Google ramps up channel focus with partner program revamp; specialisations
Google has ramped up its partner program offering incentives including low interest loans and expanded co-funding and rebates and introducing new partner specialisations, as it looks to harness the channel more strongly.
The company announced its plans to partners as it kicked off its Cloud Next conference in San Francisco this week.
Qualified premier partnes will have access to capital investment in the form of low interest loans to enable them to grow their teams, while co-funding can now be used for early-stage strategy workshops to help accelerate sales, in addition to building a proof of concept or supporting customer deployments.
Rebates are being expanded to include all Premier G Suite and Premier GCP Reselling Partners, as well as the current GCP and G Suite discounts.
The vendor highlighted its first partners to have achieved the new specialisations – application development, data analytics, machine learning and infrastructure – with Accenture accredited across all four specialisations.
The changes will also see the company's partner program requirements simplified, and partner enablement and training enhanced.
Sales training and product development credits will soon span all products in a move the company says will make it easier for partners to train their teams and build solutions across the entire Google Cloud product set.
Training and revenue goals for the partner program now encompass G Suite, GCP, Maps, Devices and Education, rather than being based on a single product.
A new track is being introduced within Google's authorised training partner program to help companies scale their training offerings more quickly.
The company says an open platform encompassing diverse partners maximises the possible surface of innovation for customers, letting them move more quickly.
"Partners deliver significant value to our customers and we're committed to supporting their success.
The announcements also included a focus on its partnerships with other vendors.
In a blog, Google Cloud vice president of global partner sales and strategic alliances Bertrand Yansouni and Nan Boden, head of global technology partners, said: "As tech partners plug into and build on Google Cloud via technical integrations and APIs, we increase the 'surface area' of how our combined innovation reaches our customers.
They highlighted work with Intel, where the two companies are launching 'several' technology initiatives and market education efforts covering IoT, Kubernetes and TensorFLow, including optimisations, a developer program and tool kits.
Also highlighted were this week's announcements about Veritas bringing its enterprise-ready data management solutions to Google Cloud; Egnyte's plans to integrate with Google Docs; and Check Point launching its vSEC cloud security solution on GCP.
