Google debuts partner program for enterprise products

Google is unveiling a partner program on Thursday to sign up independent software vendors (ISVs), resellers, consultants, and systems integrators to provide complementary wares and services for its enterprise products.

The goal of the program, called Google Enterprise Professional, is to extend the reach of enterprise products such as the Google Search Appliance, the Google Mini, and Google Desktop Search for Enterprise, all of which are designed to index and retrieve information in organizations such as companies, educational institutions, and government agencies.

Google offers a basic level of service and customer support for its enterprise products. For example, it offers online training for the Google Mini and the simple version of the Search Appliance, and on-site installation for the bigger versions of the Search Appliance.

But it doesn’t offer any consulting, integration services or customization work, said Dave Girouard, general manager of Google’s enterprise business unit. That’s where the partners will come in and provide those types of services Google isn’t skilled at, he said.

About a dozen partners have already been signed up, and Google expects that number to exceed 100 over the coming year, Girouard said.

However, he cautions that the focus of the program isn’t on simply signing up a lot of partners, but on having a set of partners that offer clients “a critical mass of expertise.”

Google also takes the time to evaluate possible partners, aware that subpar work from them will reflect bad on Google, Girouard said. “We have to be pretty careful about who we work with in this program because in the end people are going to look at Google in terms of whether the experience with our products is good or bad,” he said.

The partners that have already been signed up are all based in the U.S., but the program will be launched shortly in Europe as well, he said.

Partners pay US$10,000 per year to be in the program, and that includes a developer version of the Google Search Appliance, support and training. Google will act as a link between enterprise clients interested in professional services and its partners, matching clients with partners with the appropriate skills for the services sought.

One partner already on board is LMN Solutions, in Herndon, Virginia. LMN Solutions President Matt McKnight said Google reached out to them because of the company’s expertise and focus on the U.S. federal government.

“One thing that makes it attractive to us is that they’re not offering any services,” he said. “In a lot of cases, you end up competing with a vendor because they’re attempting to offer their own services for the product they sell. In this case, you don’t have to worry about competition from them.”

Two staffers from LMN Solutions already have received training from Google on the vendor’s three enterprise products, he added.

LMN Solutions will not be reselling Google enterprise products, but other partners will have the capacity to do so, according to a Google spokesman. LMN Solutions will be referred clients by Google’s sales staff, McKnight said.

The Google Search Appliance is designed to index information stored in a variety of server-based data repositories, including intranets, public Web sites, relational databases, enterprise business applications, content management software and legacy systems.

Meanwhile, the Google Mini, a simpler and less expensive version of the Search Appliance, is designed for use by small and medium-sized businesses that want to make searchable the information in their intranets or public Web sites. Both products are hardware boxes with Google software in them.

Google Desktop Search for Enterprise is a software application for indexing and making searchable the contents of PC hard drives.

More information about the program will be available at some point Thursday at http://www.google.com/enterprise/gep