Bull's Eye Awards: Americas Channel Executives of the Year - CHALLENGER
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Jeff Ragusa
When you hear the name Google, most people don’t think reseller
channel. But they’d be wrong. Under the leadership of Channel Manager
Jeff Ragusa, Google has in the last year started to carve out a
bona-fide partner program, especially around its cloud-based
applications business.
Ragusa’s
team has signed up more than 400 partners to the Google Apps Reseller
Program since launching it in January. Those participants came with
little to no recruitment or promotion on Google’s part, but that’s also
changing. Ragusa has been raising Google’s profile at channel industry
events, including taking out sponsorships, including becoming a
platinum sponsor of MSP Partners, an association now a part of CompTIA
that provides education and training to a membership of managed
services providers.
Ragusa believes MSPs have natural synergy for Google’s cloud model.
But it’s not just MSPs that he and his team are looking to attract to
the partner ecosystem. Solution providers, ISVs and integrators are all
targets for the juggernaut as it looks to rise to the top of the cloud
computing heap above Microsoft, Amazon and a whole host of smaller
players eyeing their piece of this market.
Ragusa acknowledges that building a channel has been—and continues to be—a learning process.
“We really spent the first six months handling inbound interest in
our program, getting early partners up and running,” he said. “Now we
are getting feedback and assessing what has worked and what hasn’t with
the program.”
That’s an up-and-comer for you and the reason why Ragusa is the Bull’s Eye Award Americas Channel Chief of the Year Challenger.
