Google: We Have Stronger Products Than Microsoft

Stephen Cho, director of Google Apps Channels, spoke with Channelweb.com Senior Vice President Robert DeMarzo, Editor/News Steven Burke and Assistant News Editor Scott Campbell about the new Google Apps Premier Edition Reseller program.

The partner program, the Mountain View, Calif.-based company's first formal channel offering around the Google Apps Premier Edition product set, offers solution providers 20 percent discounts, which translates to recurring revenue of $10-per-year on a $50-per-user, per-year-subscription fee. Google said that partners will maintain the billing relationship with the customer and prepay Google in advance for each one-year subscription. Partners will be able to start deploying Google Apps Premier Edition seats in March.

The channel program pits Google directly against Microsoft's wildly-popular Office packaged software applications suite and Windows Live Essentials.

Cho talked about the battle with Microsoft and shared details of the new channel program. Below are excerpts of the conversation.

On the SaaS front, do you think you have a better channel program than Microsoft?

We believe that we have strong and stronger products in the marketplace around SaaS and a channel program that will compare favorably with any of the other programs that exist in the market.

Our main point is we believe we have the best products in the industry around cloud computing and will continue to develop and advance those and build a channel program to match around it.

Is this a throw-down aimed at Microsoft?

Our objective is to serve customers and build the greatest products to serve customers in the marketplace. We will continue to do that aggressively.

Why is Google's offering a better choice for resellers than Microsoft?

What we see in the reseller community is a lot of familiarity and reality around working with Microsoft products. And we expect to see that continuing of course. Folks are now migrating and expanding into new areas of opportunity following to where their customers are leading them. What our program provides is a robust full-service channel program for them to expand into the new full SaaS, full cloud computing environment where they are provided with a good channel discount which they receive into perpetuity and a good reselling revenue stream that recurs as well as a service revenue stream around it, as well as a platform for them to develop and add additional solutions.

Next: The nitty-gritty of Google's new partner program