It also means that most companies don’t even look at alternatives like Google Apps, since they have to pay for Microsoft Office during their EA’s term no matter what.
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Google announced in a blog post today a new offer for enterprise customers that will make the Google Apps for Work suite free for organizations still under an enterprise agreement contract with another productivity provider.
“We’re going to meet the needs of customers with EA”, says Google Apps head of global sales Rich Rao. The only caveat being they commit to the full price of Google Apps for Work for at least one year after their Enterprise Agreement with Microsoft expires.
Google says that once your enterprise agreement is runs out, companies can sign up on a simple contract “with no traps or gotchas”, and that many businesses find that Google Apps is cheaper, as well.
Google Apps for Work, which includes Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, Forms, and Drive along with calendaring and communications tools like Gmail, Hangouts, Calendar, and more, as well as an I.T. dashboard for management, starts at $5 per user per month, or increases to $10 per user per month for unlimited storage space and “Vault”, a system for eDiscovery of emails, chats, docs and files. And just in this past quarter, reports have been surfacing that Office 365 has over taken Google Apps for Work.
“It’s cash from us, on behalf of customers, for resellers”, Rao says.
Google estimates once those companies make the switch, they’ll see savings, on average, around 70 percent with Apps as their primary office productivity suite, according to Sitaram. Meanwhile, the company says it’s working on bringing the offer to global markets in the future. The $25 per user bonus helps these resellers lessen their costs of training their client’s staff in newly deployed software. Strategic moves like this one are created to push Google deeper into the enterprise, now that the product is so well-understood.
It appears to be struggling to hold its own against Microsoft. And the new levels of Google’s commitment could be a significant threat to Microsoft as many of their other businesses, such as Azure, rely heavily on Enterprise customers.
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So the question becomes whether or not Google can pry away those customers with the enticement of free software.
