OS33 Integrates IT-as-a-Service Platform with Google Apps

OS33, an IT-as-a-Service delivery platform provider for managed service providers (MSPs), has integrated its platform with Google Apps — a cloud-based collaboration suite for individuals and business end users. Google Apps for Business launched in 2007 and now has more than 30 million users throughout 3 million different businesses. I caught up with OS33 Chief Technology Officer (CTO) Alex Osipov and Director of Marketing Paul Angelides in mid-January 2012 to find out how the integration will affect OS33’s MSP and business customers that use the company’s platform to provision and deploy applications and create a fully hosted IT desktop.

According to OS33, the main change is now OS33 users can provision, manage and consume Google Apps with all of the other business applications, IT tools and cloud storage solutions they already are using, and they can do it all through OS33’s Webtop — a web-based desktop for business users that, the company says, MSPs are embracing now more than ever. But why the integration now?

Small Business and Google Apps

“Google Apps is cost-effective and has useful features like internal docs sharing,” said Osipov, who noted OS33’s small-business customers who have used the newly integrated platform like the new feature access. (OS33 defines its small-business customers as those with 100 to 300 users.) “Most customers are starting to explore Google Apps features and want to do compliance with Google Apps and want to cut costs.”

Enterprise and Google Apps

Both Osipov and Angelides said pricing on Google Apps is cheaper than on Microsoft Exchange, which is what most of OS33’s enterprise customers are running  currently. And that’s fine with OS33. The company will still support Microsoft Exchange 2007 and 2010 users, as it expects a long migration process for companies moving from Exchange to Google Apps.

“To get the full benefit of Google Apps you have to go all-in,” Angelides said. “You can’t stop using Exchange but keep [Microsoft] Outlook. So migration won’t happen overnight.”

But OS33 still expects the full migration to happen, as the company claims to have made the most intriguing platform for businesses to use Google Apps. “Many companies can’t use Google Apps alone, so they need to buy applications from other IT vendors,” Angelides said. “But with the OS33 unified platform, they don’t have to use those other applications anymore.”

So the Google Apps product suite — including e-mail, calendar, task and other features — will now be integrated into the OS33 unified IT platform. MSPs and end users can use OS33’s Self Service Manage Tools to automatically provision and manage their Google Apps accounts, will have single sign-on access to their Google Apps just like they do for their other IT services, and will have support for data tags such as employee directory information.

“Google Apps alone is a great product, but businesses also need line-of-business apps, storage, security, mobility and more to run their business,” Osipov said in a prepared statement. “This integration enables users to work with the familiar and customer-friendly interface of Google Apps right alongside their business applications and other IT resources, without having to build and manage their own IT platform.”

The OS33-Google Apps integration comes on the heels of Google Apps’ biggest customer win yet — BBVA a financial company with 110,000 seats. It also will draw more attention to the Google Apps Authorized Reseller Program, which has more than 2,000 international resellers.