Johannesburg - JSE-listed information and communication (ICT) company Faritec has thrown its weight behind a new partnership with Google to sell managed services to South African businesses.
Speaking at the launch of the partnership, Faritec regional executive Gordon Love said the company had spent "multi-millions" of rands training people and setting up the new business unit, which would be the seventh in its armoury of specialised services units and compliment others, like its already well established security cluster.
Although Google does not believe in exclusivity, according to its head of sales at Google Enterprise for Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) Jesper Frederiksen, Faritec is hoping that its first mover advantage with give it the opportunity to take the lead in selling Google Apps products in the country.
Frederiksen would not be drawn on when Google might appoint its next Enterprise partner in the South African space, but did say that Faritec had already proven to be the ideal partner in terms of the investment and commitment it had made to the relationship.
Love estimates bringing in revenues of at least R20m in the first year from the business unit, with exponential growth thereafter.
In the context of the R1.1bn in revenue that Faritec expects from the group this financial year, this amount seems to be small. But Love reminds that when the group first set up in managed services and opened its Security Operations Centre in 2004, it was criticised for doing so. However, this was now a R150m a year business for the group.
Frederiksen said Google constantly strove for innovation, with all 19 000 employees expected to come up with new ideas that may or may not turn into the next big thing. "Innovation is what we do at Google," he says.
Staffers must spend 20% of their time - one day a week - in an exercise they call the "20% rule", mining ideas in whatever way they see fit. Frederiksen said both GMail and Google News were, for example, originally 20% projects.
Significant return on investment
Google started enterprise search about six years ago, and launched the Apps business in February 2007. It was adding new features to it on a weekly basis, Frederiksen said.
The idea behind it was that Google had as its goal to organise the world's information, in the most relevant, useful way possible. And, although it was the world leader in internet search - everything outside the firewall - it wanted to do so inside the firewall, in other words, at companies, as well.
The Google IT solutions that Faritec will sell in the South African market will include Enterprise Search, Geospatial Solutions (Maps, Google Earth and Google Sketchup) as well as Google Apps (Security and Compliance).
In Enterprise Search, Google could help companies find their crucial information no matter the back-end they were using. Love said the return on investment was so significant that it was an easy sell to company chief investment officers (CIOs).
Using Google's Geospatial Solutions, he said companies could create a visual representation of where their information and assets were located, and how best to use this in the organisation. It sees an opportunity to sell into municipalities, financial services institutions and other key industries like telecommunications companies.
Love said Faritec would also package Google Apps into a Software as a Service (SaaS)-type offering that could save companies huge amounts of money. Google Apps, which are already available to the individual user, but would be packaged and customised for the corporate in a secure way with around the clock support, include Gmail, Google Talk, Google Calendar, Google Page Creator, Google Docs & Spreadsheets and Google Start Page.
Ensuring a single employee remains up and running could cost the corporate around R26 162 a year, Love estimates. The same suite of applications from Google, delivered by Faritec, would cost just R696 a year.
- Fin24.com