Google will launch on Wednesday a reseller program for the paid version of its Apps hosted collaboration and communication suite.

The program will allow, for the first time, third parties to resell Apps Premier, which costs US$50 per user per year.

Resellers can be IT service providers, VARs, system integrators, consultants, software vendors and ISPs of any size anywhere in the world.

Although most Apps customers are individuals and small businesses that use its free Standard edition, Google has beefed up the Premier edition in a variety of ways to attract the attention of large organizations.

Fostering the creation of an active reseller community for Apps Premier is the latest step in that direction. Resellers are able to provide the dedicated, one-on-one support that large organizations often require throughout the lifecycle of their enteprise software products.

Google will offer Apps Premier licenses at a 20 percent discount to resellers, and provide training, support and tools for sales and marketing.

Resellers will be able to bundle their own complementary IT services with the sale of the suite to generate additional revenue. Resellers will handle the billing process for Apps Premier, not Google.

To further differentiate the Premier and Standard editions, effective Wednesday Google is also capping the number of users an organization can have on the Standard version. This limit doesn't apply to existing Standard users.

CIOs and IT managers in mid-to-large companies are warming up to Web-hosted software like Google Apps as an option to traditional software that is installed and maintained on customer premises.

Among the things many find attractive about hosted software, commonly known as software-as-a-service (SaaS) products, are that it's generally cheaper, it's installed and maintained by the vendor on its data centers and it's usually designed to make it easy for users to share and collaborate on files.

On the other hand, there are also objections to SaaS products, such as occasional performance and availability issues and security concerns.

SaaS products are part of the cloud computing trend, which also includes the provision of IT infrastructure services via the Internet, like storage and server capacity.

"In general, there has been a lot more awareness about cloud computing [recently] and about the transition [to that model] that has been taking place," said Rishi Chandra, senior product manager of Google Apps. "Many partners have been coming to us and telling us they see the [cloud computing] momentum and that they want to get involved."

Companies interested in applying to the program can find out more information about the requirements online. Google will begin giving partners the green light to resell Apps Premier towards the end of March.