cloud innovation. The use of Google Cloud’s tools further enhances these capabilities and results.”

All that activity surely is what Google Cloud hopes to foster through the new Partner Advantage program. Harding said as much in her blog

“Partnering is a key part of how we serve our customers, so we are committed to building an ecosystem of innovation and services that can drive digital transformation for customers,” she wrote.

Which Option Is Best?

The Google Cloud Partner Advantage Program features different ways to work with the vendor. There’s a self-engagement model that targets VARs and distributors. These parties integrate Google Cloud into their offerings and sell the technologies accordingly.

The service-engagement option targets systems integrators and managed service providers. They are able to consult, offer integration services, manage client applications and workloads, and even conduct Google Cloud-authorized training.

The build-engagement choice works best for independent software vendors and SaaS companies. Google said these partners integrate with or run on Google Cloud and incorporate products including G Suite and Chrome Enterprise.

Google Cloud says it offers other models, too, but partners first must enroll in Partner Advantage and verify expertise beyond the fundamental requirements. Those who do rise from the more basic “member” designation to “partner” gain access to the following resources:

The company said to expect more announcements soon.

Forrester’s Jay McBain

Partners earning certifications such as those for Google Cloud are on the right track.

“All of the data we are seeing is that customers are wanting true multicloud support, and expertise across AWS, Microsoft and Google is increasingly preferred,” said Jay McBain, principal analyst at Forrester Research.

McBain added a word of caution, though.

“The specialization should be across line of business, sub-industry, geography, size/sector, and parts of the tech stack — but not a single vendor.”

Google Cloud already contributes a large chunk of revenue to parent company Alphabet’s earnings, and the new partner program stands to add to those numbers. The company’s second-quarter 2019 financials included more than $8 billion in annual revenue run rates from Google Cloud.