Google hires BearingPoint to boost Enterprise Search "Best Practices"

Rare is the day when Google announces a partnership with a top tier management consulting firm (well more accurately, Google never does that and this firm is Top 20 or so). Neverthless, the Official Google Blog and Google Enterprise blog announce today the collaboration between Google and BearingPoint in offering Google's Enterprise search products to BearingPoint's clients. Google Enterprise's product portfolio currently comprises the talked up Google Mini, another larger scale search appliance, and Maps, Toolbar, and Earth integrations for corporations.

The alliance is a huge boon to BearingPoint's name in the consulting world as top players like McKinsey, Bain, and BCG usually manage to make the high profile corporate headlines far more often than BP. The number of headlines BP will see in the paper today will be payoff enough for this respected but not quite top of the charts management consulting group. As for the actual collaboration that will occur between the two players, it seems like Google is basically just training BearingPoint to analyze companies' information storage quandaries and to suggest and install Google's Enterprise products as the tenable solution for most companies. For Google, in addition, the announcement has the benefit of further legitimizing Google's search products in the traditional corporate world outside of tech. Consider that this announcement can bring a very bubbly but robust tech product to staunch, staid finance and pharmaceuticals companies (who would often choose less widely known custom corporate solutions to their information problems). This pattern, in turn, enhances BP's ability to court new clients, thereby boosting its own portfolio as a direct result. Further, BP will take much of the current upkeep and installation work out of Google's hands, leaving the search company's resources to bigger and better things like improving the Enterprise search products themselves. BearingPoint promises to provide extended search capabilities, lots of customer service, and extra security measures to the Google Enterprise Search solutions it will be installing for corporate clients.

Incidentally, Google's stock rose with this accompanying announcement to fend off the bears of yesterday. The stock rose over $350 again in the early morning hours of trading. Certainly the price will drop again, but Google never fails to have a stock price-saving announcement... just in the nick of time!