SADA CEO On Google Workspace AI Push, Insight’s Microsoft Business And AI Strategy

Tony Safoian, CEO of Google Cloud all-star partner SADA, talks about winning new Google Workspace customers, Insight’s Microsoft practice and his bullish thoughts on Google’s AI strategy.

After Insight Enterprises acquired Google Cloud superstar SADA for $410 million a few months ago, SADA CEO Tony Safoian said he is bullish about the new cloud customer opportunities and greenfield accounts Insight—a renowned global Microsoft partner—is bringing to the table.

SADA is a multiyear Google Cloud Partner of the Year award winner, while Insight is a multiyear Microsoft Partner of the Year recipient. Although Microsoft and Google Cloud are heated rivals in cloud and AI, Safoian said his company’s merger with Insight is driving millions in new customer pipeline.

“Of the 30,000 customers Insight has, only 10,000 of them have any Microsoft footprint at all. So it’s not even a competitive situation most of the times,” Safoian told CRN. “But even for the other 10,000 [Microsoft customers], we are living in a very multi-cloud, multi-service [world].”

“It is not binary like it was 10 years ago, when you were like, ‘Am I using Office or Workspace?’ You had to choose one for the most part,” SADA’s CEO said. “Now we’re like, ‘My data is here. My storage and compute is there. I’m using this AI model that’s from something else. I’m using this other SaaS solution.’ So we’re very conducive to most customer environments who are really using multi-cloud and multi-solutions.”

The synergies between SADA and Insight so far have been astounding, Safoian said, with both providing new customer accounts and technical capabilities to each other.

“We’ve already driven millions and millions of new pipeline together, hundreds of referred customers in, dozens referred back,” Safoian said. “There are a lot of our customers who want us to do things that we can’t do, like, ‘Can you procure this hardware for us? Can you do this Pure Storage thing for us?’ We don’t do that, but Insight does, so we can refer those bidirectionally.”

Insight Enterprises’ $9.5 Billion Run Rate

Chandler, Ariz.-based Insight captured $2.38 billion in net sales for the first quarter of 2024, fueled by a 17 percent increase year over year in services revenue. This means Insight now has an annual run rate of more than $9.5 billion.

Insight’s gross profits increased by 13 percent year over year to $441 million in first-quarter 2024, with gross margin expanding by 170 basis points to a record 18.5 percent.

Meanwhile, Google Cloud recently reported first-quarter 2024 sales of $9.6 billion, an increase of 28 percent year over year. Microsoft’s Intelligent Cloud business captured $26.7 billion in revenue during first-quarter 2024, representing a 21 percent sales increase year over year.

Google Workspace, Gemini AI Push

One of the biggest pushes in 2024 for SADA has been Google Workspace—which includes Google Meet, Gmail, Docs, Drive, Sheets and more—and it has been injected with Google’s AI Gemini.

“Google laid out a set of incentives around fundamentally winning new business and new customers to Google Workspace that maybe never evaluated Workspace before,” said Safoian. “Now we’re showing them the full power and context of Workspace with Gemini. It really changes the conversation.”

New Gemini AI features inside Workspace revolve around cybersecurity, generative AI as well as the launch of its new AI-powered video creation app, Google Vids. “Last year, we had a tremendous year in Google Workspace new customer acquisition. SADA won something like six of the top eight deals in North America last year in Google Workspace,” Safoian said.

In an interview with CRN, Safoian talks about the Google Workspace strategy, working alongside Insight, and why SADA believes Google will win the “AI arms race.”

Insight was not a big Google Cloud partner before buying SADA. Are Insight and SADA driving Google Cloud together?

The thesis going in was always that we were going to merge a capability that was very important for Insight, which is a world-class, Global Sales Partner of the Year award winner, 10 Google specializations partner— all that stuff.

They wanted to merge this [Google] competency that was quite rare in the world with a base of customers that is quite rare in the world.

So it was matching Insight’s 30,000 customers with our core capabilities. Then, how do we shrink time to market in building Google pipeline and Google wins into their base of customers? They didn’t have the capability to do that before. They had a small Google practice, but it wasn’t very scaled out.

The first four months have been really focused on the joint go-to-market efforts: ‘How do we bring our capabilities and solutions into Insight’s sales organization so they learn how to recognize an opportunity for Google? How do we match their contracts with our target list?’

They have so many contracts in place with a set of customers that are our greenfield targets. So how do we merge those things together is the focus.

How are SADA and Insight driving sales and new customer wins together?

We’ve set up tons of infrastructure, lead referral programs, a bi-directional market council that meets almost weekly to talk about the top 20 joint opportunities and pursuits with some of the largest accounts that we’re pursuing together.

There’s a lot of time we spend in the field with our regional leaders getting to know each other, aligning with Google, and creating entry points across top solution pillars that we are going to market with.

Those are security, data, AI, infrastructure modernization specifically with [Google Cloud VMware Engine]. And, of course, productivity and collaboration with Google Workspace, just getting those core entry points into as many customer conversations as possible.

We’ve already driven millions and millions of new pipeline together, hundreds of referred customers in, dozens referred back.

There are a lot of our customers who want us to do things that we can’t do like, ‘Can you procure this hardware for us? Can you do this Pure Storage thing for us?’ We don’t do that, but Insight does, so we can refer those bidirectionally.

What do you like most about Workspace and Google’s AI strategy across markets?

The speed of AI innovation at Google is breakneck.

Just think about how much has happened over the past nine months. What we were showing or what ‘wowed’ us nine months ago we take for table stakes today. It’s like an arms race, like, ‘Who’s going to build a bigger and better AI thing?’

When you look at Google, you’re really talking about the entire spectrum of value—from the core chips required for any company to Google itself building those things and packaging them around Workspace and other SaaS technologies.

I think where it’s most accessible for people is in things like Workspace.

For example, the new [Google] Vids in Workspace. You’re talking about things that used to take creative people hours and days to do. Now a noncreative person can create their own stories, their own pitch decks, their own presentations, their own narratives of whatever they’re trying to do—in a way that doesn’t require exceptional expertise. The Gemini in Workspace stuff, which includes the Vids technology, is really exciting.,

Another [AI use case] is to assess the qualifications of an RFP response that you put out. The use cases are, ‘Summarize the response for me, but also can you check to make sure it’s compliant to all the parameters of the RFP?’

Again, these are manual things that are not only time-consuming but error-prone, which we know computers are going to be better at in terms of error detection. And not only is it a faster experience, but it’s a more accurate experience in people’s everyday workflows.

Google is throwing massive amounts of incentive dollars at winning new Google Workspace customers. How are you attacking new customer accounts with Google Workspace?

Google laid out a set of incentives around fundamentally winning new business and new customers to Google Workspace that maybe never evaluated Workspace before. Now, we’re showing them the full power and context of Workspace with Gemini. It really changes the conversation.

There’s still sort of a correction back from a SaaS sprawl coming out of COVID. Companies bought every SaaS product on the planet because their users were distributed and they just bought everything.

Why would you buy Zoom right now? Like, you already own a meeting capability with Google Workspace? Why do you need another chat application if you have Google Chat?

All of these things are coming together in a way that customers can evaluate the holistic opportunity to move a bunch of disparate SaaS things they bought into one suite in Google Workspace. That is the type of behavior Google’s trying to incent.

All of us have to work very, very hard to win new customers.

Last year, we had a tremendous year in Google Workspace new customer acquisition. SADA won something like six of the top eight deals in North America last year in Google Workspace.

These are not fast-moving digital companies. These are print companies, manufacturing companies, construction companies, etc. so we have to just continue this ambitious track of winning a lot of large enterprises who could benefit from what Google Workspace brings.

Not to mention [Workspace’s] security footprint. Security is top of mind. Not every SaaS vendor platform has the best reputation in the world for being secure and thwarting phishing attacks and other vulnerabilities.

Google Workspace is one of the most secure platforms on the planet. So if you care about security, you definitely want to value Google Workspace for that reason alone.