12 Ways Enterprise CIOs Use CloudReady

The world of Operating Systems is changing. 

Microsoft’s Windows has practically dominated the space since 1990, when Windows 3.0 came out. But now Google’s Chrome OS is upending the OS Status Quo. In just a few years, Chrome OS has gone from non-existent to totally dominant in U.S. K-12 school districts, making up 70% of new computer shipments in 2018. Now, it is quickly making inroads with large enterprises, government agencies, and other organizations trying to attract and adapt to the next generation of graduates, save money, enhance security, simplify management and increase reliability, without all of the traditional headaches. Chrome OS has already won early enterprise adopters shifting to the cloud (est. 5% U.S. market share in 2019), and now the early majority are beginning to pile in as the paradigm shifts from Windows and the OS Status Quo, to Chrome OS and doing everything in the cloud.

In 2021, Chrome OS became the 2nd most popular OS in the world, after a break-out year related to remote work, remote learning and a major focus for most organizations on accelerating the shift to cloud computing.

At Neverware, CIOs of companies ranging from 10 to 570,000+ employees come to us asking for help transitioning to the cloud - specifically OS help - and they usually have a specific problem they’re trying to solve. But what they come to realize is the paradigm shift with Chrome OS can address a LOT of other issues with their Windows/Mac computing - the cost of refreshing computers, the risk of ransomware attacks, the slow pace of wholesale migration to Chrome OS, the amount of time and effort IT spends supporting the OS Status Quo, and perhaps most importantly, the time users waste waiting through slow boot ups, battling through errors and eye-rolling through lengthy, unexpected updates. Oftentimes, they don’t realize it’s an issue, until they learn there’s something better.

A bit about our flagship solution: 

CloudReady is an operating system that transforms Windows and Mac computers up to 13 years old (no joke!) into Chromebooks. Some of the oldest ones look like this.

Neverware actually guarantees support for this HP Mini 100e model through mid-2023, believe it or not!

And some of the newest ones look like this.

They then behave just like Chromebooks (or desktop Chromeboxes) for end-users, and for IT admins. End-users of the computers get faster boot times and better performance (imagine: no more disruptive Windows updates, no freezes/crashes, etc.), and IT eliminates a lot of inefficiencies tied to the OS Status Quo: 

• Pushing out Group Policy, updates and security patches
• Paying for, deploying and managing antivirus and malware software 
• Dealing with endpoint security vendors
• Handling TONS of helpdesk tickets
• Paying for new computers every 3-4 years
• Reimaging computers
• Oftentimes, paying to outsource some or all of these
• Oftentimes, paying to cope with RANSOMWARE attacks

These are just a handful of items on the long list of IT responsibilities though, and solving them can easily fall behind other priorities, especially when most IT admins and end-users don’t know these are solvable problems, having never worked with anything other than Windows or Mac OS! They don’t know what they don’t know. And those that “get it” might not know how to frame how big an impact Chrome OS/CloudReady can have for their CEO and the organization as a whole. 

What would it mean to leave Windows - partially or completely? After all, it is the OS that everyone has used for the last 25 years!

It takes an open mind and bold leadership from the CIO (and even the CEO, as in the case of Veolia, a company with 170,000+ employees) to highlight these inefficiencies and tackle them head-on - for the benefit of end-users, the IT team and the organization’s overall health. 

Here are 12 ways that you can use CloudReady to your advantage as CIO:

1. Save or stretch your budget. As CIO, you are under pressure to perform and take on greater and greater responsibility. From digital transformation initiatives to cybersecurity programs, data privacy compliance to robotic process automation, IT supports practically every new initiative in organizations today, and it’s dizzying. A couple of CIOs I work with are inheriting physical security, or work under the policy that if it goes on the network at all, it falls under IT’s responsibility! Why not just group in everything that plugs into an OUTLET while you’re at it...

While overall budgets may be increasing for select companies’ IT teams, most are getting squeezed. Even companies that are not actively trying to shrink overall IT costs are expecting investment into new initiatives that drive new business outcomes and therein curtailing legacy infrastructure budgets. CIOs are getting asked to do more with less, and faster.

2. Eliminate end-user obstacles with faster boot times, better browsing speed, and improved performance. End-users report a 94% decrease in PC downtime normally lost to helpdesk calls, reboots and OS maintenance. As CIO, you are responsible for ensuring the technological productivity of your organization. If employees, students, teachers or other end-users can work with greater speed and focus, everyone wins. Technology should get out of their way, never impede them.

3. Keep Windows 7 computers running, secure and supported after end-of-life (EOL) occurs on Jan 14th, 2020. As CIO, you can’t leave Windows 7 computers on Windows 7 - they’re a major security threat on your network and for your organization. Upgrading to Windows 10 might be an option, but many Windows 7 computers will not run Windows 10 well, and they might not even fit it on their old, small drives! CloudReady offers you a secure, manageable and reliable alternative to keep your Windows 7 computers in production for years longer. See how Questar Assessments, with 500 peopl, does it.

4. Eliminate malware, ransomware and data privacy vulnerabilities. Chromebooks are secure by default and cannot launch malware or ransomware. In fact, they’re among the most secure computers out there. As CIO, your boss and Board are increasingly counting on you to protect the organization. You can take a giant leap forward by securing your endpoints with CloudReady.

Kiva, an international non-profit from San Francisco with 110 employees and 450 volunteers and $1.34B in loans funded across 82 countries, had security concerns with interns using personal computers. “When you have a workforce using their own devices, which may not be secure, or could be left at a Starbucks, you have no control whatsoever. There was no way for us to make sure those machines even had the latest security patches. We have corporate data about users, borrowers, and lenders that we want to control and keep secure. With the interns, it was a potential liability issue—there were cases where we just couldn’t allow access to data on these uncontrolled machines.” It also saved their small IT team a ton of time, and gave them the ability to support users they couldn’t beforehand. Get the whole story here.

5. Save your team time. IT teams that shift to Chromebooks experience a 78% average drop in helpdesk tickets & never have to update, secure, patch or deploy Group Policy again. As CIO, you then get to decide whether to reduce or repurpose staff.

Mercado Libre, the most popular e-commerce company in Latin America, with 174 million users, estimates that “between saving 250 hours of device bootup time per shift, re-assigning operational support staff, and reducing support tickets—and based on the amount of tickets solved per hour—we estimate contact-center productivity has improved by 25 percent.” And they saved time on deployment too - “Neverware was an incredible partner. We couldn’t believe how fast we were able to migrate over to Chromium OS.” Read their article here.

6. Centralize device management and standardize end-user computing on Chrome. As CIO, you want a central view into computers across your organization and control over how they’re used. Google’s Admin Console and Chrome Device Management greatly simplify this for IT, and make reporting a breeze.

And users get a simple interface they already know and love with the Chrome browser. There’s a minimal learning curve, and you can get everyone on the same platform quickly. Users that need desktop apps when there’s no acceptable browser-based alternative can use Citrix, VMware, Nutanix or other VDI/virtualization, all of which have released Chrome extensions for this purpose, knowing it’s the future.

Elite Staffing, a staffing agency with 80 locations in all 50 states, onboarded 40,000 employees in one year using CloudReady on their outdated Windows 7 kiosks. “Before, you would walk into the office sometimes and those computers would be doing Windows updates, taking forever and there were people in line trying to apply. Now we don’t have to worry about them. The way we have it set up now, people just sit down, open up the public session, and the Chrome browser just pops up automatically and goes straight to the application process. And for our IT department, it saves us a lot of time imaging them, servicing them, managing them. It’s easier now. We’ll keep using CloudReady until the machine dies, and we have plenty of those models sitting here in storage. For new sites that open up, we’re also going to use CloudReady.”

7. Increase the useful life of computers (up to 13 years). Windows and Mac computers are made to last 3-4 years, and then slow down dramatically. Updates come, Apple and Microsoft slide in new bloatware (default apps you might not need, background services, etc.), and the cycle perpetuates. It’s a version of planned obsolescence, so that OEMs (Apple, Dell, Lenovo, HP, etc.), channel partners, and other service providers stay happy and selling new computers, accessories and services. While some CIOs sweat these assets up to 8 or even 10 years in rare cases, performance for end-users suffers greatly with native OSs, the computers fall out of compliance with the latest apps, and the burden of keeping outdated systems running as well as possible becomes untenable for IT.

CloudReady is made to run on computers up to 13 years old. The OS is designed around efficiency, and modern Chromebook specifications (RAM, Storage & processor capability) are remarkably similar to 10-year-old Windows & Mac computers. So the computers run great up until they hit the 13-year mark, allowing CIOs (and CFOs) to put off or eliminate costly replacements every 3-4 years. 

Tri Counties Bank (NASDAQ: TCBK) used CloudReady to extend the life of Citrix endpoints that originally ran a mix of Windows 7 and Windows 10. With 1,200+ employees, 79 branches, $6.3B under management, and having completed a recent acquisition, they needed an easy way to scale flexible, mobile, secure computing that could prevent local data storage at bank branches, and connect to their Citrix netscalers.

Google's Admin Console made it easy for them to lock down their CloudReady computers in Kiosk Mode and configure Citrix Beacons for users on their local network, and externally, for remote employees. Paul Musler, IT Support Supervisor for Tri Counties Bank, enthused - “it’s kind of still mind boggling to me how it works, but it definitely works. If the end user is at work, they hit our internal [Citrix netscaler]; if they’re at home or at Starbucks or a hotel, they hit our external and they remote in, like via a VPN, into Citrix. It just works flawlessly. Once we put that in place into our policy in the Admin console, it just flew. It was a great find and was the key point to us going forward.”

With those policies in place, remote employees using the CloudReady laptops have access to all of the apps they need, either via full Windows Desktop using Citrix Virtual Desktop or as individual apps served via Citrix Workspace app. And all application-related settings, configurations, and user data are stored server-side, leveraging Citrix's Profile Management tooling. Nothing is stored locally on the laptops, and users are restricted to using the bank's Citrix environment, achieving the level of security and data protection Musler and his team need.

8. Easily set up Secure Kiosks. Whether it’s for VDI (Citrix, VMware, Nutanix, etc.), Digital Signage, Sign-In Stations, or to lock down computers for high-stakes activities like entering personal financial or healthcare information, CloudReady and Chromebooks are the easiest way to turn any computer into a Secure Kiosk that is HIPAA and PCI compliant.

From Tabcorp using CloudReady to regain control of its lottery and display computers (largest gambling and entertainment company in Australia with 5,000+ employees and $3B+ in revenue) to Henry County Schools using CloudReady for Georgia Milestones Testing (42,000+ students), CIOs from some of the largest organizations in the world utilize CloudReady and Chromebooks at scale for Kiosks. 

9. Show financial prudence and accountability to your Board, CEO, CFO, Investors, Employees and Community, or in the public sector, your Board, CFO, Taxpayers and Constituents. 

What about these folks? When was the last time you gifted them cost-savings, productivity boosts and happier employees that they didn’t expect, or didn’t know were possible?

10. Establish a long-term, sustainable computer refresh cycle. Has your organization budgeted for a refresh in 4 years already, or will they be caught taking cookies from the CapEx cookie jar? As CIO, it makes life easier for everyone when you’ve formulated a long-term plan to keep your computers updated and determined the most appropriate budget well ahead of time. If you can’t quite get where you want today, CloudReady is a great option to bridge the gap. In some cases, CIOs have told us we were even their lifeline, enabling them to get the computers they needed just-in-time and just-within-budget, when they didn’t expect it to be possible.

11. Avoid Chromebook auto-update expiration (AUE). CloudReady computers never stop getting updates, and models are supported until 13 years after their release date. With regular Chromebooks, you have to budget for new ones every 5-6 years, at a maximum, because they stop getting updates and supporting what you need from there.

With CloudReady, you can sweat your assets up to 3x longer, and avoid the effort and cost of replacing hardware so often.

12. Gain the flexibility to turn any PC or Mac form-factor into a Chromebook. With Chromebooks, you’re limited to the selection of Chromebook and Chromebox models available on the market. There are some great options, including low, middle and high-end (see the upcoming Pixelbook or Dell’s recently-released Enterprise Chromebooks), but with CloudReady, you can use pretty much any form-factor that comes with Windows or Mac OS from the last 13 years! For Windows computers in particular, there is a much more developed hardware ecosystem, particularly for niche applications in healthcare, manufacturing, retail, thin-client computing, and more.

Is there a Chromebook equivalent to Panasonic Toughbooks for police & military officers? 

Or for medical-grade, touch-enabled kiosks, like Pruitt Health needs? 

How about POS systems to use with Shopify?

What do you think? Will your company swim with the rising tide, or sink with the OS Status Quo?

Will your competition do the same, or have they already begun swimming? Or raced ahead?