A novel authorized reseller program for Google Apps is being launched on Thursday by Google that will allow partnered businesses enfold Google Apps with their own services in special bundles that can be resold. Things like localized customer service, hardware installation, file migration, and special hosting for things that fall outside of Google's built-in Sites service would be included in it.

Before launching this program, pilot testing with 50 companies since last summer was also conducted by Google. Anyone can make use of this program from Thursday onwards, as it will be available everywhere in the world. Furthermore, resellers in the U. S. get a 20 percent discount on the $50 per user, per year price tag, which comes as an added bonus.

Resellers would get full control over things like customer billing and account management as a part of this deal. This deal is being seen as a major help in moving medium to large sized companies over to Google Apps platform by Google.

"There's great opportunity to take something like [Google Apps] and roll it out with support. We're never going to roll out a big services group," said Rishi Chandra, Senior Product Manager for Google Apps.