Posted by Dan Tisone, VP of Global IT, BioDot

Editor's note: Today we hear from Dan Tisone, VP of Global IT at BioDot, a low volume dispensing manufacturer specializing in biotech applications. Learn how BioDot’s 60 employees use Android and Chrome devices to work closely together and build better products.


I’ve led IT at BioDot since my father, a former research and development engineer at Nokia Bell Labs, founded the company in 1994. Since then, I’ve seen workplace technology evolve from clunky desktops and servers to the fast, cloud-based devices we use today.

Our transition to Google started with Gmail in 2009. Through Gmail we discovered Google Apps like Drive, Hangouts and Docs. Google Apps are affordable and easy to use, so when we needed to purchase computers and smartphones for our employees the following year, we chose Google Chrome and Android products. Today, we have 42 Android smartphones, as well as a few dozen Chromebooks and Chromeboxes.

As an international business headquartered in Southern California with satellite offices in Asia and Europe, our sales team travels a great deal, and tends to use their smartphones more than laptops, whether they’re at the airport, in between meetings or in a taxi. They use Google Docs to review contracts and Google Slides to create new business presentations from their Android phones while traveling. They can even update Pipedrive, our CRM platform, through the mobile app.

I install work apps on each device using Google Mobile Device Management so employees can access required work apps and install any other pre-approved apps from the Play for Work Store. I can securely manage all devices with this central console, too. If an employee accidentally installs an app or downloads malware, I receive an alert and can fix the problem immediately.

Setting up Chromebooks is simple, too. It used to take me hours to deploy our old laptops. Each Chromebook takes minutes to set up — no time-consuming installations required. As BioDot’s sole IT staff member, it can be difficult to quickly deploy new devices while ensuring the security of every company device around the world. Chrome makes this easier.

Cloud-based Android devices also foster a collaborative work environment. For example, when the manufacturing team is assembling a new medical dispenser in the factory, they mark up the schematic diagram in red pen to show which parts don’t work. They used to snail-mail this marked up diagram to our engineers, who are hundreds or thousands of miles away in an office. Now, the manufacturing team snaps a picture of the schematic with their Android phone and uploads it to Google Drive, so engineers can see their revisions immediately. This saves our teams a few days’ delay, so they can iterate faster, and ultimately build better products in a shorter timeframe.

Google Apps also allows us to be more productive and efficient. Instead of taking a one-day trip to meet with a prospect for the first time, sales executives are starting to use Google Hangouts. This saves our company around $1,000 for each trip. When you think about the hundreds of trips salespeople take throughout the year, these savings go a long way — especially for a small company.

Switching to Google Apps, and subsequently Chrome and Android devices helps BioDot run faster and more smoothly. Employees, from tech-savvy millennials to employees who were new to smartphones, now rely on Android and Chrome devices to work together and complete tasks, whether they’re in the office, on the road or at one of our manufacturing facilities.

Posted by Ed Obuchowski, Senior VP, Advisor Technology Solutions

Editor's note: Today we hear from Ed Obuchowski, Senior VP of Advisor Technology Solutions at Charles Schwab, one of the largest public brokerage and banking companies in the U.S. Learn how Charles Schwab launched Schwab Intelligent Portfolios in 250 branches nationwide using Google Chromebooks. If you’d like to learn more about how Chrome devices can be used as kiosks, register here for our August 17th Hangout on Air. To find out how Chromebooks can be used as shared devices, register for our August 18th segment here.


At Charles Schwab, we believe in the power of investing to transform people’s lives. Last year, we launched Schwab Intelligent Portfolios, an online investment advisory service that uses sophisticated computer algorithms to help clients invest smarter.

It was a huge opportunity for us to innovate and offer our clients more options when it comes to investing.

In order to launch successfully, we needed an intuitive interface that not only educated potential clients about our product but also made it easy to sign up. We tested several laptops and tablets that weren’t the right fit, before I reached out to Google. That was on a Friday and the following Monday, Google engineers came into our Phoenix engineering facility. By lunchtime, we landed on a solution that was quick to deploy, very easy to manage and use, and offered the high level of security that we demanded: Chromebooks.

With help from Insight, a Google reseller, we rolled out 1,000 Chromebooks in 250 Charles Schwab branches in less than two months. Everything worked right out of the box — our IT team didn’t have to install any software or manually customize settings directly on the devices. Instead, they used Chrome device management to put each device in public session mode, so multiple clients could use the same Chrome device securely, without signing in.

Our IT staff can implement specific settings, such as session length, which saves time on device management. Today, our IT team spends fewer than 10 hours each week managing 1,700 devices in our branches across the country.

Opening a Schwab Intelligent Portfolios account on a Chromebook is easy. When a client walks into one of our branches to learn more about automated investing, an associate hands the client a Chromebook. Within seconds, the client is guided to a Charles Schwab webpage, where he or she can learn about the product, complete a questionnaire and open an account. The whole process is electronic, so there’s no paperwork — minimizing errors and time spent on administration.

Our clients trust us with their sensitive financial data and their money. Security has to be our biggest priority. Chromebooks’ rigorous security settings ensure our clients’ data is safe. Chromebooks manage software updates automatically, so devices are always running the latest and most secure version.

Our IT staff limits session length and all data is wiped after a client finishes. IT can also block certain websites and limit Chromebooks to the private Schwab network, so data isn’t traversing public networks. If a device is stolen, there's no risk of data loss and the device is rendered virtually useless.

Our partnership with Google has helped us deliver on our promise to provide best in class client experiences with ongoing innovation. We’re also looking into installing Chromeboxes in kiosk mode in our branch lobbies, so clients can easily explore all of our other product offerings. Tens of thousands of clients have opened Intelligent Portfolios accounts using Chromebooks’ secure, client-friendly devices, and we've exceeded our targets nearly every month since the devices were deployed.

Here's more on how Charles Schwab's clients use Chromebooks to sign up for Schwab Intelligent Portfolios.

To find out more on how Google helps keep your data and devices safe, view the Atmosphere: Rethinking Security in the Cloud digital event on demand here.

Posted by Robert Cheetham, Founder and CEO, Azavea


Editor's note: Today we hear from Robert Cheetham, founder and CEO of Philadelphia-based geospatial web software and analysis firm Azavea. Read about how Azavea has relied on Google for Work tools for more than eight years and recently started using Chromebox for meetings and Chromebooks so employees can work together from anywhere.

When I founded Azavea in 2000, I dreamed of creating a great work environment focused on driving social impact by applying geospatial technology. We're a certified B Corporation, and our mission-driven work includes climate change, elections, public safety, transit, water infrastructure and natural resources. Inspired by my first job working for a local government agency in Japan, where cubicles don’t exist, I designed our workspace to have an open layout, long before it became popular in contemporary offices. Today, we rely on Google Apps, Chromebooks and Chromebox for meetings to support this collaborative environment and help us work closely together on our software and data analytics projects.

In the early years, when Azavea only had a handful of employees, we installed basic workplace software from a CD-ROM and had limited server space. When we outgrew our email system in 2008, we chose Gmail. Our employees quickly started using Google Calendar, Docs, Hangouts and Sheets because they integrate so closely with Gmail. These tools helped us work effectively together on projects, so it was a natural next step.

In 2012, our software developers started asking for supplementary computers to let them work from home, when traveling for client meetings or even in the office kitchen. We looked into tablets, but they were expensive and didn’t have fully functional keyboards. As longtime Google users, our Operations team investigated options from Google.

Chromebooks are fast, affordable, secure and remarkably powerful, so we started offering them as supplementary devices for people who wanted more mobility. Our colleagues can easily switch between their main workstations and portable Chromebooks, and the long-lasting battery makes them the perfect companion for frequent travelers, office roamers and remote employees. I typically travel for a week each month myself, so I use my Chromebook on long flights as well as meetings and conferences where there may not be convenient power. It typically lasts more than nine hours, while a laptop only lasts two or three.

The company now has more than fifty people, and when we moved to a new office a few months ago, we needed a videoconferencing solution for a dozen new meeting rooms, we once again turned to Google and picked Chromebox for meetings. Like the other Google products we use, Chromebox is affordable, easy to install and integrates with our existing workplace software, like Hangouts and Calendar. Anyone can quickly set up and join a meeting. As a small firm, this ease of use is critical for us — we don’t have a team of dedicated IT staff, so we don’t have capacity to constantly deal with technical difficulties or high-maintenance updates.

I wanted to start a company that felt like a community and made an impact. Over the past several years, Google has significantly enhanced our company’s operations because their products simply work and easily scale as the company has grown. Our teams are able to work effectively together, no matter where we are.

Posted by Rajen Sheth, Senior Director, Android and Chrome for Work Product Management


Chromebooks already offer businesses of all sizes a secure platform to get work done. Companies are choosing Chromebooks because they’re easy to maintain, can be centrally managed by IT and have multiple layers of security to protect sensitive data.

Today we’re announcing support for Android apps on Chromebooks — with little to no extra effort on the part of developers — making Chromebooks an even better choice for work.

That means your employees can have access to the broad ecosystem of Android apps in Google Play for Work on their Chromebooks, managed centrally with access controls. So in addition to the speed, simplicity and security of getting work done quickly in web apps, your workforce can run previously unavailable mobile apps on Chrome devices with complete file integration, notifications, offline support and touch input on supported hardware.

More productivity possibilities
Early first-runs with many Android workplace apps including Concur, TripIt and DocuSign, as well as many other productivity apps, look very encouraging. While the 2 million businesses already using Google Apps for Work can view and edit Microsoft Word documents, some may prefer to use Microsoft’s Office software. That’s possible on a Chromebook by installing the Android version of Microsoft Word, for example. And those who supplement Google Hangout meetings with Skype can do so on a Chromebook by using Skype for Android.

Also, this gives users full access to apps that were built for the mobile world. For example, while the web version of Slack already works in the Chrome browser, the Android version of Slack is designed from the ground up for mobile use with support for push notifications, do not disturb rules and quick switching between teams.

If your workforce prefers an Android app to the web version of that software or wants to use an app with offline support, they now have the choice on a Chromebook.

We’re encouraging Android developers of all kinds to see how the application experience adds value for Chromebook users and brings them new opportunities: Now building one app extends from Android phones and tablets up to Chromebooks.

You’re still in control
One of the key benefits of deploying Chrome devices in your workplace is that you can centrally manage them with ease through more than 200 administrative policies. Administrators can manage these Android apps now from that same Chrome admin console.

We’ve added new policies to allow or restrict Android application installations, and you can even allow particular Android apps for certain users and not others.

We’re making the feature available in early June on specific Chrome devices — the Asus Chromebook Flip, Acer Chromebook R11 and Chromebook Pixel (2015 edition) — for developers to try out. Later this year, we’ll add support for many more Chrome devices, detailed here. And if you’re developing in-house Android apps for your business, you can learn more about how to optimize your Android app for Chrome devices here.

Posted by Diane Greene, SVP, Google

Applications have long been the lifeblood of the enterprise. This has never been more true than in today’s market. And Google has never been more committed to the enterprise. We’re excited to expose our APIs to enterprise developers who can now incorporate advanced technologies such as image recognition, speech recognition, location and maps, email and calendaring into their applications.

Google I/O is a great opportunity to share what excites us about the massive digital transformation happening at companies around the globe. We’re thrilled about the speed of innovation with all of our enterprise products, particularly Google Cloud Platform, Google Apps, Maps, Android and Chromebooks. We’re laser focused on creating what developers need to build successfully in the cloud.

At Google, we continue to push new innovations that enable developers to turn great ideas into world class applications. We can also help you get your apps in the hands of your customers through marketplaces like Google Play, Chrome Web Store, Google Apps Marketplace and Cloud Launcher, which serve billions of Android and Chrome users and millions of businesses.

Today’s announcements at I/O further build out our developer toolkit, with new features to help developers build what’s next for the enterprise.

• New APIs for Sheets & Slides: With the new Sheets API, we're giving developers a new level of access to some of the most popular features in Sheets. Create new spreadsheets, populate them with data and formulas, insert charts and pivot tables, and pull results right into your apps. Developers can use Sheets in a powerful workflow to push data from their app into Sheets, allowing users to collaborate on that data, before the updated data is pulled back into the original app. The Slides API enables developers to push data from other applications into Slides in order to create custom, polished presentations quickly.
• API Partner Ecosystem: A number of partners, including Salesforce, SAP Anywhere, Conga, Prosperworks, Anaplan, Sage, Trello, and Asana are already connecting their services through these new APIs, and we look forward to seeing even more developers follow suit.
• Enhancements to the Classroom API: We’re giving developers programmatic access to our most powerful features within Google Classroom. The Classroom API lets school reporting systems sync coursework and grades from Classroom and quickly connect teachers and students to their learning content.

Whether you’re using Google Cloud Platform, integrating with our Machine Learning APIs or building on top of our Google Apps suite, we’re committed to delivering the tools and technologies that help businesses improve productivity, securely connect information across platforms and power new workflows. Earlier this month we announced a BigQuery integration with Google Drive that allows customers to run queries, gather insights and then share that data with teams in a familiar and easy to understand template, no matter where they are. We also recently added two new security certifications, ISO27017 for cloud security and ISO27018 for privacy. And customers like Land O Lakes are taking advantage of our cloud and APIs to revolutionize their fields — in this case, modern farming.

Ever since I began my career in technology, I’ve been working to advance the way the enterprise runs. I worked on some of the first relational databases for Sybase and Tandem and then, at VMware, helped to create an entirely new industry centered around virtualization. Fast forward to today, and I can say that I’ve never been more excited about the potential for the cloud to transform businesses. There was a period in time where the energy was around consumer applications, but we can now see that people are realizing just how much innovation can be done in the enterprise, and it’s enticing more and more developers. While we’re excited about the innovations that we’re bringing to market, we’re even more excited about how you will take advantage of these new advancements. As the momentum continues in the enterprise, we can’t wait to see what you build next.

Posted by Saswat Panigrahi & Raghu Yarlagadda, Product Managers, Chrome for Work



Editor's note: We’re currently hosting a multi-city Chrome roadshow in locations near you to explain how Chrome benefits your business and to show the latest Chrome for Work devices.


Businesses of every size around the world are taking a lesson from the education market and adopting Chromebooks thanks to the speed, simplicity, shareability and security the platform offers. A March 2015 ESG-Group survey also indicates that 70 percent of IT professionals expect Chromebooks to supplement or replace their existing device footprint in order to cut costs and safely improve employee productivity.

We’ve listened to business customers who have had a need for lightweight devices that don’t compromise on battery life, performance or build quality, and that provide the enhanced security businesses demand. And today with HP, we’re happy to introduce the HP Chromebook 13, the latest professional laptop that’s ultraportable — one of the thinnest and lightest in its class — and offers a new Chromebook docking station to boost productivity and help Chrome work for you.

Designed and built for business At just 0.5 inches thin and starting at 2.86 pounds, the anodized brushed aluminum HP Chromebook 13 is a capable travel partner to and from meetings. It’s also ideal for online meetings, thanks to Audio by B&O Play and a 720p webcam for clear sound and video. Both meetings and work will look great on the 13.3-inch display, available with either full HD or a pixel-packed 3200 x 1800 (QHD+) resolution.

Inside is plenty of power for business grade multi-tasking, with configuration options ranging up to an Intel 6th generation Core m7 processor and 16GB of internal memory. Working through the day won’t be an issue either thanks to a battery that lasts for up to 11.5 hours* between charges. The optional HP Elite USB-C Docking station and port replicator accessories turn the HP Chromebook 13 into a full desktop solution with additional USB 3.0 ports and dual display support.

Easy, seamless integration thanks to new and improved Chrome OS features For our customers who are using a Microsoft infrastructure, we’re excited to announce the improved Citrix Receiver 2.0 for Chrome, a virtualization solution that lets you remotely use apps from other platforms in their own window, even from the Chrome OS launcher. You simply use legacy and Chrome apps the same way, whether they’re local or remote, in browser tabs or individual windows. We also now offer direct integration with the Microsoft PKI based off of Active Directory Certificate Services (ADCS).

You can get more done at your desk with a Chromebook too: support for 3+ monitor and UDL 3.0 DisplayLink support is baked into Chrome 51, currently in the Beta channel. For organizations using smartcards for authentication, such as banks and government institutions, we’ve launched a Certificate Provider API that technology partners are integrating with. And we added the ability to centrally restrict network access for organizations operating in sensitive environments.

Equip your business with Chrome
HP Chromebook 13 starts at $499 in the US, with pre-orders starting today at our reseller partners, and availability from HP and directly through the Chrome for Work site starting in May.

*Battery life may vary depending on specification, usage and other conditions.

Posted by Jean-Marc van Cutsem, CEO, louis delhaize Delfood, Montignies-sur-Sambre, Belgium


Editor's note: Today we hear from Jean-Marc van Cutsem, CEO at louis delhaize Delfood, a groceries supplier in Belgium with an annual turnover of €160 million. louis delhaize neighbourhood stores have been a fixture of Belgian life for generations, and all of the food they sell – from fresh fruit to baked goods – comes from the Delfood warehouses. Read how this 140-year-old family firm is using Google Apps for Work to create a faster, more efficient business.


It’s exactly 140 years since Louis Delhaize, the fourth son of a Belgian winemaker, followed his three brothers into the groceries sector. The pioneering companies they set up would go on to dominate Belgian chain-store retail, so that generations have grown up knowing they’ll receive friendly, fast service on everyday items at their local louis delhaize store.

For the Delfood team that supplies the food, honoring that trust means staying one step ahead of rising expectations. So when our 2007 email solution was due for an upgrade, we took the opportunity to build a more efficient business.

With help from Fourcast, we began introducing Google Apps for Work in January 2015. After our early adopters and IT department had migrated, Fourcast and HR gathered crucial feedback using Google Forms to ensure that staff were content with the process. By April, the whole company was online, and the new tools were already making a difference.

From warehouse to shop display, we’re delivering food faster with Google Apps for Work. If items from our 9,000 dry and 3,000 fresh food lines arrive damaged at our two warehouses, staff use Hangouts on a Chromebook to provide visual proof to headquarters and inform our suppliers. When food heads out to the stores, we calculate optimal routes for 40 trucks with Google Maps. Once it arrives at stores from our warehouses, our inventory managers and their teams photograph anything in less than perfect condition and upload the image to Google+ for immediate action at headquarters.

In store, floor managers display food according to promotions and advice posted by our experts on Google+. This close communication between our store teams on-site and our experts located across the country helps us arrange our products in the most sensible way for our customers – ensuring, for example, that when strawberries are in season, they’re the first thing customers see.

Google Apps is helping us improve the working lives of staff throughout the company:

• The marketing department moves along the promotion decision process much quicker through the real-time collaboration functionalities of Sheets.
• Rather than keep time sheets on paper, store staff enter hours directly into Sheets, so that compiling hours can be done in two minutes, instead of a the full day every week it used to take.
• All staff, wherever they are, can use Gmail. With its powerful search function, 30GB storage space per user, and seamless integration with Calendar, it’s everything we could ask for.
• Departments use Forms to request leave and sales teams use it to report issues in stores.
• Chromebooks at our warehouses and owned stores ensure that information travels fluidly around the company instead of only one-way from headquarters.
• We use our Google logins to access other Google for Work products, such as Chrome for Work to manage digital signage in stores, and Google Cloud Platform to build internal applications.
• Docs and Sheets with their collaborative features help staff at our separate sites feel like part of a larger team.
• Our teams receive continued support and advice so that they can find new ways to implement Google Apps with tutorials in-person and on Hangouts from Fourcast.

With Google Apps for Work, we know we always have the latest and best tools at our disposal. Automatic updates to the software mean we can count on Google to cover new needs in an ever-evolving business environment. Being open to innovation has helped us remain a market leader for more than a century, and we plan to honor that legacy well into the future.

Posted by Billie Laidlaw, Assistant Director IT Resources, RSPCA

Editor's note: Today we hear from Billie Laidlaw, Assistant Director Resources-IT at the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA), the UK’s oldest and largest animal welfare charity with 1600 employees across England and Wales. In 2014 the £43 million that the organisation received in voluntary donations helped rescue more than 128,000 animals from cruelty, abuse and neglect. Read how the RSPCA is using Google Apps for Work to help give these animals a new chance.

I often refer to our IT spend as kitten food, since that helps us focus on its value. Every pound we save with our solutions helps to rescue, rehabilitate and rehome animals across the country. So when our legacy email system reached the end of its working life, we wanted great value for money in the short term and opportunities for cost-saving and innovation further down the line. With Google Apps for Work, we got both.

We started the rollout with the IT team, then added superusers, then everyone else. We called these stages “ready,” “steady” and “GO.” In the “steady” stage, we trained up superusers and gave them t-shirts and flags so their colleagues knew who to turn to for advice. We installed timers on everyone’s desktops with a day-by-day “Countdown to Google” that created a real sense of excitement about the change and used Forms to gather post-go live feedback from 1,000 members of our team. The response was overwhelmingly enthusiastic.

From the start, we saved significantly on equipment costs alone. Our previous system operated from more than 40 servers, all of which have been decommissioned and will never have to be replaced. At £3,500 per server, that saved us £140,000 just on equipment. And digital signage now costs one tenth of the price we used to pay, from £1,500 per store to a solution using Chromebox and Slides that costs just £150 per store. Chromebooks have proven so cost effective that we bought 150 this year and plan to adopt them further. And because they connect to Drive, we don’t need to carry heavy paperwork around, which is good for the environment, our budget, and our backs. Also, when we needed to add 500 staff to our email platform, we did it in a matter of days with no additional infrastructure other than the provision of Android smartphones.

Every year we find new homes for more than 50,000 animals, and Google Apps tools make that rehabilitation process so much faster. Our 500 RSPCA inspectors are out in the field every day, investigating animal cruelty and complaints. Under our old system, none of them were connected to a central email hub, but now they all have Gmail and Drive on Android phones and access to Chromebooks, so they can instantly share test results, check documentation, send pictures and request temporary accommodation for an animal at one of our animal centres. And as soon as an animal is ready for rehoming, the quest begins to find new owners. We used to make promotional videos that we would burn to DVDs and deliver to our shops and centres by hand once a month, but now we can use Slides and a Chromebox to send promotions instantly to our screens, the same day an animal’s ready for a new home. No driving, no hassle with DVDs.

We’re committed to creating a more united, mobile, flexible workforce by the RSPCA’s 200th anniversary in 2024, and with Google Apps for Work, we’re well on the way to making that a reality. Working together in Docs isn’t just making our internal processes more transparent, it’s connecting people from parts of our organisation that otherwise operate independently and allows us to share knowledge and advice across the country. Hangouts let us meet face-to-face online and keep workflow moving with instant messaging. We’re also using Calendar to keep in synch and Sheets to work out duty rosters and book holidays.

Every time a supporter puts a pound in one of our collection tins, they want it to be spent wisely. By streamlining our services with Google Apps for Work, we make sure that more of that money serves the animals who need it. In the end, it could be food for a kitten, or a puppy, a horse, a seal, a hedgehog…

Posted by Hiroshi Lockheimer, SVP Android, Chrome OS and Chromecast

(Cross-posted on the Google Chrome Blog.)

Over the last few days, there’s been some confusion about the future of Chrome OS and Chromebooks based on speculation that Chrome OS will be folded into Android. While we’ve been working on ways to bring together the best of both operating systems, there's no plan to phase out Chrome OS.

With the launch of Chrome OS six years ago, we set out to make computers better—faster, simpler and more secure—for everyone. We’ve since seen that vision come to life in classrooms, offices and homes around the world. In fact, every school day, 30,000 new Chromebooks are activated in U.S. classrooms—that’s more than all other education devices combined. And more than 2 million teachers and students in more than 150 countries have the Share to Classroom Chrome extension, which launched in September and gets students onto the same webpage, instantly. Meanwhile, companies such as Netflix, Sanmina, Starbucks and of course Google, are using Chromebooks given the ease of deployment, the ability to easily integrate with existing technologies, and a security model that protects users at all levels, from hardware to user data. (Chromebooks are so secure you don’t need antivirus software!) IT administrators can manage tens of thousands of Chromebooks through a single web console, making them ideal for both classrooms and the workplace.

For everyday use, we’re proud that Chromebooks are continually listed as a best-selling laptop computer on Amazon.com. In an effort to make computing even more accessible, earlier this year we introduced the first $149 Chromebook—a fast, affordable laptop. And in the next couple weeks the Asus Chromebit will be available—an $85 device that turns any display into a computer so you can replace your old desktop with an affordable computer the size of a candy bar, or let businesses transform a billboard into a smart digital sign.

This year we've also worked to redefine the different forms Chrome OS can take, introduced the first designated Chromebook for Work, and brought more of your favorite Android apps to your Chromebook via Apps Runtime on Chrome (a.k.a. ARC). But there’s more to do. We have plans to release even more features for Chrome OS, such as a new media player, a visual refresh based on Material Design, improved performance, and of course, a continued focus on security. With our regular six-week software cycle and guaranteed auto-updates for five years, Chromebooks keep getting better over time. Finally, stay on the lookout for dozens of new Chromebooks in 2016.

Posted by Douglas Grgas, General Manager of IT/Infrastructure, Converga

Editor's note: Today’s guest blogger is Douglas Grgas at Converga, a business process outsourcing company based in Australia, providing digital mailroom, document processing and a variety of other managed services. Converga introduced Chromebooks to ensure better availability of internal services for remote employees, as well as a new platform for office staff.

When employees are based in many different locations, whether it’s at corporate offices or customer sites, it’s important to make all employees feel connected to headquarters. As a company with over 1,300 resources at more than 150 customer locations, we’ve addressed this challenge firsthand by providing employees with technology to stay in touch. Many of our employees spend the majority of their time at our customers’ offices providing managed services, such as operating mailrooms or converting paper documents to digital versions.

To bridge the gap between off-site and on-site communications, account managers visited customer sites regularly to communicate with remote employees, and our CEO carried out a roadshow, where he talked about company performance, new customer wins and progress on global objectives, but off-site employees still felt disconnected from central operations on a day-to-day basis.

Our biggest ongoing challenge with keeping employees connected while at customer sites was having to rely on customers’ devices and networks. Often employees couldn’t access email and the Internet, which resulted in being disconnected from corporate communications and reduced productivity. We wanted everyone to feel connected and productive wherever they were, and to have access to technology that simplified their activities.

We chose Chrome for Converga because of its simplicity of use and seamless remote management. We liked that Chromebooks are sleek and lightweight like a tablet, but have a keyboard for easy data entry.

Beyond the device, the central Chrome Device Management service allows easy deployment and controls, device security, network connectivity and integrated apps across Converga’s fleet of Chromebooks, all with the additional benefit of leveraging Google’s Support services.

Also, since Chromebooks integrate with Citrix XenApp, which virtually delivers existing apps through the Chrome Browser, we don’t have to repurchase or rewrite existing applications.

Converga has deployed Chromebooks at 50 customer sites across Australia and New Zealand during the past year. We’ve also deployed numerous devices, many utilizing the Citrix XenApp, at our corporate offices.

Now more than 500 employees have a two-way channel to communicate with headquarters, using a reliable and standard operating environment, which IT can manage remotely. Employees can quickly search for information using Chrome, record notes in Google Docs and communicate with employees at other sites via Hangouts and Google+, all accessible via a simple to use, remotely managed, lightweight device.

Chromebooks are the foundation that helps our employees connect with each other and senior management. We use our company Google Site, which acts as our intranet, to do everything from feature employees of the month to communicate company perks and share performance metrics. Employees also use the intranet to share updates about customer sites, so the rest of the business can stay connected. For example, around Christmas, our employees post pictures of how their customers have decorated for the holidays. Each time an employee does something related to the Converga tree, a tree that represents our company values, he or she is asked to share the activity with the rest of the community.

Introducing Chromebooks has supported our goal of making all employees, regardless of their location, feel united. As we continue to introduce new technologies, our employees are more engaged in their work and empowered to share their stories with one another.

Posted by Ashley Sprague, Director of IT, Netflix

Editor's note: Today’s guest blogger is Ashley Sprague, Director of IT at Netflix, where over 65 million members go to stream their favorite movies, shows and more. Netflix was recently featured at Chrome Live to share how they’ve brought their call center into the cloud powered solely by Chrome devices and Chrome management. To learn more about Netflix’s approach to work, check out this recording of Chrome Live.

If you’re binge-watching the newest season of “Orange Is the New Black” on Netflix and the streaming video falters just as the ladies of Litchfield launch into a new scheme, we want to troubleshoot for you. If you have questions about your monthly plan, we’d like to answer those too. Whatever your question or challenge, the Netflix Salt Lake City call center reps can provide fast answers. Now that Chromeboxes, Chromebooks and Chrome management are the backbone of our call center, we can focus on helping customers instead of managing software and hardware from multiple vendors. By bringing our contact center to the cloud with the help of Chrome, adding reps and managing hardware and software is easier than ever — and we’ve broken free of the traditional call center model.

Netflix’s call center is growing steadily, and we’re expecting to increase the number of reps. Legacy hardware didn’t give us much flexibility to add new reps or bring in new equipment when we had breakdowns. Swapping in new workstations demanded that we reconfigured the devices, so we had to keep an extra row of workstations just for reps to use when their desktops didn’t work. We maintained more hardware on the call center floor than we needed — taking up space, costing money, and requiring more time and IT resources to manage. The call center is hundreds of miles away from our IT home base, so a cloud-based management solution made sense.

We’re already using Google Apps for Work at Netflix, so it made sense to think about how Google could help reduce the call center’s dependence on outdated technology while allowing us to grow as needed. At the heart of our new call center is Chrome management, which gives us a one-stop shop for maintaining Chrome devices used by reps and call center managers.

Our reps are using Chromeboxes at their workstations, while supervisors use Chromebooks to manage Chrome and the call center. We can add reps in Chrome management in just a few seconds, and they instantly have access to their email, calendars, and Hangouts — everything they need to start working. We can apply policies to groups of reps with just a few clicks, which is a big time-saver.

Switching out a device requires nothing more than handing a rep a new Chrome device and telling them to plug it in. You hear a lot of overly optimistic claims about “plug and play” in the technology world, but with Chrome devices, it’s all true. One of our call center managers says it takes longer to get a Chromebook out of the box than it does to set it up — and I believe it.

Our call center reps love having every application right at their fingertips as soon as they sign in to Chrome. We can tell they’re happy because the number of trouble tickets has dropped noticeably, another way we’re saving time on the IT side. When reps can get straight to work without worrying about the technology they’re using, they can spend more time on giving customers great service — so when people call with questions about streaming the new season of “Orange Is the New Black,” we’re ready.

Posted by Saswat Panigrahi and Raghu Yarlagadda, Product Managers, Chromebooks for Work

Editor's note: To learn more about the new features that make Chromebooks ready for work, join our Chrome product team for a Hangout on Air on Tuesday, September 1st at 10AM PT. 

Today, Chromebooks are putting on their power suit. Customers like Netflix, Sanmina and Starbucks have adopted Chromebooks for their ease of deployment, security and ability to integrate well with existing technologies, and a recent IDC study of Chromebooks use in K-12 education shows that Chromebooks require 69% less labor to install and 92% less labor to support than other devices. And with today’s announcements, the Chromebook family gets even bigger and better:

Work-ready devices: Today, the new Dell Chromebook 13 joins the Asus Chromebook Flip and Chromebook Pixel in the Chromebook for Work lineup. Built with a lightweight carbon fiber cover, the laptop comes with a 13.3” FHD IPS touchscreen display, 5th Gen Intel® Core™ processor, magnesium alloy palmrest, backlit keyboard and high-precision glass trackpad. And if you’re often on the road or rushing between meetings, you’ll have the machine power to keep moving, thanks to a 12-hour battery life. Starting at $399 and available for purchase starting September 17th, the Chromebook 13 brings enterprise class performance at an economical price point.

Plays well with others: Using Microsoft infrastructure? No problem. Single sign-on and support for legacy apps mean Chromebooks can now plug right in with VMWare, Dell vWorkspace, or Citrix’s improved Chrome receiver. Connecting to your files is even easier with Windows File Shares (SMB/CIFS), Box, Dropbox, or OneDrive. Need to print? Printing to local printers with Cloud Print 2.0 or to any existing printer using the improved Cloud Print CUPS connector is simple. With the help of a new API, HP supports over 100m+ printers with the HP Print for Chrome app. And connecting just got more seamless –VPN support from Pulse Secure and Dell SonicWall join Cisco AnyConnect on the Chrome Web Store (F5 Networks and Palo Alto Networks coming soon).

Manage from the beach: Chesterfield School District deployed 14,000 Dell devices in just a few weeks, and manages almost 32,000 devices today. What’s their secret? The Chrome Device Management console, a cloud based management solution with 200+ features that integrates Chrome devices with your infrastructure and helps manage thousands of devices with ease – from users to networks to applications. We've made enhancements such as domain autocomplete and asset management, making users and IT admins lives easier.

With so many businesses undergoing transformation, shifting to the cloud and rethinking how mobile and devices play into this transformation, Chrome authorized resellers and SYNNEX corporation are ready to help you.

Check out our webpage or join us on Tuesday September 1st at 10AM PST for a Hangout on Air to learn more about Chromebooks for Work.

Posted by Rajen Sheth, Director of Product Management, Chrome for Work

Today at Chrome Live, we showed how Chrome continues to make the way we work faster, simpler and more secure, while businesses like Netflix, Pinterest and Chico’s shared how Chrome for Work is bringing innovation to their workplaces.

We also announced new Chrome products and features that make it simpler to bring Chrome to work, including:

• Chromebook integration with Box for more ways to bring your files to the cloud: Now, you can seamlessly access your Box documents from a Chromebook, just as you would access your local documents. This means that with your Chromebook, you’ll have access to even more applications, no matter where you are.

• Bringing face-to-face meetings to larger rooms: Last year, we launched Chromebox for meetings so you can have face-to-face conversations with colleagues in remote offices and still feel like you’re in the same room. Today, we announced a new version of Chromebox for meetings that powers meeting rooms fitting up to twenty people. The hardware in the bundle includes a Chromebox powered by Dell, Asus, and HP, a pan tilt zoom camera, and more; just bring your own display. From huddle rooms to large conference rooms, you can now affordably bring video meetings to more office spaces.

• Improvements to Chrome management for Chrome-dedicated devices: A few weeks ago, we announced over a dozen Chrome partners in the digital signage space. We’ve also improved ongoing reporting to monitor the health of your kiosks and signage at all times. You’ll get alerts from Chrome management if a screen goes down and can remotely reboot the device to get it back online without dispatching a technician. You can also get live updates about system usage and capture screen grabs to see exactly what viewers see.

• Bringing Chrome management pricing flexibility to more places: We’re adding pricing flexibility to Chromebook management at a subscription fee of $50/year and announcing availability in seven new countries: Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, India, UK and France.

If you weren’t able to attend the live session, you can still watch the event on demand. Feel free to share your thoughts, impressions and questions using #chromelive15 on social media.

Posted by Henrik Poulsen, Deputy CIO, Arbejdernes Landsbank

Editor's note: Today’s post comes from Henrik Poulsen at Arbejdernes Landsbank, a full service retail bank in Denmark. Arbejdernes Landsbank recently introduced Chromebooks to help customers become more digitally savvy.

Many people open their mailboxes to find dozens of envelopes from financial institutions with information they can easily find online. As a retail bank, most of our customers are used to receiving bank statements and loan documents via snail mail, but that’s about to change. At the end of 2014, the Danish Government mandated that all citizens receive mail from the public sector online. At Arbejdernes Landsbank, we’re helping our customers adapt to a new era of digital banking in 2015.

Before we started prioritizing this digital service, customers struggled to access their online information when they visited a branch location. They had to bring their own devices since using the bank’s devices could expose customer data to security issues. Customers brought different devices with varying network settings, so often our employees spent time dealing with technical computer issues, rather than helping the customer. This was not just time-consuming, but resulted in poor customer service and security issues. Keeping data secure in the financial industry isn’t an option; it’s a requirement.

We introduced Chromebooks in January 2015 because they’re secure and easy to use. In each of our 70 branches, we have a Chromebook set up as a kiosk for customers to log onto our website and access income and loan documents, digitally sign customer agreements and refer to electronic statements. We can create a setting so the data one customer accesses is completely wiped before the next customer uses the device. Customers feel comfortable disclosing sensitive information using the Chromebooks because they know their information is safe. Setup for each device requires about two minutes of our IT team’s time, and the device can be managed remotely.

Chromebooks help our customers become more digitally savvy while streamlining time-intensive processes, like completing and mailing in paperwork. When a customer needs to access their income information for a loan, they can pull it up online while at the branch, rather than going home and mailing it. Instead of waiting for the next teller, customers help themselves using the Chromebook. Employees spend their time helping customers who need immediate attention, which allows us to deliver higher quality service.

Introducing Chromebooks has helped us keep sensitive information secure while providing peace of mind for our customers and familiarizing them with digital banking — all without placing a burden on our IT resources. As we pioneer new digital technologies, we look forward to serving as an educational resource for our customers and making it easier for them to manage their finances anytime and anywhere.