Last week, we hosted a highly informative ISV Alliance Partner Panel featuring executives from LumApps, MariaDB, and Itopia. Hosted by Miles Ward, CTO, SADA, the panel provided viewers with firsthand testimonials from these innovators across the social intranet, database, and VDI space. Panelists delved into why they made the decision to build on Google Cloud enabled by go-to-market support from SADA’s industry-leading SaaS Alliance Program. Designed to maximize the value of ISVs’ partnerships with Google Cloud, the Alliance program helps businesses fully harness the platform’s full capability while assisting in amplifying sales and marketing efforts. By leveraging the power of the SADA brand with co-marketing and co-selling initiatives, such as co-branded marketing collateral, customer case studies, and more, the partners featured on the panel have been able to extend their market reach. Here are 3 key takeaways from the panel that shed light on how Google Cloud and SADA are helping ISVs accelerate growth.
1. Panelists cited similar reasons for selecting Google Cloud, including scale, security, and Kubernetes expertise
When asked why MariaDB, a popular open source relational database created by the original developers of MySQL, decided to build on Google Cloud, Jags Ramnarayan, the company’s Chief Product Officer, enthusiastically stated, “One word: Kubernetes.” He then added, “It really came down to three key factors. One was, given the scale of some of our customers, we really needed something where we could scale hundreds of thousands of instances, and we really needed flexibility—the granular choice when it came to these resources was extremely important. The second was security…Third, I’d say was really fairly unique architecture…We have customers that needed absolute guarantees on security and complete isolation, which literally meant we can run a different isolated Kubernetes cluster per customer…Fleet management was a huge deal for us.”
Jon Lieberman, CEO & Co-founder of Itopia, a cloud automation and orchestration platform purpose-built for Google Cloud, agreed stating, “The vast scale of Google Cloud Platform’s (GCP) global network was a major factor…GCP has the best support for managed Kubernetes with GKE and seamless integration with Google identities and storage solutions. All of these are core components to our offering and were really table stakes in our evaluation of the Big Three cloud providers. An additional factor for us that we considered is our core mission, which is to enable companies with globally distributed workforces to deliver secure access to their apps. With the computer residing in the data center, you need to deliver great connectivity and fast compute and storage to give an acceptable user experience. We felt that Google really came out on top of that in our evaluation given that it’s the same network that’s delivering Gmail, Google Workspace, Search, YouTube, Maps, and the five or six others products that Google has that have over a billion subscribers. Those were the two big factors, but certainly driven by the expertise that Google has with Kubernetes.”
Elie Mélois, CTO & Co-Founder of LumApps, a cloud-based social intranet for the enterprise, cited similar reasons. He stated, “The scale is just native, and we have more and more people coming on the [LumApps] platform, [so] elasticity is key. That was a true game changer for us. And, of course, the security is a big thing for us because the majority of our customers are enterprise customers, and they’re really picky about where we store the data…so when we say it’s on GCP, that’s a big plus for us…And, of course, there’s being able to always benefit from the best products, like BigQuery and Kubernetes. We really like the innovation.”
2. Panelists cited a variety of reasons why customers are looking to Google Cloud as the anchor in their cloud strategy, including the notion of “success begets success”
At SADA, we’ve noticed customers are looking to Google Cloud as the core, fundamental building block they use to take their next steps. We asked the panelists why businesses see Google Cloud as an anchor in their cloud strategy. Here’s what Ramnarayan had to say:
“I wouldn’t say there’s just one thing that stands out; the reasons are pretty numerous,” said Ramnarayan. “But when it came to MariaDB itself, we also saw another class of users just running on-prem, and it so happens that their online operation database is the first most complex thing they’re worried about. [They want to know] ‘How do I onboard that onto GCP? How do I migrate my data? How do I keep my data and my database in the cloud live while I have my on-prem database—which is running 24/7—also live?’ Those are cases where we had this huge advantage having had experience with GCP, which is well ahead of our experience with AWS and others. We kind of naturally biased the customer towards GCP. In that case, we were wiser in terms of saying, ‘Hey, let’s go down the GCP path.’”
Lieberman agreed with Ramnarayan, but added, “I look at it in more of a macro view of things. I think it’s around momentum and success begets success. It was no question for a lot of companies as to whether Google had the best tech. I think the real question was whether or not they were serious and really committed to the enterprise. Since becoming CEO, I think Thomas Kurian has really changed the narrative of the company, and now that Google really is officially the fastest growing of the Big Three, they’re becoming increasingly hard to ignore. It’s mind-boggling to me that they’re an $18B company growing at more than 50% a year—but that’s exactly what Google is doing, and I think business executives and stakeholders are taking notice. I’ll add that the pace of investment that Google’s making in its data centers, technology, and most importantly the people, is also really impressive.”
3. Panelists cited a number of reasons for selecting SADA as a partner, including expertise, trust, and cost optimization
When asked about why Itopia decided to partner with SADA, Lieberman stated, “SADA possesses a deep bench of expertise with both Kubernetes and containers…SADA was also the first Google partner to support Anthos, and Anthos is an important path for Spaces…Second, we needed a partner that had a strong DNA and connective tissue with the software development community and the open source community.” Lieberman cited access to expert resources as a big factor in partnering with SADA, specifically calling out SADA CTO Miles Ward who sits on the board of the Open Usage Commons, and Rich Hoyer, Director of Customer FinOps, SADA, who serves on the board of the FinOps Foundation.
Mélois added, “We partnered with SADA because promoting a great product is not enough. We need experts that our customers trust, and SADA has been able to communicate, build trust, advise them, and include them in the vision of the employee. It’s really a two-way partnership.”
Ramnarayan echoed the other panelists’ additions and added, “We all work for our customers, right?…It’s all about our customers. And the main thing for me was the cost optimization that we pass along. As a DBasS offering, we’re constantly on a quest to [determine] how we can get the best price performance…[We appreciate] the fact that we can have these discussions [with SADA] and figure out…at the end of the day how we can pass these savings on to our customers…These conversations are always useful.”
Accelerate Growth with SADA and Google Cloud
With Google’s recent announcement that it’s slashing the amount it keeps from sales on its cloud marketplace, ISVs will have even more incentive to align with and sell their products on Google Cloud. Contact us to learn more about benefiting from this new fee structure and to discuss how we can help you build a robust pipeline, amplify marketing efforts, and streamline your operations.
