As Google transitions the CEO crown from Eric Schmidt to Co-founder Larry Page (pictured), at least one major Google channel partner predicts Page’s leadership is a healthy development for VARs, managed services providers and cloud integrators.
“We are not concerned in the least bit with Larry Page now becoming CEO,” says Michael Amadio, director of marketing at Excel Micro, a major Google Apps security partner. “Google understands the importance of their Apps resellers and we actually think the change will be great.”
Excel Micro is the largest authorized distributor of Google’s message security and compliance solutions. The 24-person company’s cloud business now spans more than 750,000 end-users, up from about 500,000 last year. Excel Micro’s top-line recurring cloud revenues grew an impressive 33 percent in 2010 vs. 2009, according to our Talkin Cloud 50 survey data.
Amadio believes Google will continue to offer VARs the opportunity to resell Google Apps for Business. “Google will continue to give resellers the ability to set their own rates, bundle implementation and support packages, and even build their own applications that integrate with Google Apps for Business,” he adds
Amadio expects the momentum to continue as Google’s CEO crown shifts from Schmidt to Page in April 2011. Although some VARs and managed services providers continue to fear large cloud-based vendors like Google, there are signs that the Google Apps Reseller partner program is gaining momentum. Indeed, 29 of the world’s top 100 MSPs promote Google Apps to their end-customers, according to the fourth-annual MSPmentor 100 report, which will be unveiled February 16, 2011.
Amadio says the Google Apps Marketplace now has “hundreds of MSPs” advertising their services and the number are growing daily. “We work with Google’s sales team every day handling their Google Apps resellers that want to offering Postini services such as Archiving & Discovery and Message Encryption,” adds Amadio.
Meanwhile, TalkinCloud will be watching to see if Page addresses Google Apps partners and developers during the Google I/O Conference (May 10-11, San Francisco).
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