Devnet Googles its name in cyberspace

Business Acumen
15th July 2008

Devnet is the first partner Google for Australia. While it is a great achievement, for Devnet CEO Craig Deveson it is not the end-goal but just the beginning.

With a strategic partner like Google, you have turbocharged your upside with local skills and talent,” Mr Deveson said.
    
The immediate future will see a product website supply of Google-Devnet software products which can be bought off the web and supported online. These include a range of ‘office support’ software products.

The other big part of Devnet’s business will be what Mr Deveson calls the ‘bespoke offerings’ in which Devnet client organisations use these products to provide service and business solutions for their own customers. A financial product, for example, could be developed by Devnet using its Google links and then branded on behalf of a leading bank to on-provide to its customers.

Such products will be developed and tailored under the Devnet brand, often with the rider, ‘powered by Google’.

“The next six months is the ramp-up period for it.” Mr Deveson said. Devnet would be working with ISPs, associations and telecommunications companies on creating and bundling unique software packages.

Devnet has gained a huge advantage from the partnership, in both marketing and development capabilities through Google’s so-called ‘cloud computing’ approach.

Google’s cloud computing network describes its global sharing capabilities through its vast network of powerful data centres.

Mr Deveson said Google has the biggest data centres in the world, offering a 10:1 development cost advantage over anyone else.

“We can build software and services in a very cost effective way and launch globally,” Mr Deveson said, over the internet. “A user will benefit from those savings.”

Mr Deveson said Google applications for business could be launched at a fraction of the cost of, say, Microsoft Office.

“When you start to leverage programs like that, the results are staggering,” Mr Deveson said. Devnet’s Google agreement allows the Queensland company to link those applications together, package, enhance and localise them.

“It means we are using higher priced but more skilled people in Australia and yet we can bundle and package and not be worried about competing with developers in, say, India, operating on lower costs,” Mr Deveson said.

In the area of website development products, Devnet will be using pre-written modules through Google and localising them. These can be Google branded, co-branded, or branded in other ways Devnet decides are best suited to the market.

There are also multiple levels of rewards in the arrangement with Google. Devnet can earn from licensing, consulting and set-up of programs, and the entity can monetise the offering by ad-sharing and share revenues with Google.

“No, we are not just a re-seller. We are creating a value layer on top of the Google product,” Mr Deveson said. “We are localising it.

“For Google, it is all new revenue and they can go to market at a lot lower rate.”

The partnership also fits with Mr Deveson’s model for future earnings, building what he calls a “powerful recurring revenue model”.

Originally, Devnet worked on fewer customers on large IT projects – but this did not have a strong recurring revenue component, Mr Deveson said.

Having the right income system and staff mix is important to fund Devnet’s growth.

“The better the funding model you have, the easier it is to bring staff on ahead of time,” he said. “Our preference is to get them locally. The question is, can we attract and train them locally?”

Here again, he said, the Google partnership would pay dividends for staff attraction, allied with the advantages of being headquartered in Queensland.

“We could lower costs by going offshore, but we don’t think that’s clever. It only gives a short-term advantage. It was important for us to make the right move.”

“As a young business it is very important we let people know who we are and we have won accounts and awards as a result,” Mr Deveson said. He decided Devnet needed strategic partner and that partner was Google.

“In IT when you talk about one company influencing the space more than any other, it’s Google,” Mr Deveson said.

“We are the first Google partner in Australia. We had the credibility and the tenacity to say, we want to do this so give it to us. It took a lot of time and a lot of cost, but it was certainly worth it.”

Devnet a leading webdesign & online marketing firm based in Queensland