Dive Brief:
- Monday, Google announced its acquisition of Synergyse, a company that offers an interactive training service for Google Apps for Work.
- Google plans to make Synergyse Training for Google Apps available to all Google Apps customers for free.
- Synergyse said its trained more than 4 million people in 3,000 organizations on Google Apps for Work so far.
Dive Insight:
Google clearly sees the investment in training services as critical to Google Apps for Work adoption, noting in its announcement that companies that use the Synergyse training program see "on average 35% higher adoption across Apps products."
Google and Microsoft have been battling to attract business customers to their respective cloud-based productivity tools for the last several months. Providing training may help sweeten the pot for companies that are on the fence about migrating to Google Apps for Work.
In April, Google announced it would expand its offer to provide Google Apps for free to smaller businesses in an attempt to bait away Microsoft customers. The offer, which was first extended in October to companies that had between 250 and 3,000 users, has now been extended to businesses with 100 users.
Recent analysis of workplace productivity tools from Gartner found Microsoft is more popular with larger organizations, while Google is more popular with smaller companies.