Google Cloud doubles-down on ecosystem in 2022 to meet customer demand

Google Cloud has been a partner-focused business from day one. As we reflect on 2021 and look forward to what’s ahead, I want to say “thank you” to our ecosystem for all of the amazing innovations and services you provided our mutual customers over the last year. 

In 2021, we faced unprecedented demand from businesses as they turned to the cloud to digitally transform their organizations. This surge in cloud deployments meant we increasingly turned to our ecosystem to help customers create customized implementations with our systems integrators (SIs), build packaged solutions with our independent software vendors (ISVs), or coach employees how to best use new cloud technologies with our consulting and training firms.

To continue meeting growing customer demand in 2022 and beyond, I am pleased to share that we are bringing together our ecosystem and channel sales teams into a single partner organization to bring a more streamlined go-to-market approach for our partners and customers. In support of this change, we plan to more than double our spend in support of our partner ecosystem over the next few years, including rolling out increased co-innovation resources for partners, more incentives and co-marketing funds, and a larger commitment to training and enablement—all with a goal of continuing our joint momentum in the market.

Providing leads and new go-to-market programs for consulting partners

The need for highly-skilled partners to accelerate digital transformation for customers has never been greater, and our ecosystem of services partners continues to gain tremendous opportunities to deliver high-value implementation and professional services, industry solutions, and digital transformation expertise. In 2022, we are investing in our SIs by:

• Moving to a partner-led, partner-delivered approach for professional services needed by our customers, particularly through expanded work with partners. This will include new programs for lead generation and lead sharing with our SI partners.

• Increasing our investment with SIs in deploying go-to-market programs for industry-specific SI solutions, as well as creating more pre-integrated industry ISV and Google Cloud AI solutions together with our SI partners.

• Accelerating critical training, specialization, and certification programs in support of our goal of training 40 million new people on Google Cloud. This includes new programs for experienced practitioners, and a hybrid learning modality that combines online and in-person learning supported by Google mentors. 

Accelerating growth for ISV partners with more resources

In 2021, our ISV partners helped build unique integrations with Google Cloud capabilities in AI, ML, data, analytics, and security for our mutual customers. In fact, our marketplace third-party transaction value was up more than 500% YoY from 2020 (Q1-Q3). In 2022, we are deepening our commitment to our ISV partners’ success by:

• Making significant investments in new Google Cloud Marketplace functionality, including adding new technical resources that will help accelerate how ISVs distribute their apps and solutions. Coupled with this, we’re also lowering the Marketplace rate to 3% for eligible solutions, helping drive more adoption with customers. 

• Expanding our regional sales and technical teams who are dedicated to supporting ISVs, and at the same time increasing market development funds (MDF) to drive further sales growth for our ISVs.

• Dedicating additional technical resources to help ISVs move to more modern SaaS delivery models, as well as to optimize and supercharge their apps for their customers by leveraging Google Cloud technologies.

• Creating new monetization models for ISVs using Google Distributed Cloud to deliver products across hybrid environments, multiple clouds, and at the network edge. ISVs will be able to build industry-specific 5G and edge solutions leveraging our ecosystem of telecommunication providers and 140+ Google network edge locations.

• Increasing funds for ISVs to accelerate customer cloud migrations by offsetting infrastructure costs during migration (ISV Cloud Acceleration Program).

Launching new program incentives to drive a thriving channel

Since the launch of our Partner Advantage program, we have increased funds for our channel partners tenfold. In 2021, to extend this momentum, we expanded our incentive portfolio for resellers to support their long-term growth and profitability. In 2022, we are increasing our investment in partner programs even further, including:

• Significantly expanding incentives to reward partners who source and grow customer engagements, and for those who deliver exceptional customer experiences and critical implementation services.

• Evolving to industry-standard compensation plans for our direct sellers, and rewarding our channel partners for implementation (vs. reselling) for larger enterprise customers.

• Significantly increasing co-marketing funding for our channel partners to accelerate demand generation and time-to-close.

• Growing our learning resources, including launching more than 10 new Expertises and Specializations, and expanding our certification programs for partners to deliver the highest levels of Google Cloud expertise to customers.

• Launching a new program for resellers to support customers via offerings on the Google Cloud Marketplace.

• Sharing a toolkit to bring the best of Google’s diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) resources to our ecosystem of partners, including programs to develop inclusive marketing strategies and deploy DEI training within their own organizations.

As we kick off 2022, it’s clear that the trend of digital transformation will only continue to drive customer demand for the cloud and, more importantly, a need for services, support, and solutions from our partners. We believe that by centralizing our partner groups into a single organization and by more than doubling our spend in support of our partner ecosystem over the next few years, we will help accelerate our joint momentum in the market around the world. For more information on these new programs and resources, please reach out to your Partner Account Manager or login to your Partner Advantage portal at partneradvantage.goog.