Recently Google announced a new tool that would allow users to migrate email, contacts and calendar data from on-premise and hosted Microsoft Exchange to Google Apps. The tool would specifically:
- Perform a centrally managed bulk migration of users
- Selectively migrate email, calendar or contacts (or any combination thereof)
- Migrate in phases for very large migrations
Sounds great huh? Self service, a degree of automation and easing the on-ramp for adoption. But I wonder…
You see Google, the company that always prided itself on a direct to consumer channel strategy, has in recent months embarked on a strong reseller program – understanding that, at least when selling into larger enterprise, there is simply no avoiding customers preference for a local VAR, and near unanimous need for a services offering on top of the software itself.
Resellers have been a little nervous, at least in part due to doubts about Google’s commitment to them as a channel – after all when you’re used to great revenue from implementing an on-premise solution, the more paltry sums involved in a cloud product look decidedly shabby. It struck me that already nervous resellers would be even more nervous with this move by Google, a move that – at least to a certain extent – would see Google eat their own reseller’s lunch.
I put this to Scott McMullan, Google Apps lead within the Googleplex for his take on this. Unsurprisingly he dismissed my contention directly, saying that:
This gives both customers and VARs a reliable (and free) tool to move bits from one system to another. Our VARs want this — they sell services around the use of this tool.
What better way to test my contention than to ask the resellers themselves. I spoke to Stuart Maxwell from Amanzi, a small IT shop, as well as Dave Livesey from Wave Adept (who specialize almost exclusively in Google apps implementations). I asked them:
Their replies were interesting:
Now a cynic would say that this is a case of self-interest with these particular VARs keen to publicly be seen to support Google – but knowing these two particular businesses personally, that’s almost definitely not the case. Looks like this is much more a case of Google providing a useful tool that its VARs can put to good use…
its not because some reseller want’s to work as they’ve worked with Microsoft that Google should do si. One of the goal of Google’s product is to be simple, not to feed thousand reseller with non-valuable work.
Things have to be easiers so the work and the value starts to be focused on content and usages, not geeky stuff.
It’s a shame thay you relate such thoughts
[..] in the past about the need for SaaS vendors or the resellers that partner with them to provide customized applications that are tailored to distinct verticals. I recently wrote a postabout [..]
For my part, it is actually the geeky stuff that makes Microsoft Exchange much more secure.