Google??s Cloud Empire Could Unite Everything
Source: Dave Courbanou
If you’ve been wondering why Google is so adamant about reaching out and establishing itself in so many markets, it could be because there exists a master plan the general public has been unaware of. Consider what would happen if Google condensed all its assets into one unified platform, for everyone, for everything. Call it Google Unified, 100 percent leveraged by the cloud and always ready at your fingertips.
The major platforms Google currently controls are vast and powerful. Google Apps, Google Voice, GMail, Google Play (Android Marketplace) and YouTube ― plus the impending Google Drive. All those services also happen to have a first party platform for delivery: Android and Chrome. Google is absolutely everywhere and it knows it. But Google’s biggest problem is convincing users to use every part of its ecosystem, instead of cherry-picking the ones they like. How many people have a GMail account but use an Apple or Microsoft service for everything else?
If Google created a cloud platform that united all its technologies, allowing users to subscribe to them for a reasonable fee, it could set the stage for a new shape of computing as we know it. This isn’t just for the consumer market ― Google Unified could very well be the platform that companies base entire businesses on. Key technologies Google provides can easily supplant traditional computing paradigms. SharePoint, Exchange and Microsoft Office all can be replaced with the Google Apps platform including GMail. For unified communications, Google Voice and Google Chat do a bang-up job. For file sharing, there’s Google Drive, and for multimedia, you have YouTube. Google+ could even find integration for social collaboration within the enterprise. This doesn’t cover every use case and not all technologies are ready for prime-time, but there is no technical reason Google cannot perfect these solutions for a fully invested project.
If Google builds it, will come? Market for Google hasn’t ever been an issue. The real hurdle is how Google ensure this service reaches millions of homes, reliably. While traditional teleco Internet connections are likely to be fine, Google could offer some extra special Google goodness inside of Google Unified if it is delivered on Google Fiber. Thus, Google becomes an ISP, reaching the customer with a complete end-to-end solution, potentially even shaping traffic for optimal Google Unified performance.
It’s not hard to imagine that kind of direct relationship with the consumer, but what about businesses? For the enterprise and SMB, the channel comes into play in a big way. A Google Unified installation would require a significant overhaul in a corporate infrastructure, so a new kind of channel role could be created, the cloud service integrator or CSI. A CSI would work with Google and the customer to ensure all the right technologies are implemented and deployed, based on the level of Google Unified services a company is buying.
For example, an enterprise with 500 seats signs up for Google Unified. First stop on the Google train is to retrofit all Windows desktops with Google Chrome OS. It’s lightweight, fast and secure, and it all the code pre-installed and pre-configured to take advantage of Google’s services. It takes less than 5 minutes to install. After a CSIs completes the desktop overhaul, configuration is as simple as logging into a user’s company-specific Google Unified account. Preferences are saved and can be carried over to any other computer running Chrome. CSIs might also help with mobile device management via Google tools, allowing for quick Android device provisioning. CSI’s may also work on optimizing a company data center infrastructure to ensure a consistent level of bandwidth and a high level of security is maintained. Google CSIs building on Google Fiber could also offer a special service wherein all the security needs are simply offloaded at the nearest Google Fiber hub. CSIs could still manage and maintain those switches on behalf of their customer, but like everything else, it would all be done from the cloud.
This may seem like a far-off future, but companies are building these cloud empires now. Google, Apple and Microsoft all clearly have the resources to create a complete, vertically-integrated cloud stack, covering every user need for every user device. The channel will need to be there to ensure integration into the cloud is smooth, but CSIs will abandon traditional sales and marketing models of the past. It will likely look something more akin to what Google Apps resellers do today ― wrapping services around a product. Never fear, these services are likely to be much more profitable, since there’s a heavy amount of initial integration and migration needed, followed by regular maintenance. Consider all the data and information a corporation could have on legacy systems. How will Exchange databases migrate into GMail? How will network shares and department specific documents find their way into Google Docs or Google Drive? Again, these are all integration services that are perfect for a CSI.
Adopting a cloud provider may not be the future for everyone, and not every company will want to pick a cloud to live in. Plus, Google Unified (or something like it) is likely 10-years down the road, so public sentiment on cloud empires may change. But it’s clear cloud technology will somehow be integrated into all facets of the IT world today. VARs setting up a road-maps to become a CSI in the near-future would be doing themselves a favor, because like it or not, we face the inevitability of a ubiquitous, always-on, always-connected, cloud-centric world.
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