Posted by Chris Williams, Director of IT and Support Services, Chapters Health System

Editor's note: Today’s guest blogger is Chris Williams, Director of IT and Support Services for Chapters Health System, which provides post-acute, palliative, and hospice care to patients in west-central Florida. See what other organizations that have gone Google have to say.

At Chapters Health System, the role of IT is to provide software, connectivity and hardware to caregivers so they can spend less time wrestling with technology, and more time caring for patients. Our goal is to make the IT portion transparent to providing superior patient care. Most of our nurses and caregivers are mobile – they visit patients in hospitals, nursing homes, assisted living facilities or in their homes.

To best support them, we virtualized our clinical and business software applications, and provide access to them via Citrix XenApp via Receiver. We also make sure our caregivers can stay connected through a Verizon 4G Mifi device. As for hardware, caregivers were using Windows notebooks but boot-up delays, long setup times for new machines, and the bulkiness of the devices were slowing down and frustrating our caregivers. In addition, the devices were hard to manage by the IT support staff.

To find a solution, we took a democratic approach and asked caregivers to evaluate four devices: the HP Chromebook 14 for Business, Apple iPad, a Windows thin client, and a traditional Windows notebook. Caregivers rated the HP Chromebook 14 higher than any other device in all areas, including form factor, battery life, ease of use, speed and performance of virtualized applications like Microsoft Outlook and clinical applications, as well as web applications. Ninety-two out of 139 caregivers who participated in our study voted the Chromebook as their favorite device for work.
Luckily for us in IT, Chromebooks for Business are also the easiest devices to deploy and manage, freeing up our own time for other projects. The biggest change we’ve heard about so far is improved speed. With a traditional Windows notebook, caregivers faced three to four minute boot times, plus multiple logins to Windows, their VPN, and then finally Citrix and the applications. With Chromebooks, boot time shrank dramatically and Chromebooks start up right at the Citrix login screen, so caregivers can access clinical data right away.

Speed benefits extend to setup time as well. Some of our supplemental and weekend caregivers borrow from a pool of shared devices, and it took 40 minutes to set up each Windows notebook. With Chromebooks for Business, we can hop into the management console and set up a new Chromebook in under five minutes. Even better, we use the management console to configure access for users so that if they need to borrow a machine we don’t have to get involved at all—they just pick up a Chromebook and log in. Since each caregiver can get his or her specific user experience on any Chromebook, it's easy for the devices to be shared.

For additional security and simplicity, we use Chromebook for Business’s Kiosk mode to offer one single application, the Citrix login screen, but we’ll be extending it other web applications soon. We also use the management console to mandate the proxy server for Internet access—a feature that’s built-in to each Chromebook for Business.

Chromebooks are giving back precious time to caregivers and their patients. In fact, we’re looking at purchasing many more Chromebooks in the near future so we can extend the benefits to even more Chapters Health employees.

Posted by Lisa Ventura, Vice President of Accounting and Administration, Better Business Bureau

Editor's note: Today’s guest blogger is Lisa Ventura, Vice President of Accounting and Administration for the Better Business Bureau serving Eastern Massachusetts, Maine, Rhode Island, and Vermont, a non-profit organization that services businesses and consumers in the community.

The Better Business Bureau (BBB) has a real mix of in office and telecommuting staff. As a busy non-profit, technology is forefront of our organization and, like a lot of Better Business Bureau offices around the country, we don’t have an IT department, which adds to the challenge of keeping information both secure and accessible. If someone needs tech help, I put on my IT hat (as does Kevin J. Sanders, our CEO), and configure new computers or update software. Juggling the IT responsibilities can be difficult during busier times of the year.

That is until we decided to bring 35 Google Chromebooks and Chromeboxes for Business at the BBB. Almost overnight, we reduced the time we spent handling IT tasks like software updates and patches, and worrying about security concerns. We’ve already seen firsthand how Google can help our business — we were early adopters among BBB offices of Google Apps for Business (about 30% of BBBs nationwide now use Google Apps), and we love collaborating on documents and managing our emails, which Google Apps has made so simple.

Chromebooks and Chromeboxes give us even more freedom and help us lock down the security of information. The devices run on the Chrome operating system and software is updated automatically on each device. Security is built into the Chromebook in multiple layers, such as sandboxing and data encryption, so we can rest easy knowing that malware can’t get very far. Using the Chrome management console we can preload the apps that we want employees to use and restrict downloads to only those applications employees need for working with consumers and Accredited Businesses. Not only are we greatly reducing IT issues, we have saved roughly $900 per seat by purchasing Chromeboxes versus computers with added software. With a staff of approximately 50 people, that savings really adds up.

Using Google Apps for Business eliminated the need for email and document servers, instantly saving BBB the cost of maintaining those devices. It became easier to share documents and track user changes, instead of emailing those documents back and forth as attachments. Plus, the ability to have Google Apps anywhere you are, allows our remote workers to always have information at their fingertips. Moving off our Windows-based desktops and laptops onto Chromebooks and Chromeboxes made perfect sense after seeing so much success from switching to Google Apps for Business.

We’re in the process of expanding beyond our original order of 35 devices and switching out all of our desktops and laptops to Chromebooks and Chromeboxes – a huge benefit for our busy organization. In fact, we’ve become such experts at adopting Google technology that other BBB offices in North America are coming to us for advice on Google Apps and buying up Chromebooks and Chromeboxes for Business

Posted by David Andrade, CIO, Bridgeport Public Schools

Editor's note: Schools bought more than 1 million Chromebooks in the second quarter of 2014. Today’s guest blogger, David Andrade, the CIO for the Bridgeport Public Schools district, which serves 23,000 students in Connecticut, shares why they selected Chromebooks. Learn more about going Google and follow our Google for Education Google+ page to see a selection of tips from David. 

When I started my role as CIO a year and a half ago, I found that our technology was not up to scratch to meet the needs of our students. We only had a few desktop PCs located in each elementary and middle school classroom, and only a few in our high school computer labs. We definitely needed more machines so students would get more time to work on class projects and do research.

Our district doesn’t have a lot of money for buying new technology, and grants can be hard to come by. Adding to our challenges, Bridgeport Public Schools are based in a working-class community with high unemployment (95% of students receive free or reduced lunches). Most students don't have access to computers outside of school and, at the time, there was a limited supply in our schools.

Bridgeport uses a variety of Chromebook models including devices from Samsung, Acer and HP.

When the technology committee for Bridgeport Public Schools raised the idea of bringing affordable computers into our classrooms, I suggested we consider Chromebooks, coupled with Google Apps for Education. I was a fan of the Chromebook right from the start because of their affordable price and ease of use. In 2010, Google sent me one of the first Chromebooks to review on my blog, Educational Technology Guy, where I write about technology resources for teachers and students.

The affordability and easy maintenance of Chromebooks clinched the deal – we could buy three Chromebooks for the price of a single desktop computer and the district’s small IT team wouldn’t have to struggle to keep up with the repairs and updates on aging PCs. We would also save on support time and costs since Chromebooks update automatically. Initially, we bought 4,000 Chromebooks for our high schools, where every classroom now has a Chromebook for each student. At the same time, we decided to start using Google Apps for Education so every student would have an email address, something we’d never been able to do before. We also used Google Drive to move student documents off of our internal file storage system – another way to save the IT team time and money. So they can now work together and communicate with teachers even while not in the classroom.

When we received some hard-won grant money, we bought more Chromebooks, and we’re now at 9,000 district-wide. Our goal is to bring Chromebooks to every classroom in grades 4 through 12. The Chromebooks have already changed how teachers teach and students learn: there’s less “listen-to-me” lecturing, and more active student involvement in creating their own projects.

Now that we've been using Chromebooks for a while, we've been able to provide our students access to technology and take the strain off of our IT department, but what makes this truly successful is the what our students say. One of our 12th graders told me she loves that she can "take school work anywhere" or as one of our 10th graders told me, "they make it easier to hand in work and decrease your chance of failing."

Posted by Bart Louwagie, CIO, Ulster-Greene ARC

Editor's note: Today’s post comes from Bart Louwagie, CIO of Ulster-Greene ARC (UGARC). UGARC is a private, nonprofit agency offering support for intellectually and developmentally disabled individuals in Ulster and Greene counties in New York.

At UGARC, we provide a full array of customized support and services for individuals with intellectual and other developmental disabilities, these include educational programs, vocational readiness, job training, residential options and clinical services. We have over a thousand employees helping more than 1,300 people live full and meaningful lives.

There are a lot of medically frail people in our care who need 24/7 support. At the same time, our direct support workers need to record every event that takes place when they are “on the clock” including daily activities, food preferences and behavioral events. This information is collected in different databases and pulled up by other direct support workers or nurses who might work with the same person. The challenge for our employees is multi-tasking — it’s hard to give someone your undivided attention when you’re also trying to take notes down before you forget.

For a long time, direct support workers used pen and paper and then spent time entering their notes into a computer when they had some down time. It’s not the most efficient, but paper is easy. You just slap it on the table and start scribbling. As the leader of the IT department, I wanted to introduce technology that was as frictionless as paper and as “invisible” as possible, so our employees could spend more time focusing on the individual.

As a nonprofit we didn’t have many resources to use on new technology. With Chromebooks and Google Apps we were able to create an incredibly affordable, secure and easy-to-manage system for employees to collect and share patient information. We purchased 130 Samsung Chromebooks and locked them down in Kiosk mode, via the management console, so a staff member could only access essential web-based forms. We synchronized this with Active Directory so logons are easy. Now, when direct support staff are with the people, they simply turn on the Chromebook, log into the Electronic Healthcare records and start taking notes right away. By cutting down their note taking time, our direct support staff can focus on what is most important for the person.

As a healthcare provider, we needed to meet stringent regulations around data privacy and security. Chromebooks are by far the easiest computers to manage and secure, thanks to the remote management console. Chromebooks give us granular control over who can access what data, preventing problems with confidentiality of personal information. Since we store no data, we are confident that losing a device will not lead to data loss.

Our employees love Chromebooks, but I think the IT department has felt the biggest impact. Because Google automatically sends updates to each device, all we need to worry about is managing permissions for each user. We’ve saved hours of work each week by not having to maintain laptops, their applications and managing upgrades. It takes less than 10 minutes to configure a new Chromebook just the way we want, versus the hours it would have taken with a Windows-based netbook.

Chromebooks have truly achieved my desire for “invisible” technology that’s simple to use, easy to manage and affordable. We hope to roll out more Chromebooks in the future.

Posted by Jason Katcher, Head of North America Large Customer Education Sales

Editor's note: If you are thinking about going Google with Chromebooks, complete the interest form on our website and a member of our team will be in touch.


As students in the United States put down their pencils and head out for summer vacation, educators across the country are hard at work planning for the school year ahead. For some, it means putting together the summer reading list or having year-end conferences. For others, it means studying materials for a new syllabus or decorating the classroom. And for Chesterfield County Schools, one of the country’s 100 largest school systems, it means securing the best teaching materials and technology to greet students when they return to school next year -- including 32,000 new Chromebooks.

Chesterfield, which serves students across 62 schools in Virginia, joins a number of other large districts who have chosen Chromebooks for the 2014-15 school year. They join Oakland Unified School District (8,000 devices), Boston Public Schools (10,000 devices), Milwaukee Public Schools (11,400 devices), Edmonton Public Schools (13,000 devices), and Chicago Public Schools (16,000 devices).

Chesterfield is one of many public school districts that believe providing access to technology for every student is possible even when budgets are tight. They chronicled their journey on a website they created, called “Anytime, Anywhere Learning,” so the community could engage in the project and efforts. One of the most important steps the District took was running an in-depth pilot study where teachers, students and administrators tested 6 pilot devices in the classrooms, to determine which were best for their schools.

Adam Seldow, Executive Director of Technology, letting younger students test the new Chromebooks

After testing and assessing the devices, Chesterfield selected Chromebooks for all 32,475 middle and high school students. What’s especially remarkable is that they were able to move to Chromebooks with existing funds — without requesting additional budget, since Chromebooks are nearly half the cost of PC desktops and laptop alternatives. Chesterfield also saved by reducing the amount of classroom peripheral devices such as interactive whiteboards, which they could replace with web-based tools. They selected Dell Chromebooks with local partner TIG, who committed to provide training and support for the journey to ensure students, teachers and administrators could take full advantage of the many benefits of the new technology.

Choosing Chromebooks wasn’t just about selecting a piece of hardware - it was about meeting Chesterfield’s goals at the right price to bring great education to all students. As Chesterfield Superintendent Dr. Marcus Newsome explained, "anytime, anywhere learning is a tenet of our strategic plan made possible by highly trained teachers, and actionable by our students' access to Chromebooks.” And as Adam Seldow, Executive Director of Technology, said, “with Chromebooks, we are now able to provide students with more opportunities to pursue their interests both inside and outside of the classroom."

Posted by Richard Huré, CIO, Fred & Farid Group

Editor's note: Our guest blogger is Richard Huré, CIO of digital creative group Fred & Farid Group. See what other organizations that have gone Google have to say.

Fred & Farid Group is the first French independent Digital Creative Group based in Paris and Shanghai. Founded in 2006 by Frederic Raillard and Farid Mokart, we create digital integrated ad campaigns for global brands such as Audi, Porsche, Diesel, Société Générale, Garnier, and Mondelez. We’ve grown extremely fast and now have more than 350 employees in our Paris and Shanghai offices and have won 129 digital distinctions since 2011.

Though Fred & Farid is known for its tech-savvy campaigns spanning web, mobile, social, video and music, until recently, we used old-school business applications like Lotus Notes and Microsoft Office. When I joined in 2011, I wanted to move our company to the cloud to improve efficiency and increase collaboration between our creative, technology, and business teams in France and China. I chose to roll out Chromebooks because Chrome OS is the perfect operating system for the cloud -- it’s easy to manage and maintain, makes collaboration a snap, and offers integrated security and control.

Macs are a popular choice among the creative team. But I soon realized not everyone needs a Mac, especially the 60 percent of our employees who work in office roles like marketing, sales, IT, and administration. We recently rolled out 10 Samsung Chromebooks in a small pilot and plan to have 200 employees on Chromebooks by the end of the year. Our decision to adopt Chromebooks wasn’t based solely on price -- though we expect to save a significant amount compared to deploying Macs -- but also a desire to have faster collaboration. When you have a Chromebook, you think less about downloading stuff to your hard drive and more about sharing information in the cloud. With Google Drive, we're able to store, sync and share all our important files easily, whether it's when we're on our Chromebooks or on our phones and tablets on the go.

We use Google Hangouts for all our voice communications -- we don’t even have phone lines in our offices anymore. In the Paris office alone, we conduct more than 50 Hangouts each day. Of course, we also use Drive for document sharing and Calendar for scheduling.

From an IT management perspective, Chromebooks are a dream. Using the management console, we can push apps onto employees’ devices, including some in-house collaboration apps we’ve created like the Fred & Farid Bridge, a social network where employees share photos, videos, music, and other creative ideas. In the future, when we have 200 Chromebooks, we’ll explore new ways to use the Management Console, including for security and analytics.

Chrome OS is like a blank canvas, and we can’t wait to come up with new ways to use it. I’m thinking about installing scannable tabs on meeting room doors, and when employees enter they can check in with their smartphones so the rooms show up as ‘booked’ in Google Calendar. Creativity thrives when people can freely communicate, collaborate, and share ideas. Chromebooks will help us unify employees across time zones into one collaborative team -- even as the company grows at an unstoppable pace.

Posted by Andrei Zimiles, Co-founder and CEO, Doctor.com

Editor's note: Our guest blogger is Andrei Zimiles, Co-founder and CEO of the vertical healthcare network Doctor.com. See what other organizations that have gone Google have to say.

Choosing a doctor can be difficult. Many of us turn to peer recommendations and word-of-mouth reviews when selecting a physician, but credible reviews are few and far between.

At Doctor.com, our mission is to connect the millions of patients in America with the right healthcare providers. Our core business is an online directory platform with detailed profiles of more than two million licensed healthcare practitioners in America. Visitors to our site can search for doctors by location, insurance plan, languages spoken, gender and other criteria. This January, we began deploying an application to efficiently collect credible patient reviews of their doctors, which we publish at Doctor.com and across a growing network of top healthcare websites such as the recently launched YourDoctor.com, a joint venture with Healthline, one of the web’s most popular destinations for healthcare information and tools.

Chromebooks are allowing us to scale this program quickly and efficiently. We send every doctor who opts in an Acer Chromebook, which typically sits at the receptionist counter. At checkout, patients are encouraged to spend a few minutes entering anonymous feedback about their doctor as they wait for their paperwork to go through. This feedback is immediately sent to our team, and we vet and publish reviews on the Doctor.com network according to strict guidelines. This combination of credible reviews from patients and a wide network of important healthcare sites is unique in the marketplace and a win-win for both our doctor and patient users.

A review system is only useful when it’s robust, scalable and incorporates the feedback of many patients. The speed and simplicity of Chromebooks makes them easy to work into the offices’ existing workflow. We could have used any number of devices, but Chromebooks were, by far, the most cost-efficient, patient-friendly and secure devices out there. With the Acer Chromebook, we are able to deploy the device cost-effectively and can pass that savings along to the doctors we work with.

From a security and IT perspective, our deployment team has enjoyed working with the Chromebook as a technology platform, particularly with the extra features made possible via Google’s Management Console. Initial set-up is very efficient both in the pre-staging at our offices and once deployed to the doctor’s offices. Out of all the Chromebooks that we have deployed we have not had any issues and we are seeing fantastic engagement from patients that are using them.

At Doctor.com we believe in improving the way patients and doctors connect through the use of disruptive technologies. The real-time feedback made possible by the Chromebook platform is a great example of this. We are simultaneously helping doctors understand how to improve the care they provide and helping patients make more informed decisions about which doctors will be best suited to their needs.

We are pleased to be partnered with Google on this exciting project and look forward to exploring further innovations using the Chrome OS and Chromebook platform in the future.

Editor's note: Maine Township High School District near Chicago has used Google Apps for Education (GAFE) since 2007 and was one of the first K-12 districts to use the productivity suite. Now the three schools in the district are using Chromebooks as part of their 1:1 program. We talked with Hank Thiele, Assistant Superintendent for Technology & Learning, about how the district’s 6,800 students are using the tools and why he is confident that GAFE is the best tool for his district. For more information, read the case study.


How much money have you saved by using Google Apps for Education?
We’ve saved more than $784,000 over six years. Those are dollars that would been listed directly in the budget. That number doesn’t even include productivity or factor in that Google Apps for Education is a better tool than anything else out there. The key differentiation between Google and the others is how easy it is to collaborate and share in the same space. There are projects we’ve done here where people say “we just couldn’t have done this without the Google tools.” People routinely say “throw that on a site” or “put a calendar invite together.” The way the whole team works with the tools — it’s so seamless it’s scary, in a good way.

How important is security to you? How does that play into your use of Google Apps for Education?
Extremely important. I’m also realistic about my resources and my team’s resources compared to Google. Google has proven that they’re a secure company. They provide the same level of security that they use to protect their own data. I don’t know of any school district that has passed the same rigor of security testings that Google has. I might have a few people on my staff who are experts in Internet security and privacy, but Google has hundreds. There is no way that I can drum up the man hours within my walls to spend on security as Google has in their own walls. So, to me it’s much safer with Google in the long run, especially since the data is in the cloud and not sitting on someone’s laptop on their desk or on a USB drive.

Has Google Apps for Education been helpful from the perspective of disaster recovery and regulatory compliance?
We’re not concerned with disaster recovery because there is continuous backup. We’ve seen more of a benefit from regulatory compliance with legal review and discovery. The biggest thing is the knowledge that there is no losing data — you know it is going to be there. You know that if a lawyer or state’s attorney comes knocking on your door, you can open the Google Apps interface and find it. There’s no fear you will have to produce something that has been lost. The more stuff our teachers put into Google Drive the better things are for regulatory compliance and legal discovery for us.

When it comes to using a service that’s purely cloud-based, what are the benefits?
No matter what happens within our walls, the Google tools are available when the Web is available. A couple of years ago we lost all power for three days at the main data center that provided Internet to our schools. We called the Internet service provider and they said, “Well, we’d love to help you out, but the switches that feed your school are under four feet of water now.” While that was going on, we were working offsite and our Gmail there was fine. If we were hosting email on premise we would have been dark. The last thing you want is to be cut off from the rest of the world and being in the cloud prevented that from happening.

What was the biggest concern when you first moved to Google, and how has it since been addressed?
The top concern was that the price was too good to be true. People worried there would be a bait and switch. I know Google Apps for Education won’t start charging because the public pressure would be daunting if Google did that. I take comfort in that.

The other thing that makes me confident in Google is their program Google Takeout. Google constantly gives me tools to move information into the the system, but it’s also easy to take it back out if I were ever to want to leave. Other companies have not been that forthright.

How is the support for Google Apps for Education?
Google support is as good or better than support for any product I pay for. It’s rare that I have to use support, but when I do I typically get an email response back within hours. On the rare occasions when I do need help, I can send an email or make a quick phone call and, either way, we get help immediately.

Posted by Amit Singh, President of Google Enterprise

Today marks the end of an era for computing, as Windows XP meets its maker. I remember when XP was released in 2001—it seemed like a revolution that introduced computers to a whole new generation. But fast forward 13 years and we live in a very different world—one in which we expect the latest and greatest software, and the ability to access our stuff from anywhere. Even Microsoft admits: it’s time for a change. After all, in 2001, computers looked like this:
In addition to the nearly 30% of desktops still running XP, many businesses are in a tough spot. Despite “significant” security and privacy risks, legacy software or custom-built apps have held businesses back from migrating in time for today’s XP support deadline. Companies in this position now find themselves at a timely crossroads.

It’s time for a real change, rather than more of the same. Chromebooks for Business offers you a secure and easy-to-use computing experience, along with a central web-based management console and lower total cost of ownership. If you’ve been considering Chromebooks for your company, until June 30, we’re sweetening the deal:

• Buy Chromebooks for Business and get $100 off for each managed device you purchase for your company.
• If your employees need to access desktop apps, we’ve partnered with Citrix and VMware to bring two offers:

1. Get $200 off Chromebooks for Business with VMware Desktop as a Service (DaaS).
2. Get Chromebooks for Business and 25% off Citrix XenApp Platinum Edition, which includes AppDNA software for accelerating Windows XP migration.

Last year, Forrester urged businesses to consider Chromebooks. Here are some reasons why even organizations that rely on desktop applications should consider a switch now:

• Run your favorite work apps — yes, even offline: With more adoption of business web apps, companies are making the switch from Windows XP to Chromebooks. Google Docs, Sheets and Slides work online or offline. Quickoffice is built into every Chromebook and Cisco is bringing WebEx to Chromebooks soon.
• Access traditional desktops and software, too: Customers, like Woolworths, access Windows applications in a virtual environment through providers like Citrix, VMware and others.
• Power your kiosks: Use Chrome OS’s Kiosk mode to power your customer kiosks, shared employee terminals, or sales dashboard — like Dillard’s, which relies on Managed Public Sessions to help employees access their corporate email and important internal systems.
• Certified for schools: For education, Chromebooks are verified to meet Smarter Balanced and PARCC assessment requirements with software from AIR and Pearson Testnav8. According to NPD, Chromebooks made up 21% of U.S. commercial laptop sales in 2013.

For more details about how to upgrade your IT solution, please visit our website. Don’t let your business go the way of tamagotchis and parachute pants. It’s time for a real change — something we can all agree upon.

Posted by Rupert Hay-Campbell, Information/Communications Technology and Information Governance Officer, London Borough of Barking and Dagenham

Editor's note: Today’s guest blogger is Rupert Hay-Campbell, information/communications technology and information governance officer for the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham, a community in East London with 180,000 residents. See what other organizations that have gone Google have to say.

At the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham, we're dealing with a classic government challenge: the need to provide great technology for our 3,500 local council employees in a climate of severe budget austerity. In the middle of 2013 we turned our attention to upgrading our IT platform in preparation for the Windows XP end of life in April 2014.

We knew we had to either upgrade our 3,500 desktop computers and 800 laptops or find new ways to give employees access to our council systems, and preferably on devices that didn’t need to be constantly upgraded or managed by our IT staff. Google Chromebooks and Chromeboxes ticked all of these boxes – and more.

We want to future-proof our systems based on how our employees will be working five or 10 years from now. They’ll be more mobile, working from home or from various council offices, so they’ll rely on laptops. The applications they’ll use will be web-based, so a device built around a browser makes sense. At the same time, we must also manage council information in strict compliance with UK government security regulations.

Once CESG, the UK government agency responsible for IT security, developed security standards for councils using the Chrome operating system, we started switching out XP desktops and laptops with 2,000 Chromebooks for employees and 500 Chromeboxes for reception desks and shared works areas.

With the help of Ancoris, a Google Enterprise Partner, and Elevate East London, the council’s joint venture IT outsourcing partner, we're currently rolling out an initial 1,500 Chromebooks. Our partners helped us provide access to council applications via a Citrix virtual desktop, but we’ll gradually move new apps to the Chrome browser.

When we finish deploying Chromebooks and Chromeboxes in early summer, we’ll have 1,000 fewer devices to manage compared to our stock of Windows XP devices. Most employees will only have a Chromebook, instead of both a desktop and a laptop.

Not only does this help employees bring their work anywhere, it also saves us £200,000 compared with the cost of deploying new Windows desktops, and we’ve estimated a further £200,000 saving on electricity costs with the more energy-efficient ChromeOS devices. And since employees can work anywhere, we’ll be able to make substantial savings on more efficient use of some council buildings and offices. Spending less money on more secure, worker-friendly and flexible technology is helping us at the council deal with the challenge of austerity cuts - and, of course, plan better for the future of our community.

Posted by Saswat Panigrahi, Product Manager, Chrome for Business

Chromebooks are designed to make computing easier and better for everyone. Businesses of all sizes prefer their low total cost of ownership, central web-based management console and built-in, strong security mechanisms.

They’re also great devices for collaborating from anywhere, any time. Today we’re adding another tool for businesses to connect on the go. At the Enterprise Connect conference, Rajen Sheth, Director of Product Management, Chrome for Business announced we’re working with Cisco, and demonstrated a proof of concept of Cisco WebEx running on a Chromebook.
We're also integrating Cisco UC technologies into Google Apps, helping our joint customers work better together. Imagine joining a WebEx meeting directly from Calendar, or starting an instant meeting from Contacts or the Gmail People widget. Starting today, if you use Cisco and Google Apps, features you love, like messaging, fax, click-to-call and Cisco presence, are visible alongside Gmail.
If you’re a Cisco customer and you’re interested in learning more, get in touch with your Google sales team or contact Google Enterprise sales here. To learn more about Chromebooks, find more details here.

Posted by Tim Dickson, Director of Technology, Auberge Resorts

Editor's note: Today’s guest blogger is Tim Dickson, Director of Technology for Auberge Resorts, a boutique luxury hotel company with hotels in seven locations, including the Auberge Resorts, Esperanza Resort, Calistoga Ranch, Solage and Malliouhana, a new property in the British West Indies. See what other organizations that have gone Google have to say.

It may seem counter-intuitive in an industry that strives to offer a more human touch, but at Auberge Resorts we try to minimize guest interaction with staff. Our luxury hotels offer immersive experiences ranging from mineral baths and wine tastings in Napa Valley to private casitas overlooking the Sea of Cortez in Baja Mexico. The less time our guests spend at the front desk, the more time they have to explore all that our properties have to offer. So we purchased Chromebooks for our guests to check in and out at their convenience — whether that’s from the pool or their room — but they don’t have to wait for us.

Employees at our resorts and residential vacation rental properties will be using Chromebooks behind the front desk for the day-to-day operations soon, too. They’re easy to deploy and support, which saves us money from an infrastructure and maintenance perspective and makes life easier for the small IT teams in our various locations. Plus, Chromebooks automatically check for security updates and download them as needed, saving our team from the tedious task of installing frequent patches. We can focus on providing the best services and experience for our guests, instead of dealing with computer issues.


We also switched our 2,000 employees from Microsoft Outlook to Google Apps. One of our primary goals in moving to Google Apps was to improve coordination among sales and marketing staff across the company. Employees at the resorts and offices in New York, San Diego and Los Angeles can share the same documents and spreadsheets. Sales associates can work in the same doc at the same time and see which potential guests have been called so they can avoid duplicating efforts.

Using Google Apps hasn’t just improved our productivity - it’s changing our corporate culture. Meetings used to be boring: people sat on phone calls, reading from agendas. Now, employees are excited to have discussions over Google Hangouts. They bring out our employees’ creativity and personalities, and they getting to know each other better as a result. During a recent companywide Hangout to share updates about our sustainability efforts, teams from the different resorts acted out skits to relay stories about their conservation efforts. One team installed a chicken coop on their property and wore chicken costumes on the Hangout as part of their performance, and another group told their story using a children’s rhyme.

Google Apps and Chromebooks are bringing our employees closer together, helping us improve communication and productivity and enhancing the resort experience for our guests in ways we never dreamed of before. The technology allows us to improve our customer service in a unique manner, to offer visitors more flexibility and convenience and to set our resorts apart. Guests still get the smile and top-notch service they expect from our friendly staff, but we let them be in control over their own experiences.

Posted by Andrew DiMichele, Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer, Omada Health

Editor's note: Today’s guest blogger is Andrew DiMichele, Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer of Omada Health in San Francisco. See what other organizations that have gone Google have to say.

Every young company has to make careful decisions about technology purchases and how to get the most value for their money. At Omada Health, the decisions get more challenging: How do we stay compliant with HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act)? Can we manage how people in our company access and share protected health information? Can we assure our customers that we can keep this data secure – and can we do it affordably?
Chromebooks allow us to build our business in a way that we think is best for reducing the impact of chronic disease. Omada creates software programs that help at-risk people improve their health. Insurers and employers buy our programs, which help people share their progress as they become healthier and receive support from a social community. Our first product, Prevent, is a 16-week online program that helps people lose weight and change the factors that put them at risk for Type 2 Diabetes.

All work by our health coaches is done with participants, but their task is still to make sure the program's goals are being met. These coaches work from home or at client sites – for instance, they may be nutritionists or dieticians with their own businesses. We need to give them tools for managing Omada programs and participants without worrying that data is being accessed by unauthorized people. We considered allowing health coaches to use their own computers, or supplying them with laptops from other brands, but we realized we’d have no way to control how or where they download information, or who else might use the machines and gain access to our participant data.

Supplying health coaches with Chromebooks is the simplest, most cost-effective way we’ve found to provide easy yet secure access to program information. Through the management console, we configure our Chromebooks to delete local data when users log off, so if a Chromebook is lost or stolen, data won’t fall into the wrong hands. We limit logins to our health coaches only, so no one else can use a Chromebook to gain entry to our coaching and program solutions. Because Chrome is the browser on Chromebooks, and because we can prevent other programs from being loaded onto the devices, we can protect ourselves from malware and viruses that could damage our networks.

When we talk to prospective customers for our Prevent program, they have many questions about how we secure health information and remain compliant. Giving Chromebooks to our health coaches makes us confident we can meet these strict requirements in a way that doesn't break the bank.

Posted by Jaime Casap, Global Education Evangelist, Google

This week the Google for Education team will be at SXSWEdu. This event brings together educators, innovators, startups, content providers, large companies and hackers, all focused on the same mission: providing the best learning experiences for students.

As our team talks to educators and developers alike, we keep hearing the same thing — people want better ways to connect with each other and discover the best tools. Developers need feedback to make great apps, manufacturers want to understand what Administrators need from devices, and teachers need easy ways to find the right content.

Today, in collaboration with many partners, the Google for Education team is announcing new tools that will help bring the best of edtech to schools.

Providing even more affordable device choices to schools
When it comes to technology deployments in education, affordability and manageability can make the difference between leveling the playing field or widening the gap. We’re pleased to see that Oakland Unified School District has chosen the Dell Chromebook 11 to bring 8,000 laptops to its 3rd through 12th grade classrooms, helping provide equitable access to information to all of their students.

Today we’re also adding more choice for schools looking at Chromebooks. Samsung announced the new Samsung Chromebook 2 Series, with more than 8 hours of battery life, more memory, a faster processor and a more durable design. There are two models that will be available for both schools and consumers in April:

• 11” Samsung Chromebook 2 in Classic White or Jet Black, for $319.99.
• 13” Chromebook with a full HD resolution screen with 250-nit brightness and high-quality audio for a superb Google+ Hangouts experience. This device will come in Luminous Titan Gray for $399.99.

The Samsung Chromebook 2 series adds to the already deep line up of Chromebooks for Education, including new Lenovo Yoga and Thinkpad Chromebooks, Toshiba Chromebook and Dell Chromebook 11.

Making it easier to find the best content for students

Tablets with Google Play for Education help K-12 schools put the right apps, books, and educational videos in the hands of students. Today we're introducing multiple improvements that make it easier than ever to incorporate the right digital content into the classroom:

• Access thousands of K-12 books - Starting today, K-12 books are available to all schools using Google Play for Education. With a broad catalog ranging from classic literature to recent textbooks, it’s easy for teachers to get the right reading to each student. James Eichmiller, Director of Instructional Technology at Forest Park School District 91 in Illinois, helped test the program and appreciated the flexibility:

"The books in Google Play for Education have been an outstanding classroom resource for us. Instead of buying a set of books and being locked into using them for years to come, our teachers enjoy having the freedom to select books that fit the needs of their current students and share them immediately. This differentiated approach is essential as schools adopt the Common Core and work to improve student reading abilities."

• Find the best app for the job - It’s easier than ever for teachers to find the right content for their lessons. Reviews from Google Play give a quick view into pros and cons, and new app details show the grades, subjects, and common core standards an app supports.
• Reassign apps as needed - When students transfer or change grades, schools shouldn’t lose the investments they’ve made in great apps. That’s why we’re adding the ability to reassign licenses for the educator-approved apps in Google Play for Education, starting on April 2. We're also making it easier for schools to keep tablets clutter-free by uninstalling apps remotely, right from Google Play for Education.

Students read on Nexus 7 tablets at Edison Elementary in Council Bluffs, IA

Learn more
If you are about SXSWEdu stop by the Google Lounge in room 602 on the 6th floor of the Hilton Austin. If you aren’t here in person follow the action with hashtags #googleedu and #sxswedu.

Posted by Rajen Sheth, Director of Product Management, Chrome

Cloud applications allow flexibility, scalability and security and enable a work-anywhere environment, but many of our customers still use traditional desktop applications. Desktop as a Service (DaaS) helps bridge the gap between the cloud and a traditional desktop by allowing you to run your traditional software in the cloud and have applications appear on your Chromebook similarly to how they run today. An example might be your Windows based accounting application.

Chromebooks have continued to help more and more customers over the last year. According to NPD, Chromebooks made up 21% of U.S. commercial laptop sales in 2013. Customers prefer the low total cost of ownership, the central web-based management console and the fact that they don't need any additional security or anti-virus software. These are reasons why businesses large and small are adopting Chromebooks.

Today, customers can fully embrace the cloud with Chromebooks using VMware Horizon™ DaaS®. VMware and Google are working together to make the migration of legacy applications even easier, by using the HTML5/Blast experience from Chromebooks. This means you can work with Chromebooks and connect to a Windows experience running VMWare™ Horizon View.

As the countdown to Windows XP end of life continues, deploying Chromebooks and taking advantage of a DaaS environment ensures that security vulnerabilities, application compatibility and migration budgets will be a thing of the past.

VMware Horizon DaaS enables customers to centralize other desktop environments and manage these as a cloud service. Initially available to customers as an on-premise service or by VMWare vCloud Service Provider Partners (VSPPs) offering DaaS in the cloud or within hybrid deployments. Users will be able to access their Windows applications, data and desktops using VMware’s Blast HTML5 technology to their Chromebook.

This technology is available now by bringing together VMware Horizon View 5.3 and Chromebooks as an on-premise service and will be available soon as an application that can be installed from the Chrome Web Store. To find out more follow this link.

Posted by Elliot Sanchez, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, mSchool

Editor's note: Today’s guest blogger is Elliot Sanchez, founder and chief executive officer of mSchool, a benefit corporation (B Corp.) that helps community centers and schools in the United States open “microschools” to connect children with structured online learning opportunities. See what other organizations that have gone Google have to say.

At mSchool, we want to see every student receive an incredible, personalized education and make it easy for schools to provide that type of learning experience. We also believe in the thoughtful integration of technology into education.

There are many powerful, fantastic tools available today to help students learn, but using them in the right way to get the right results can be a complicated, and often costly, process. We work directly with local community centers and schools to open – in two weeks’ time and for about $5,000 – accredited one-classroom “microschools” staffed with academic coaches from the local area. Through our adaptive learning program, mSchool gathers over 250,000 data points on student learning in each classroom. That data allows us to individualize our curricula to a student's needs and adjust based on each student's performance.

We offer a technology-rich education option for students, grades 3 through 12, to deepen their math understanding and prepare for Algebra I. This includes multimedia content, interactive animations, tools for creating digital graphs and charts, and formative assessments. Chromebooks are now a big part of that experience. In our pilot classrooms, students used a range of devices – mostly donated equipment – including laptops, PCs, Macs, and tablet computers. But when we were ready to expand our program this year from 30 students to more than 200, we needed to find technology that could grow with us. We considered several different options, but Chromebooks really stood out.
First, we liked the web-based management console for managing Chromebooks and user access. We needed the ability to manage the student experience in a quickly growing number of classrooms across the country-- from around the corner in New Orleans to rural South Dakota. We can remotely control which sites students can access which allows us to help them stay on track with their learning. With Chromebooks, students are spending more “time on task.”

Cost was another primary factor in our decision to use Chromebooks throughout our classrooms. We were able to put a Chromebook into the hands of every student we’re working with this year. The low cost of replacement of the Chromebooks also means we can leave them with the community centers at the end of the academic year.

We never want technology to be a barrier to learning. And with Chromebooks, it isn’t. Students are able to access our cloud based adaptive curriculum and work at their own pace. Chromebooks are allowing our students to engage in ways they weren’t able to with pen and paper and static content like printed books. They also help us to instruct students in a personalized way. And they enable collaboration: students can work through problems independently, but when they get stuck, remote teachers can see exactly what they’re working on and help to guide them.

In 2014, mSchool will expand into five states using grant funding we received this year as part of the Teach for America Social Innovation award. And it’s the reliable rollout and scalability of Chromebooks that will help to ensure we can open all the classrooms that we’ve planned.

Posted by Caesar Sengupta, VP, Product Management

Dell has a long history of serving schools’ education technology needs. Today, they join the Google for Education family, announcing the new Dell Chromebook 11.

The new Dell Chromebook 11

The Dell Chromebook 11 was designed with schools in mind. The battery lasts up to 10 hours -- enough for a full school day plus homework -- and boots up in 8.4 seconds. It is light and highly portable, making it ideal for student use at home or on the go. And like all Chromebooks, it includes the cutting edge in security features, keeping schools protected from online threats. The device will be available in two versions - 4GB in January 2014 and 2GB in Q1 2014 - both for under $300.

“Dell asked for and listened to feedback about what our district needs in a laptop so we can ensure the best teaching and learning experiences across our schools. Simplicity in rolling out and managing the Chromebooks was really important to us because we only have a crew of six IT team members to manage 13,000 students. We also know that students can be tough on the technology, so we really appreciate the durable screen and robust power supply the Dell Chromebook 11 offers.”

--Bryan Phillips, Chief Technology Officer, Hoover City School District, Alabama

Verified for 2014 Assessments
The new Dell Chromebook 11 joins a family of 5 other Chromebooks that are verified for the latest education assessments. Both Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (Smarter Balanced) and the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) verified that all Chromebooks meet their requirements for standardized assessments in the 2014-2015 school year. With the shift toward online assessments and the Common Core State Standards, Chromebooks are helping schools achieve their goals.

To learn more about Chromebooks for Education, please visit our website and fill out our contact form to speak with a member of our team.

Posted by Gregg Rosann, President, Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer, Graduation Alliance

Editor's note: Today’s guest blogger is Gregg Rosann, President, Co-Founder, and Chief Technology Officer of Graduation Alliance, based in Salt Lake City. Graduation Alliance works with school districts around the country to help students facing challenging life circumstances to graduate. See what other organizations that have gone Google have to say.

High school can be a tough time for any student. But the students we work with face challenges that many of their peers couldn’t even imagine. They may work to support family members who are ill or unemployed, be homeless or have been bullied in school. Or they may have young children. Many of our students haven’t been in a classroom in years.

Since 2007, we’ve been giving students like this the flexibility, academic interventions and social support they need to get back on track and moving forward toward graduation. Working in partnership with local public school districts, we provide a complete suite of online learning courses that are free to students and allow them to earn credits toward graduation at their own pace. We also offer several layers of human support, which is essential to helping students make education a priority.

Because few of these students are in a position to attend a brick-and-mortar school, we provide laptops and internet access to our students as part of the program. We deployed Chromebooks to about 600 students this school year. We determined that moving to Chromebooks from the PCs and tablets we were providing could help us reduce our cost of ownership by significantly reducing the need for technical support. We also like that Chromebooks are essentially “log on and go.” Students don’t have to worry about a multistep process just to get on the web. Also, the speed and simplicity of the Chrome browser helps our students access our online learning program and get to work faster, so they can be more productive.
We manage students’ Internet access through a proxy server that we control though the Chromebook management console. The ability to limit Internet access (which we do when students fall behind in their coursework), turn off machines, and control policies from a central console is very helpful. It allows us to make sure students are taking full advantage of the program. Also, there’s no need to send a Chromebook back to the home office to be reset before it’s issued to another student, as user information is siloed, encrypted and easily wiped remotely. That’s a huge plus for an organization like ours with a nationally distributed student base.

The most important thing about Chromebooks is that they just make sense for our students, because they’ve grown up with the web. Asking them to use a desktop app to access their coursework is a foreign concept. But, if you give them instructions to go straight to a website, they understand. That’s their mindset.

Chromebooks help us focus on our students, and allow our students to focus on moving forward toward graduation. And when a student who once saw nothing but obstacles instead sees their name on a diploma, it’s an amazing thing.

Posted by Rick Mueller, IT Manager for Pediatric Home Service

Editor's note: Our guest blogger is Rick Mueller, IT Manager for Pediatric Home Service, a provider of in-home nursing and medical care for medically-complex children based in Roseville, Minnesota. See what other organizations that have gone Google have to say.

Pediatric Home Service started offering in-home respiratory care for medically-complex children 23 years ago. Our founder, Susan Wingert, understood that kids thrive at home, not in the hospital, so we brought the medical care to them. Since then, we’ve expanded our services to include infusion therapy, pharmacy, nutrition, education, social work, and most recently private duty nursing. We help care for more than 3,400 children in Minnesota and western Wisconsin.

Over half of the 330 people on staff are skilled clinicians and nurses who spend their days in patient homes. Our clinicians do 99% of their charting and reporting electronically, so they need to securely access records right from the patient’s home in real-time. We used to install Windows laptops in some private duty nursing patient homes so nurses could log onto our records system, but that was costly and cumbersome.

When it was time to upgrade our old Microsoft Exchange Server two years ago, we looked at several options, and quickly realized moving to Google Apps would be the most secure, scalable and cost effective solution for our growing organization. We launched Apps in September 2011, starting with Gmail, Chat, Contacts and Calendar. During the rollout, we used the Google Guides program, where we trained a few power users who in turn helped their colleagues learn the ropes of Google Apps.

All of our employees loved Google Apps, so when it came time to upgrade the Windows laptops in the field, we replaced them with Chromebooks, including models from Acer and Samsung. The Chromebooks put critical information, including charts, medication lists and treatments, at the nurses’ fingertips. Many of them are installed in patient homes, enabling our private duty nurses to check Gmail as well as update charts in our Windows-based patient records system via Citrix.

From a cost perspective, we’ve saved over $17,000 buying the Chromebooks versus Windows laptops, but the real savings is ongoing. So far, we have saved at least $50,000 in soft costs due to decreased management and upkeep, and expect those savings to continue.

We plan to buy more Chromebooks and deploy them in our headquarters, our warehouse and among the facility staff. The IT team are all converts because Chromebooks require almost zero maintenance. We use the Management Console to remotely lock machines, get full visibility into usage and configure on-site wireless access. Chromebooks take 10 minutes to set up, and we spend 1/10th as much time maintaining Chromebooks as we do our Windows laptops.

Our nurses and clinicians have one top priority: taking care of the child. They don’t want to fiddle around with technology; they want technology that just works, and with Chromebooks, they’re empowered to better help kids and families thrive at home.

Posted by Eric Schmidt, Executive Chairman, Google

Earlier this month, I delivered a keynote at Gartner’s annual symposium and published a blog post about the rapidly evolving landscape of business technology. The rise of cloud computing and ubiquitous, powerful mobile devices means that organizations can reduce their IT bills significantly while boosting employees’ productivity and collaboration. Moving to the cloud is no longer a questionable proposition — it’s inevitable.

This led some of the organizations I work with to ask: “That all makes sense, but how do we actually get started?”

Good question. Here are five concrete steps you can take to get started:

1. Start by setting up a Google Apps account for your organization. This will allow you to move your standard productivity and communications work to the cloud: you’ll use Gmail for your email (with your own domain, like joe@joescoffeeshop.com); Google Calendar for your calendars; Google Drive to store files; Google Docs to create and edit documents, spreadsheets and presentations; and Hangouts to send instant messages and hold video calls. This will free your staff from spending time maintaining servers and installing upgrades. Google Apps is free to schools and non-profits, and costs $50/person per year for businesses and government agencies.
2. Move your other standard business applications to cloud-based equivalents. Popular apps include Workday (HR), Salesforce (CRM), Zendesk (customer service), Netsuite (Financials), and Wix or Weebly (websites). More companies are creating and launching cloud-based business applications every day — check out the Chrome Web Store for more.
3. Move your custom applications to a cloud infrastructure. Many organizations have built their own custom applications or need to be able to do very specialized programming. Most people use Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform or Microsoft Azure. Choose between the first two.
4. Standardize on a modern browser, ideally Chrome. Chrome is built for speed, simplicity and security — and of course it’s free. To make sure that you're protected from the latest threats, Chrome automatically updates whenever a new version of the browser is available. You can also use Chrome on all the major desktop and mobile platforms, including Android and iOS, and sync your tabs and bookmarks between different devices. Chrome for Business includes a cloud-based management console, which lets you customize policies and preferences for your employees easily from the web, including which apps and extensions they receive, across their devices.
5. For hardware, you can now move to a flexible, “bring your own device” policy. Without servers, the only real hardware you need are computers and phones — and a true cloud architecture works well with any operating system: Windows, Mac, Chrome OS, Android, iOS. People can choose the device that suits them, and you can then reimburse their purchases and/or their own personal cell phone and internet bills. If you do decide to supply your staff with computers, consider Chromebooks: they boot up in seconds, have built-in virus protection and are dead simple to deploy and manage.

Lots of companies have already moved to the cloud successfully, from local coffee shops to major corporations with 200,000 employees. For small and mid-size companies, the transition can be made in a matter of days or weeks. For larger companies, who often have custom legacy systems built over many years, the migration may take a few months. In these cases, consider working with experts that specialize in helping companies move to the cloud using all the tools I’ve mentioned.

The world is moving to the cloud. Now’s the time for you to move, too.