Graduation day is approaching for Google as a provider of cloud computing solutions to commercial buyers, according to SYNNEX Corp.
Indeed, the Fremont, Calif.-based distributor says that while Google’s Chrome operating system and G Suite productivity solution made their first inroads beyond the consumer space in the education market, they’ve begun gaining momentum with businesses in a wide range of other verticals too.
“We feel good really about the trend lines that we’re seeing,” says vice president of software and cloud services technology solutions Rob Moyer, speaking with ChannelPro at this week’s SYNNEX Inspire partner conference in Greenville, S.C. “It’s a real business.”
That’s been especially true for SYNNEX since earlier this year, when the company officially became the first distributor in North America authorized to sell both monthly and annual subscriptions to G Suite via its online cloud solution marketplace. According to Moyer, while the still young offering accounts for a modest share of SYNNEX’s overall cloud revenue at present, the early sales returns are promising.
“It’s enough to make people notice,” he says.
Moyer cites several reasons why Google’s SaaS portfolio generally has begun catching on in the business world, beginning with low barriers to entry.
“It’s simple, easy to deploy, easy to use, easy to manage, and it’s secure,” Moyer says. “At the end of the day it just works.”
Google products are also popular among users, he adds, especially the millennial-aged ones that businesses most want to recruit.
“We’ve got a couple retailers that went G Suite because their workers were used to Google,” Moyer says, noting that employees are particularly fond of the G Suite Hangouts videoconferencing service.
“You’ve got a lot of companies that are using Hangouts commercially,” he says.
Meanwhile, channel pros are discovering uses for Google cloud solutions that go well beyond collaboration. Chrome, for example, makes a good engine for digital signage solutions.
“It’s a lightweight tool that can manage a large format screen,” Moyer says.
At present, most SYNNEX partners that offer Google products support no other platform. Moyer encourages Microsoft and Amazon Web Services resellers to consider adding Google to their lineup as well though. With Google’s SMB partner ecosystem still maturing, he notes, they’ll face little competition from peers, and mastering the Google line card is a relatively simple process.
“There’s not a lot of SKUs that you have to go figure out,” Moyer says. There’s money to be made as well, he adds.
“If you grow at market [rate], you’re going to grow,” Moyers says. You’ll grow even faster, he notes, if you include Chrome-based hardware like the new Pixelbook 2-in-1 that Google introduced yesterday in your deals, as many current Google resellers do.
“We see a very good attach rate,” Moyer says.
For the moment, SYNNEX plans to make endpoint solutions the sole focus of its Google partnership.
“We’re a crawl, walk, run [organization],” Moyer says. “We try to execute on a thing at a time and then we grow.”
Eventually though, he continues, Google’s infrastructure-as-a-service offering, the Google Cloud Platform, will join G Suite on the SYNNEX marketplace. All that remains to be determined is when.
“More to come,” Moyer says.
