Partner Advantage: two years of growth, energy, and impact!

Last month marked the two-year anniversary of Google Cloud Partner Advantage. I want to thank our fast-growing ecosystem of global partners for their hard work, imagination, and energized commitment, and to reflect on how much we’ve accomplished together. In 2019, we kicked off by building a multi-year action plan together with partners, added some innovative Googleyness, and have since remained laser focused on our core principles -- ensuring simplicity, fostering collaboration, focusing on the customer, and sustaining a growth mindset. 

We also continue to measure partner success in three fundamental ways that set us apart in a highly competitive market: Ensuring that Google Cloud and our partners are each aligned to the same business goals and strategies, providing partners with the opportunities to earn and showcase their skills to the market, and empowering partners to demonstrate differentiated value through customer success stories, certifications, Net Promoter Score (newly added this year!) and more.

I am very pleased to share that to-date the results have been fantastic--thanks to an ecosystem based on trust and collaboration:

• The average size of partner-involved deals more than doubled from 2019 to 2020.

• We onboarded almost 3x more indirect resellers in the first three quarters of 2020 compared to the same period in 2019.

• Partner-created pipeline in the mid-market segment grew more than 200% YoY from 2019 to 2020.

• Partners were involved in 3X more customer deals in 2020 than in 2018.

• The number of enterprise customer accounts with a partner attached increased by 50% from 2019 to 2020.

• Our partner ecosystem has grown by more than 400% in the last two years.

We’ve rapidly expanded key programmatic elements of Partner Advantage, such as incentives and Differentiation; worked with analysts and partners to design the most compelling offerings, integrated closely with key teams across Google Cloud; advanced our technical infrastructure; and deployed new features and growth drivers, from our Partner Advisors, to more formal certification and training options, to portal features that bring greater control and transparency to partners. 

We’ve also focused on ensuring that partners are part of every deal. Resources such as the internal and external partner directories allow Google Cloud sales teams to match partners to deals, help customers easily connect with the best partners for their needs, and allow partners to showcase their expertise and knowledge depth.  We highlight partner accomplishments by showcasing customer success stories, expertise by industry or solution area, and specialization in a major practice area--all to make it easier for our customers to find the right partner at the right time with the right skills for innovation and confidence.

Check out the items below to learn more about what Partner Advantage has fueled and accomplished with our valued partners in the past two years.

Advancing the Partner Differentiation Journey

The Google Cloud Partner Differentiation Journey has always been the heart and soul of Partner Advantage. By providing partners with the tools, training, and insights they need to differentiate their business in a rapidly shifting global marketplace, we help partners offer more value to customers. In the two years since we launched Partner Advantage, partners have looked to our Differentiation Journey to achieve their goals and win:

• The number of Customer Success Stories published by partners has increased 250% since 2019. More than 3,800 are now online and accessible by customers. 

• The number of partners with Specializations grew 70% through 2020. Earning Specializations helps unlock additional benefits and incentives.
  

• Our managed partners more than doubled their Expertise designations in 2020 over the prior year.

• We’ve also partnered with Forrester to take a deeper look at the business opportunity Google Cloud offers to partners¹. I’d encourage you to read the report if you haven’t already as it contains some excellent data and insights you won’t find anywhere else.

Reinventing Partner Incentives 

Incentives are one of the most important elements of Partner Advantage and a strong motivator for partner loyalty and investment. Since launch in 2019, our incentives portfolio has  expanded  significantly  to offer partners more opportunities to earn and grow their business , easier for partners to leverage, and more competitive. It’s all about winning business with our partners — together.  

In fact, IDC is projecting² that when you combine our incentives with other components of Partner Advantage, the future looks very profitable:

• The overall Google Cloud partner business opportunity is expected to increase by a factor of at least 3.6 by 2025.

• On a global basis, IDC expects partners to generate $5.32 USD in revenue for every $1 of Google Cloud revenue. Better still, they expect partner revenue to jump to $7.54 for every dollar Google takes in by 2025.

For our part, the Google Cloud Partner Advantage incentives are an attractive, competitive and comprehensive portfolio of rewards across Sell, Service and Build partners. Our partner investments include:

• More than 10X increase in partner incentives and funds since launch : 

• Google Workspace

• We focused on rewarding  partners for new customer  acquisition and to protect partner investment, which have led to more than a 50% increase in win rate for partner registered deals, and a significant increase in partner sourced pipeline. 

• In 2021, we expanded the incentive portfolio to boost partner profitability for expanding into new markets  and driving adoption leading to customer success.

• We launched incentives for Distributors to expand into new geographies and new segments

• Google Cloud

• Beginning with the MSP Initiative, we’ve expanded the incentives portfolio in 2021 to offer attractive partner discounts, additional incentives for new customer acquisition and rewarding partners who help their customers grow consumption.

• We have seen 40% more partners utilizing the funding for pre-sales engagements  and deployments and for sales acceleration.

• And, in the summer of 2021, to expand our routes to market, we launched Distribution incentives for GCP.

We’re thrilled that our evolving resources and initiatives are strengthening our collaborative relationships with partners and helping to better serve our customers. That relationship is the cornerstone to our strategy as we drive innovation and grow our businesses together. To learn more about Google Cloud’s partner program, click here.

^{1.The Google Cloud Business Opportunity For Partners, a commissioned Total Economic Impact™ study conducted by Forrester Consulting, January 2020
2. IDC eBook, sponsored by Google Cloud, Partner Opportunity in a Cloud World, doc #US46702120BROI, August 2020}