Google's timing is perfect. When its competition backtracks on their offers, the Alphabet company makes theirs even more appealing.
In October, Google made bold moves in stealing more customers away from competitors by offering businesses free access to Google Apps for Work if they ditched their existing contracts with other cloud computing companies like Microsoft.
With Microsoft recently limiting its "unlimited" OneDrive storage and scaling back on its promises, Google announced it is opening up its app ecosystem to both businesses and developers to help corporate customers get more done in the cloud.
Letting go of some of the limelight for their own native apps in the Google Apps Marketplace, Google is calling their new initiative "Recommended for Google Apps for Work."
"Today, more than 2 million paying businesses have chosen Google Apps for Work to advance communication, collaboration and productivity across work teams," Google's Amit Singh says. "In addition to all the goodness that Google Apps offers, many businesses look to the cloud for things like customer relationship management and telephony tools. Through our relationships with Google for Work Technology Partners, today we'll start recommending applications that help our customers get the most out of the cloud."
Secure and reliability are what customers have come to expect from Google's own apps. As a result, Google will also be thoroughly testing the third-party apps it recommends and making sure they pass security and performance metrics.
"These apps are reviewed by Google and an independent third-party security firm to make sure that these solutions are safe and reliable, and meet our requirements for high quality integrations," says Google Apps for Work Managing Director, Rahul Sood.
The first batch of apps added to the Recommended for Google Apps for Work program are:
ProsperWorks for CRM
Smartsheet for project management
Ringcentral and Switch for cloud-based communications
AODocs and Powertools for document management
Ping Identity and Okta for identity and access management
These and other enterprise level apps with mobile versions will get more attention on Android, too. Google says it will feature them in Google Play for Work. No matter where their business customers are, they'll always have access to Google's and their trusted partner's tools in the cloud.
So far, that's a total of 750 apps that can work alongside Google Apps for Work. By recommending other apps, Google is using the program to entice more software developers to work on their platform. By incorporating Google App Service APIs into their apps, developers can get perks like security and product endorsements as a Google recommended app that will help them stand out in a crowded app marketplace.
