BitTitan may have overcome the last barrier to migration with the release of the Google Complete Starter Kit.
The cloud enablement and data migration vendor has been offering solutions such as MSP Complete that help solution providers transition customer mail boxes and docs away from Google to One Drive. The company then offered a way to switch from Google Apps Vault to Office 365 along with the ability to remotely configure user accounts. While these solutions opened up new revenue streams for channel partners and BitTitan’s base of solution providers grew from 5,000 to 6,000 going into 2016, the Kirkland, Wash.-based company still did not possess a solution for migrating from Sites, Google’s version of SharePoint to the real SharePoint nor did BitTitan have a tool for staged migrations.
Until now.
The Google Complete Starter Kit comes with tools for solution providers to actually help convince customers on a Google Apps to Office 365 migration along with leads and sales scripts. It also comes in a white-label model with around the clock help desk support that includes reporting and auditing.
BitTitan’s VP of products and marketing Rocco Seyboth calls Google Complete “the last barrier for migration.”
Seyboth told CDN the Google Complete Starter Kit is important because it’s a new offering that builds recurring revenue streams for channel partners, while also opening up a dialogue with customer for more upselling and cross selling opportunities.
He cited a recent example of a small Brooklyn, N.Y.-based solution provider Agrei Consulting Inc. who migrated more than 40,000 mailboxes to Office 365 touching 30,000 users and a Petabyte of data using the Google Complete solutions. “What makes this story so remarkable is that Agrei is a 10 employee MSP and they took down a big Google installation,” Seyboth said.
One of the newer additions Coexistence is targeted at organizations with 50 employees or more who tend to need a few weeks for a migration. The problem BitTitan solution providers faced was that these customers had trouble syncing up calendars for the migration. Coexistence can pinpoint free time for migration projects. Seyboth said it usually led to a few tough weeks for the customers. “If you are a bigger business these types of migrations are a non-starter. Customers want to switch but the lack of coexistence capabilities was a major reason for not doing them,” he said.
The company also expanded MSP Complete with the introduction of Concierge and Mission Control as part of its services pillar for Office 365.
The revenue model outlined by Seyboth with Google Compete now that it has five tools increases margins on every workload migrated. For example, the first could net between 10 to 12 points, the second workload jumps up to 40 points and if a partner can upsell the customer to a third it then soars to 70 per cent margins.
Besides the migration barrier, Google Complete also has the ability to pinpoint both regional and global Microsoft incentives. Seyboth said the Microsoft FastTrack program pays solution providers $50 a seat for migrating customers away from Google. “That’s the most important one but every subsidiary at any given time will have some type of Google compete incentive,” he added.
“Microsoft partners year-after-year forgo millions of dollars in incentives and they don’t even know they are available. They don’t know how to sign up for some of these incentives. BitTitan searches out all these incentives and funds and pass them over to solution providers. From there they can pass those savings onto the customer or keep it in their pockets and become more profitable; or a combination of both,” he said.
Another Microsoft incentive singled out by BitTitan is the one for Office 365 assessment workshops. Microsoft will pay a $2,000 bonus to solution providers for ever assessment workshop done at a customer’s premises.
The addressable market for Google Apps migration is in the tens of thousands in Canada and the U.S., according to Seyboth. “Many of them are small businesses,” he said.
