VARs Have Google-y Eyes For New Ingram Pact

The Santa Ana, Calif.-based distributor is now distributing the Google Search Appliance (GSA) and the Google Mini, the first time the products have been available through the channel. It's a relationship that solution providers said they have wanted for some time.

"We haven't been able to sell Google enterprise products until, well yesterday," said Mike Chipman, president of Xooni, a Los Angeles-based company founded in 2005 to provide Google Analytics services to business customers. "Up until this point, we've been providing expertise in the form of consulting and integration for customers. I would expect we'll start selling the hardware as soon as we can. Thankfully, we're already set up as an Ingram reseller."

Other solution providers said it's nice to see Google embracing the channel, and Ingram Micro adding the foundation of another solution set to its portfolio. "It would have been nice if [Google] had had a distributor earlier. The product's been great. People really like it," said David Goebel, president of Goebel Group, a Cleveland, Ohio-based solution provider. Goebel, who has bought directly from Google in the past, expects to move his purchases to Ingram Micro now that the distributor is on board. Some solution providers that said they may not have ever given Google a second glance if Ingram Micro hadn't picked up the appliance line. "We were probably too small to deal with Google directly on anything. Since it's available through distribution, the opportunity is there to consider it as another piece of our solution set," said Jane Cage, COO of Hearltand Technology Solutions, Joplin, Mo. Cage said she'll look to hear what Ingram Micro has to say about selling it in the channel. "We'll try to figure out how we would gear up to sell it. What kind of engineer needs supports it. I don't have a very good answer for that yet," she said.

Until now, most of Google's reseller sales were into end-user accounts that needed to get multiple quotes to bid, Goebel said. Google often brought resellers into the fray to meet that quota, he said."They didn't have a reseller program except for certain accounts and there was a limited number of people in the channel," he said.

Google was a great partner several years ago when it introduced the GSA, Goebel said. That changed when it started building a direct sales force and the competition increased, but Google has been more friendly for the last year or so, he said. "In the beginning, we'd do trade shows together. We'd be in the booth together. Then they started taking deals direct. But now it's a complete circle. Over the last year, they've worked with people a little better. They'll ask us what support we need. If it's a huge account and they were in there first, that's one thing, but they've really come around," he said.

The Google Search Appliance and Mini appliances sit on a company's network and are capable of searching for information stored on multiple devices. At Googlestore.com, the Google Mini starts at about $2,000 for 50,000 documents and the GSA starts at $30,000 for 500,000 documents.

Solution providers familiar with the products said search technology solutions are a hot, growing opportunity, especially now that they're affordable to small businesses, but it also allows small VARs to go after big corporate accounts.

"Being a small reseller, it's opened up a lot of doors for us. When we had the Google brand we could go in to large companies like Georgia Pacific, Lockheed-Martin." Goebel said.

As demand for search solutions increases, solution providers are primed to benefit, said Xooni's Chipman. "Google can only provide so much consulting and expertise itself. The real opportunity is knowing how it works and doing the actually implementation and consulting," Chipman said. That's why he left Google two years ago to form his own company supplying those services. "We work with companies all over the map. We get calls from people working out of their basement and a few Fortune 50 companies," Chipman said. "Any company with a Web site, their job is to help visitors find what they're looking for as quickly as possible. Google has a suite of products that everyone with a Web site can use. The Mini and [GSA] fall into that realm. As a corporate or even governmental web site, the usefulness [of information] continues to grow."