Google Cloud Launches Premium Support Offering

'By expanding the offering, increasing features and coverage and adding mission-critical support, Google Cloud is recognizing customers are trusting their most crucial systems to Google and giving them a premium support back line to ensure they continue to run smoothly,' says Aric Bandy, president of Agosto, a Google Premier partner.

Partners say a new Google Cloud Premium Support offering will help them deliver more value to customers with support needs that exceed services available through the cloud provider's Technical Account Management (TAM) program.

Google Cloud has launched Premium Support to address mission-critical needs of its large enterprise customers with 15-minute target response times 24x7 from Google customer support for highest-priority cases. The new service also will be extended through Google Cloud partners, who can resell the offering.

“As a Premium Support customer, you’ll have your cases handled directly by context-aware experts who understand your unique application stack, architecture and implementation details,” Atul Nanda, vice president of cloud support at Google Cloud, said in a blog post. “This team will work hand-in-hand with your technical account manager to deliver a customer-centric support experience with faster case resolution, more personalized service and higher customer satisfaction.”

Google Cloud designed Premium Support to help bring consistency to the support plans for Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and G Suite, according to Nanda. Other features include a case management API tool that integrates customers’ and Google Cloud’s systems, operational health reviews and simplified pricing models. A Google Cloud support web page lists these pricing examples: a bundle price that includes a base fee of $150,000 per year plus 4 percent of a customer’s GCP net spend and 4 percent of its G Suite editions spend; or a base fee of $150,000 per year plus 4 percent of a customer’s net spend on GCP or G Suite for GCP-only or G Suite-only customers.

The Premium Support offering is another example of how Google Cloud is meeting customers where they are, according to Aric Bandy, president of Agosto, a Minneapolis-based cloud services and development company and Google Premier Partner.

“Many of our GCP customers have been leveraging Google TAM services, but their support needs have been greater than the TAM service provided,” Bandy said. “By expanding the offering, increasing features and coverage and adding mission-critical support, Google Cloud is recognizing customers are trusting their most crucial systems to Google and giving them a premium support back line to ensure they continue to run smoothly.”

David Cutter, director of marketing at Reston, Va.-based Dito, said Premium Support services demonstrate Google Cloud’s “continued focus on improving and enabling the best customer experience possible.”

“They also allow us to scale our ability to support larger and more complex customers worldwide through better-aligned access to technical resources at Google Cloud,” said Cutter, whose cloud advisory and services firm is a Google Cloud Premier Partner. “We always welcome the addition of new customer-centric programs that allow us to deliver more value to our customers.”

Premium Support customers will get previews of new products up to 20-plus months in advance of their launches and may have access to test products still in beta.

Google Cloud will offer advanced services to be purchased as add-ons to Premium Support, including an advanced event management service for deeper architecture reviews and increased readiness for peak events. Companies with global operations that need TAM guidance in multiple time zones can purchase additional TAM support during business hours in other regions. Google Cloud also is piloting site reliability engineering engagement, which evaluates and helps customers design a “wrapper of supportability” around Google Cloud projects with the highest sensitivity to downtime. The service is expected to be rolled out later this year.

“The process interlocks that we build with the customer allow us to jointly respond to major incidents using predefined war rooms,” Nanda said.