Posted by Murali Sitaram, Director of Global Partnerships & Strategic Alliances, Google for Work

(Cross-posted on the Google for Education Blog)

The landscape of cloud technology has changed significantly since we started selling Google Apps in 2006, and our breadth of offerings has changed with it. Today, millions of companies and schools around the world turn to Google's products to help them launch, build and transform their organizations in the cloud. Our commitment to bringing the best of Google to work has also grown substantially.

Our partners are a fundamental part of our business and this effort. Partners help customers move, live and grow in the cloud by taking full advantage of the Google for Work and Education suite of products. They onboard and train new customers, manage change, create specialized software to integrate with Google Apps and develop unique solutions using Google Maps and Google Cloud Platform.

In order to meet the needs of customers moving to the cloud, and a new generation of partners, we’re updating our partner program. Our existing programs across Apps, Chrome, Cloud Platform, Maps and Search will fuse into one Google for Work and Education Partner Program. The new program allows partners to better sell, service and innovate across the Google for Work and Education suite of products and platforms.

Our new partner program is simple in design, having just three tracks, each designed to address specific customer needs (partners can join multiple tracks):

• The Sales Track is for partners whose core competency is marketing and selling Google for Work and Education products at high volume. Selling includes ongoing account management
  and renewals associated with a partner’s customers.
• The Services Track is for partners who provide the full range of services to customers, such as selling, consulting, training, implementing and providing technical support for Google for Work and Education products.
• The Technology Track is for partners who create products and solutions that complement, enhance or extend the reach or functionality of Google for Work and Education products.

To ensure the best customer experience, we have also updated the requirements and application process for the Google for Work and Education Partner Program, which will roll out in early 2015. Partners will receive a range of benefits to help them better support customers, including:

• Access to Google for Work Connect, our one-stop community for partners to access marketing campaigns, sales content, support resources and training
• Ongoing program communications
• Console to manage customer accounts
• Use of the designated Google for Work or Google for Education Partner badge
• Resale discount on the list price of our suite of products
• Listing in our partner directory

We will also offer an updated Premier tier, which is reserved for partners that have demonstrated higher levels of excellence within their track. Premier partners will receive exclusive benefits and support, including:

• Designated partner manager support
• Co-marketing opportunities with Google
• Access to marketing funding and other financial incentives
• Exclusive training and events
• Use of the exclusive Premier Partner badge

From Cloud Sherpas to Sprint, Ancoris to Devoteam, CDW to Promevo, and many more, our partners are helping transform businesses around the world. With the new Google for Work and Education Partner Program, we will continue to invest in creating world-class business relationships with our customers and provide the support and investment our partners deserve.

Posted by Rich Rao, Director of Global SMB Sales, Google for Work

This year, some of the world’s leading online service providers — Wix, Weebly and Endurance (parent company of Bluehost and others) — chose to offer Google Apps for Work as part of their mission to help small businesses get online. Now, we welcome two more to the Google for Work Partner Program: content management systems Squarespace and WordPress.com, who chose Google Apps for its simple integration process and common goal of helping business get off the ground and grow. And, as Google Apps customers themselves, these companies are deeply familiar with its benefits and understand the value it can bring to customers.

These partners make it simple and seamless for businesses to register a domain name, create a new website and set up custom business email through Google Apps, all at the same time and in a single signup process. In addition to the ability to communicate professionally right off the bat, businesses also get a familiar, easy-to-use productivity suite featuring tools like Google Calendar for scheduling, Google Hangouts for video meetings and Google Drive for storing files. Customers have everything they need to build and maintain their online presence as well as run their day-to-day business in one central place.

With a set of APIs that lets these companies build Google Apps into their existing user interface, the process of integrating with these partners’ own products is just as seamless as their customers’ signup process. That’s one of the reasons Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com, chose to offer Google Apps: “We’re constantly looking to optimize customer dashboards,” says Matt Mullenweg, Automattic’s founder and CEO, “so integrating Google Apps was a natural decision for us.”

These partners also experience the benefits firsthand in their own companies — they’ve seen how the tools encourage teamwork, improve communication and let employees work the way they live — anytime, anywhere, on any device. “We're huge proponents of giving our customers access to the services that we use ourselves to run our own business,” said Anthony Casalena, Squarespace’s founder and CEO. “We've been using Google Apps since we were a small team, and we continue to use those same tools to power 390 employees.”

We’re thrilled to be teaming up with our new partners, and we’re proud that they’ve chosen to share Google Apps for Work with their users. If your company offers online services to business customers who can also benefit from the value of Google Apps, feel free to email us.

Posted by Hari Ravichandran, CEO and Founder, Endurance International Group

Editor's note: Today’s guest blogger is Hari Ravichandran, CEO and Founder of Endurance International Group, which helps small businesses get online and manage their web presence.

Launching a small business is tough, and getting a website up and running along with marketing your company online can seem especially daunting. At Endurance, we realized way back in 1997 that the Internet was going to change how small businesses reach and serve their customers, and that bringing the power of the Internet to them was both a great business opportunity and a way to support aspiring business owners globally. So we built our company around helping SMBs manage their web presence with hosting, domains, email, design and online marketing. With Endurance doing the technical heavy lifting, SMBs can focus more on growing their companies and making them succeed.

Google Apps for Work is now is now an integral part of our e-mail and cloud productivity offering we recommend and provide to our customers, and it’s going to make business owners’ lives easier. How do we know? Because we started using Google Apps ourselves, and we’ve seen firsthand how we’ve used it to connect more often with our teams, get projects done faster and save money.

Today we serve over 3.7 million small businesses around the world, and we operate a number of leading brands such as iPage, Bluehost, HostGator and Domain.com from offices around the globe. In such an environment, communication is important. In the past, it took too many actions to complete simple tasks — sending emails back and forth, with employees from different offices not easily able to collaborate on documents or see each others’ calendars to schedule meetings. That all changed when we moved to Google Apps.

We knew of Google Apps and wanted to use the suite, which has all the e-mail, calendar and document-sharing features we needed to run our business. Many of our employees had personal Gmail addresses, so they were already familiar with Google and were genuinely excited about making the switch. Our IT department was equally happy about the short learning curve for Apps, since it made migrating our employees over to Apps surprisingly easy.

Perhaps the best part about our move to Google Apps is the ability to communicate with our colleagues across the company, no matter what country we’re based in. We talk to each other and keep in touch far more often than we used to, thanks to Hangouts and Google+. Since Google Apps has everything we need, from file storage to video calls, we will no longer rely on expensive or hard-to-use video conferencing, email, and file storage solutions.

We have built a relationship with Google to help small businesses harness the power of the web in multiple ways, first through the AdWords Referral program, and more recently via joint programs in the US, India, Africa and Southeast Asia including the “Get Your Business Online” program. Once we saw how quickly Google Apps changed the way we work, we wanted to share it with our small-business customers. That’s why we’re excited to be joining the Google for Work Partner Program. We’re integrating Google Apps with the dashboard that our customers use to manage their businesses, like email marketing and website design, so customers can have one seamless experience working with their website and productivity apps. And since we use Google Apps everyday ourselves we can help our customers get the most value out of it.

Google Apps fits in perfectly with our philosophy of guiding small businesses to success – not simply getting online but being online. When you have an easy-to-use solution like Google Apps, working together on projects, accessing documents from anywhere, and keeping costs in check becomes part of doing business every day.