 "Google Workspace added 1 mn paid enterprise users in 2024: Senior executive")
Google Workspace added one million paid enterprise users last year to take the total to more than 11 million, said Sumedha Chakraborty, country head of Google Workspace in India and South Asia.
Workspace is a suite of Cloud-based tools for productivity and collaboration; it includes apps like Gmail, Drive and Docs. “(the number of paid users) in less than a year, going from 10 (million) to 11 (million) plus paid companies which use Workspace is a needle-mover impact that we are now seeing globally. A big reason for the push is generative AI (artificial intelligence, GenAI),” Chakraborty told ‘Business Standard’ in an interaction.
India has had an uptick in large enterprise users being added to the Google Workspace client portfolio. More than 85 per cent unicorns — a startup valued at $1 billion or more — use Workspace, Chakraborty said.
“We have a genuine edge in the digital native space. That has been our stronghold, and we continue to strengthen our stronghold there, especially with GenAI coming in. The larger enterprises, which have traditionally used other products, feel the need to have GenAI without hitting their P&L (profits and losses),” she said.
Workspace has addressed users’ concern about GenAI-related cybersecurity by using Google’s Cloud architecture to control external threats. “Because we do not have an on-premises footprint, it is much easier for us to control. Our users do not save files on their desktops. Therefore, the person who has created that document always has access, and therefore, they can always change the access rights,” Chakraborty said.
Apart from a security architecture built on a zero-trust framework, Workspace’s real-time collaboration feature has helped it gain ground among enterprises and paid users, she said.
Workspace is powered by Google’s AI tool, Gemini. According to the company, about 100,000 customers have used Gemini in Workspace. Google AI is part of Workspace Business and Enterprise plans.
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