Google Apps Reseller Team: 1,000 SaaS Partners

The Google Apps Reseller team is out in full force at this week’s Parallels Summit in Miami. The conference, which has attracted several hundred SaaS and cloud experts from across the globe, seems to be a gathering place for solutions providers and service providers focused on recurring revenue opportunities. Here’s the scoop, along with an update on the Google Apps reseller program.

As The VAR Guy walked to this morning’s keynote at the Parallels Summit, he noticed the Google Apps trade show booth occupying prime real estate at the conference. Google Apps Channel Manager Jeff Ragusa is here, and he has a message for partners: Since launching the Google Apps Reseller program in 2009, the effort has attracted 1,000 partners, according to the Google Enterprise blog. And roughly 22 percent of MSPmentor 100 survey participants say they are promoting Google Apps to their customers.

The VAR Guy is intrigued … especially since Google Apps doesn’t really generate instant fortunes for VARs. Generally speaking, solutions providers earn about $10 per user per year when they resell Google Apps to end-customers. But Ragusa continues to make the point that VARs and MSPs can write their own application extensions for Google Apps. With that opportunity in mind, Google has launched a Google Apps Developer Certification partner program. Also of note: Having Google in your business kit often opens doors to customer discussions and sales meetings, The VAR Guy believes.

Still, plenty of questions remain. How engaged are the 1,000 Google Apps reseller partners? How much money are they making? And how many seats have Google Apps resellers sold in the first year of the partner program? Google declines to offer specifics, other than to say the partners are quite engaged with the company.

The VAR Guy hopes to catch up with Ragusa here at the Parallels Summit within the next few hours.