Here's What Just Happened to Google Workspace

As Google Cloud puts its public sector group into a standalone division, the company says it has attained an “important milestone” for serving governments and schools. The world’s third-largest public cloud provider now holds the U.S. Department of Defense’s Impact Level 4 authorization for Google Workspace.

Will Grannis is CEO of Google Public Sector.

Google Cloud’s Will Grannis

“This is an important milestone in our ongoing commitment to serving the needs of federal, state, local and education entities,” Grannis wrote in a July 20 blog.

Google Workspace features business versions of Google apps including Gmail, Drive, Calendar, Meet, Docs and Sheets. With that in mind, Grannis says that Google Workspace now holds IL4 authorization across Google Cloud’s entire public cloud offering.

“This means all customers can be confident they are collaborating securely, without having to deploy a separate government cloud limited in its capacity to support customer needs at scale,” he wrote. “It also means that customers in highly regulated agencies and industries can operate seamlessly without having to incur additional cost and implementation complexity.”

What Is IL4?

The IL4 security requirement addresses controlled, yet unclassified information. This is info related to critical infrastructure, defense, intelligence, finance, law enforcement — and proprietary business information.

That’s a big deal, according to two analyst firms.

“In addition to helping government agencies and education entities grow and run organizations efficiently and securely, collaboration tools and platforms such as Google Workspace also help to shape and recruit the next generation of the workforce,” said Adelaide O’Brien, research vice president at IDC Government Insights.

Michael Diamond, senior technology and channels analyst at Futurum Research, agreed.

“Obtaining the U.S. Department of Defense’s Impact Level 4 authorization is an excellent achievement for the Google Public Sector team that will undoubtedly help accelerate its growth further in the federal markets as those customers are also seeking to digitally transform themselves in highly secure ways,” Diamond said.

Google Workspace is already in place at the federal Defense Innovation Unit, the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory and government organizations worldwide, per Grannis.

Google Cloud, Google Workspace in the Public Sector

The new DoD designation for Google Workspace comes as the U.S. federal government continues its efforts to deploy multicloud environments. It’s not an easy task, given all the legacy programs and sensitive data that must be updated and protected, respectively. The feds also have come up against unexpected pushback to their digital transformation initiatives. Remember all the fighting around the now-defunct Joint Enterprise Defense Initiative? That has now morphed into the Joint Warfighter Cloud Capability (JWCC), which will look to multiple cloud vendors to deliver services on an indefinite delivery-indefinite quantity contract.

Overall, the benefits of Google Cloud’s new authorization for Google Workspace should trickle down to channel partners who sell the provider’s solutions to public sector clients. That’s because Google Cloud has changed and streamlined how it goes to market through its managed service providers and other indirect partners. One major way the company is doing this is by bringing partners into its direct sales organization.

Google Cloud’s Thomas Kurian

In late June, Google Cloud announced that Google Public Sector would operate as a subsidiary of Google LLC. The goal is to bring Google Cloud technologies to public sector customers in the United States.

Thomas Kurian is Google Cloud CEO.

“Google Public Sector will provide a full complement of business functions and capabilities, including specialized sales, customer engineering, customer success and services, customer support, channel and partner programs, compliance, and security operations, so that our U.S. public sector customers can leverage the full range of technology offerings from Google Cloud,” Kurian wrote in a June 28 blog.