Xepa Consulting brings Google Apps to market

As the concept of software as a service increasingly gains currency, Cape Town's Xepa Consulting has signed on as a reseller of Google Apps, through distributor Grove Group. Xepa MD Garth Francis says the addition of the cloud computing services to the company's solutions portfolio is a natural progression, which fits into Xepa's managed services strategy.

The Google Apps service from the vendor most widely recognised for its search engine technology is a set of Web applications, which delivers functionality similar to that of traditional office suites. Available applications include Gmail (e-mail), Google Calendar, Talk (instant messenger/VOIP), Docs (word processing) and Sites (wiki).

“The future of efficient and cost-effective computing lies in hosted solutions. On attending a seminar given by Google distributor Grove Group, it was clear that Google Apps is an ideal fit for our strategic vision,” says Francis.

Cloud-based services offer fixed cost, without the need for software licensing, hardware or archiving capacity. Google Apps' Premier Edition is billed at USD50 per user per year and includes 25GB of storage capacity. All maintenance is performed by Google itself.

“That's for full-featured e-mail, similar to hosted Microsoft Exchange, as well as all other functionality relating to the other applications,” Francis says. “When demonstrating this solution, our clients are simply blown away.”

Having already signed up several clients on Google Apps, Francis says the 'sweet spot' for SaaS services in this country is small businesses with distributed personnel. “Any company relies on effective collaboration to achieve common goals. For smaller organisations, which may have personnel located in various places around the country, Google Apps is an ideal platform for the secure and effective exchange and 'in-cloud' storage of information,” he explains.

Chad Bartlett, head of sales for Grove Group South Africa, notes: "Our figures show that the South African market is going Google quicker than any other African country. It is therefore important to have regional partners that can provide the technical and support expertise for Google Enterprise services. Xepa will help sell Google Apps to the market and provide premium consultancy and technical support in partnership with our organisation.”

While the safety and security of information stored in the cloud can be a concern for clients, Francis says this is a perception issue rather than a real problem. “The reality is that with the security measures which are in place for Google Apps, data protection in the cloud is likely far better than information stored on-site. It's also backed up reliably; there is something of a mindset change which is necessary when moving to cloud-based services, but momentum is gathering.”

Larger organisations are still somewhat hamstrung when it comes to cloud services, he continues, owing to potential impact on bandwidth costs. “For example, in large organisations files are generally exchanged on the LAN. If such files are exchanged in the cloud, with each user downloading it from the Internet, costs can escalate. However, bandwidth costs are coming down and when one offsets bandwidth expenditure against savings on hardware and software, cloud computing is still feasible.”

Interestingly, Francis points out that although SaaS dispenses with the 'boxed' software model by putting it all online, it does not negate the value added by the traditional two-tier distribution model. “Grove Group is the distributor; we are a reseller. It provides marketing support and demand generation, while as the reseller, we are responsible for the customer relationship and first line support; through its Cape Town-based contact centre, Grove delivers second-line support,” he explains.

“The SaaS model doesn't change the structure of the channel - only the manner in which software is delivered and paid for.”