Partners urge UK midmarket firms to 'Go Google'

Premier partners hopeful migration scheme will convince midmarket stragglers to move off existing Enterprise Agreements

UK Premier partners of Google are poised for a midmarket assault as a new campaign urging firms with 250 to 3,000 staff to ‘Go Google' lands in the UK.

Under its Midmarket Campaign, Google is offering to cover the Google Apps license fees of new customers as they run down the clock on their existing enterprise agreements with Microsoft and other vendors.

It is also chipping in on some of the deployment costs.

Only firms with 250 to 3,000 staff are eligible for the scheme, which was launched in the US and Canada last month and has been rolled to the UK and EMEA as of yesterday.

The campaign arrives in the UK just as Google announced that over two million paying businesses now use Google Apps for Work for their communication, collaboration and productivity work teams.

James Doggart, managing director of Cloud Technology Solutions (CTS), which is one of a small handful of Premier Google for Work partners in the UK, said the scheme will help his firm tackle any reservations about switching to the cloud with Google.

"We're now at a stage that when we show people Google's technology they are usually impressed, but quite often they have existing EA agreements with Microsoft and other vendors," he said. "Google are accepting that and saying ‘don't pay us for Google Apps for the remainder of the contract', and on top of that are helping fund the deployment through Premier partners like us.

"This is a real sign of intent that Google are committed to the midmarket and are trying to get rid of any objections in the midmarket for not moving to their technology."

As of yesterday, Google has also begun recommending third-party cloud applications through its Recommended for Google Apps for Work programme. The first batch of applications to get the nod include Ping Identity and Okta for identity management and Smartsheet, a project management app designed to integrate with Google Calendar, Gmail, Drive and Single Sign-On.

Meanwhile, Ancoris, another UK Google for Work Premier partner, said it has launched a new package, which includes free training and a year's free support, to support Google's new midmarket campaign.

"We're aware that for some Microsoft customers, one of the biggest barriers to embrace cloud collaboration can be exiting from expensive and complex enterprise license agreements," said Ancoris chief executive David McLeman (pictured).

"At Ancoris, we think this limits the ability for businesses to transform the way they work and innovate."