Promevo CTO On Google Workspace Gemini Vs. Microsoft Copilot
John Pettit, CTO of Google Premier Partner Promevo, talks to CRN about the benefits of Gemini now being free in Google Workspace deals, competition against Microsoft Copilot, channel margins and partner opportunities with Workplace in 2025.
Promevo sold hundreds of Gemini Workspace deals last year before Google’s AI technology became a free add-on to Workspace this month, which makes Google Workspace even more attractive to customers compared with Microsoft Copilot, says CTO John Pettit.
“As you look at the next two or three years ahead, people are going to be shifting their mindset from, ‘What’s the best email platform? to ‘What’s the best AI platform for my company?’” said Pettit, CTO at Google Premier Partner Promevo.
“That’s really where the decision point is going to be between Microsoft and Google. So where Google owns a lot of their own AI technology and has a lot of powerful capabilities with their search engines and apps and business links, they may start to catch more ground on Microsoft.”
[Related: Google Workspace Gemini AI Price Changes: 5 Big Things To Know]
Promevo first began partnering with Google in 2009.
The Covington, Ky.-based solution provider offers solutions across Google’s portfolio—from Google Workspace, data analytics services and Google Cloud Platform (GCP) to ChromeOS and Google for Education, which includes Chromebooks. The company’s gPanel software is an exclusive Google Workspace management and reporting solution that continuously optimizes Workspace users’ management and security.
Google Workspace Vs. Microsoft Copilot
This month, Google revealed that Gemini AI features will now be included in the price of Workspace—which consists of Gmail, Chat, Slides, Vids, Docs, Sheets and Meet—for all Google Workspace Business or Enterprise users rather than being sold separately as an add-on option.
Previously, Google Gemini cost $20 per user, per month for the Gemini Business plan or $30 per user, per month for Gemini Enterprise. However, Google has also increased prices across the board for Google Workspace subscriptions with most annual and flexible plans increasing roughly 20 percent.
Microsoft, for its part, relaunched its free Copilot for businesses as Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat. The free Copilot Chat now includes access to Copilot AI agents within the chat interface, which previously was only available in the full Microsoft 365 Copilot paying subscription.
“I know Microsoft just released their Copilot Chat for free, but it’s still sort of limited in integration,” Pettit said. “So I think Google still has the best AI integration into their platform, toolset and for productivity. When you look at model evaluation, Gemini 2.0 is amazing in terms of context window and reasoning and its abilities to provide value. Also, Google’s Agent Builder is pretty amazing in terms of being able to create your own search agents and chat agents with low code.”
Pettit has been a top technologist for decades, previously serving as CTO for data services firm Backstop Solutions Group as well as for analytics software company PerTrac. He also was CIO at CRM provider Peak Performance.
In an interview with CRN, Pettit talks about Google Workspace changes with Gemini, competition with Microsoft Copilot, Workspace partner margins and Promevo’s bullish thoughts on Google Cloud in 2025.
Do you think Gemini now being automatically included in Workspace deals will help Google’s market competition versus Microsoft Copilot?
What’s important with AI is people naturally feel like they want to use the AI that’s connected to where their data is. And when there’s price barriers for one competitor versus another, then that can create an obstacle.
I think Google’s made the right choice by making it easy for people to keep the data in the Google ecosystem and use their AI tools without having to have huge extra costs. So that’s smart.
Google is providing a more comprehensive integrated toolset. We do see some people who switch away from Microsoft, but obviously for large organizations, that’s a big choice.
How does this affect Google’s competition with Microsoft in the long term?
As you look at the next two or three years ahead, people are going to be shifting their mindset from, ‘What’s the best email platform? to ‘What’s the best AI platform for my company?’
That’s really where the decision point is going to be between Microsoft and Google. So where Google’s owning a lot of their own AI technology and has a lot of powerful capabilities with their search engines and apps and business links, they may start to catch more ground on Microsoft.
Right now, it’s still early days. We’re seeing the frontier of all of what AI can do for people. There are early adopters who are starting to see value. But as this matures, they’ll be more competitive.
Google’s always been strong on picking up new companies. So if you also think of the disruption of the new companies emerging in this AI economy or transformation, they’ll be there at the beginning for most of those companies. So they’ll be with them as they grow into being the next large organizations.
Microsoft has a lot of old, traditional large business, but this is a big disruptive change.
What are your overall thoughts on Google’s new Workspace price changes with Gemini?
It’s the logical next step. We’ve been saying for the last couple years, when [Gemini] was Duet, eventually there’s just going to be an AI SKU.
AI is productivity in the market because there’s no better interface than no interface. So AI is providing a new modality of interacting with your systems and your data. We foresaw that having a separate SKU wasn’t going to be a long-term thing. So it’s only logical.
We’re one of the top partners in deploying Gemini AI out there for Google. We did hundreds of workshops and got lots of organizations using it and helped them become effective with it.
We saw a lot of people see real gains after six weeks of using AI technology, but the cost factor was one of the elements that was limiting their initial deployment of users.
This is great for us because it means more AI deployed into more companies and getting customers to see the tangible benefit of the productivity gains they can get from it.
In 2024, how many Workspace customers did you sell Gemini to prior to it now being a free add-on?
We implemented hundreds.
We had a very steady pace [and] it led to one of our better services years, just on the demand for what people are asking for.
Some other resellers out there are just tied into maybe Workspace or tied just into one element of Google. We’re deployed across the Google ecosystem. We do a lot of Chrome business. We do a lot of GCP services business.
We have our own SaaS offerings like gPanel that helps people manage Google Workspace easier, and that had huge growth. We doubled our gPanel deployments last year.
What are paying Workspace Gemini customers saying now that it’s free?
We’re going to work with our clients to make sure that they get the fair approach to what that means for their contract.
But our intention is to make sure that they get the benefit of Gemini and get it deployed. Then, help them take advantage of it and help their organizations grow.
Do you think your Workspace partner margins will be affected?
On the margin side, there’s definitely more things coming. What we thought was exciting in AI last year is now table stakes. That’s just what happens.
The next thing is what Google’s pushing around the agent space and agentic AI. That’s going to be the next disruptive trend where you have automation agents doing your bidding, with some human in the loop interaction, but deploying things for you much faster in terms of your day-to-day work.
So we’re going to see a move from just assistive AI to agentic AI the next year.
Google has some great options that they put out there with Agent space, which kind of integrates their agent builder technology and Notebook LM, which has some enterprise connectors and things like that. So there are opportunities there.
There’s no standing in place when you have something this transformative happening in terms of technology. That’s going to continue to be the trend for the foreseeable future.
What are your thoughts on Google in 2025?
They’re in a great spot. They released their paper on Titan, which is interesting in terms of learning and AI agents.
Gemini 2.0 flash—that’s in beta and is fantastic. So I feel like they’re well poised going into this year with technology that’s going to help them be very competitive against the other AI tools out there.
I know Microsoft just released their Copilot Chat for free, but it’s still sort of limited in integration. So I think Google still has the best AI integration into their platform, toolset and for productivity.
When you look at model evaluation, Gemini 2.0 is amazing in terms of context window and reasoning and its abilities to provide value. Also the Agent Builder stuff is pretty amazing in terms of being able to create your own search agents and chat agents with low code.
We’re looking forward to being able to help our clients take advantage of that technology and we see use cases all over the place—from people looking for digital asset management or just hooking into Drive and exposing documents to their users.
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