Dive Brief:
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Google Cloud's technology partners grew 10 times since the beginning of 2017 and Google uses such partnerships to continue its growth and adoption in other companies, according to the company. Part of Google's go-to-market strategy is to use channel partners like Accenture, Deloitte and KPMG.
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The cloud vendor is using programs to help extend its Software as a Service (SaaS) partners' offerings. Programs include one which which connects Google's Customer Reliability Engineering team to its SaaS partners for maintenance on Google Cloud and one which offers the opportunity to receive Marketing Development Funds from Google depending on how much customers use GCP that they drive with their SaaS services.
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New integrations include a collaboration with Deloitte on solutions for running SAP apps on GCP, a developer challenge with Cisco and a new plug-in for VMware vRealize Orchestrator so customers can use GCP in addition to on-premise VMware solutions.
Dive Insight:
Every cloud provider, including Google, wants to create a platform better equipped for housing SaaS partners. In doing so, cloud vendors need to provide SaaS partners with programs that help a customer better use the application on the cloud.
However, no matter how extensive a cloud provider's partnership ecosystem might be, it is likely companies will continue to use multiple clouds. Nearly a quarter of companies are using public cloud to augment on-premise infrastructure, a solution Google adapted to with its plug-in for VMware.
Still, Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the top public cloud leader for Infrastructure as a Services (IaaS), followed by Microsoft and then Google. Together, the three companies account for 60% of that market space, but Google managed to hit just above the visionaries category and into the bottom of the leadership group in Gartner's 2018 Magic Quadrant for IaaS.
But perhaps most importantly, Google and AWS are on par in terms of leadership ranking in native security, which is a big influencer in selecting a cloud provider for companies.
The move to the cloud puts a lot of trust in the vendor itself, but S&R professionals agree that native security is better and more cost-effective than in-house security teams working on an on-premise system.
