Sanmina reflects on four years of going Google

Posted by Elliot Tally, Senior Director, Sanmina

Editor's note: Our guest blogger this week is our long-time friend and customer, Elliot Tally, Senior Director of Enterprise Applications, Collaboration & Innovation at Sanmina, a global electronics manufacturer headquartered in San Jose, California with over 47,000 employees. See what other organizations that have gone Google have to say.

Since I joined the company over 12 years ago, Sanmina business communications have evolved from an organization into an organism. In the past five years using Google’s tools, I have seen the business transform further from a traditional manufacturing company with change-resistant IT infrastructure, basic collaboration, and a reliance on resource-draining travel for “teamwork,” into a modern company that has embraced the cloud, breathing clean air through more inclusive collaboration, and fostering a flexible and dynamic environment for employees to work effectively where and when they need to.

In 2008, when we first looked at moving to the cloud, we wanted to reduce infrastructure and cut IT costs. We were dealing with a lot of data: 112 Exchange servers across 70 locations. We create 2 Terabytes of email per month, and our Guadalajara campus alone was spending $15,000 a quarter on backups. Plus, we were spending millions of dollars on Microsoft licenses. By choosing Google Apps, we now save about $1.5 million a year, reduced our on premise email infrastructure by more than 90% and have seen a reduction in servers, refocusing of staff, licensing costs and other operating expenditures. We only need two people, instead of six, to support Google Apps for our 21,000 employees who use email.

I knew moving to the cloud would impact our bottom line, what I didn’t realize is how it would influence the culture of our business and the way we get things done. Working across time zones used to involve countless emails, crowded teleconference rooms, and expensive travel. Employees quickly and organically embraced Google Docs to work together without worrying about time zones or physical location. Now we have more than 700,000 Google Docs, 3,200 Google Sites and 4,000 Google Groups spanning all functions of the business. For example, our product engineering teams use Google Sites to track documentation, planning, and product testing for many of their projects, including leveraging the platform for customer collaboration. Using Google+ Hangouts on a daily basis has cut travel costs and we find that employees feel more connected and productive, without the jetlag.

Google Drive has also helped us grow by facilitating the discovery and information sharing process during mergers. We used to manage acquisitions using file attachments for everything from the discovery questionnaires to legal contracts. There were too many attachments to create a record for everything. The draft content was usually shared via email or FTP and version control was a challenge. So when we purchased BreconRidge in 2010 we decided to use a Google Site and Google Docs for the majority of the documentation. The advantages were threefold: active collaboration, inherent version control with synchronization, and ease of sharing. We shared docs internally and with BreconRidge throughout the process to reduce some of the travel requirements, be more transparent, and to facilitate the discovery process and negotiations. The increased collaboration & document control effectiveness resulted in this model becoming the de facto choice for managing subsequent M&A transactions.

Google Apps isn’t the only Google offering helping to streamline our business. In our factories, we’re in the process of replacing thousands of data collection points - spanning each part of the manufacturing line -- with commodity Android tablets. These tablets present a touch-enabled and rich interface for employees, which is readily available on their own mobile devices. Our plant managers appreciate the simplicity of the single interface and the automation; we have dramatically reduced the need for expensive PCs, paper or filing cabinets, and printed work instructions, creating instead a convenient platform for our engineers to target with innovative new apps using technology they already know. The tablets can also send notifications to supervisors and issue quality alerts, allowing for speedier resolution of problems in our plants. We’ve leveraged Google App Engine to host a machine maintenance and calibration system we developed to track equipment and spare parts, and automate the relevant business processes, reducing parts inventory and ensuring easily auditable compliance. Our Printed Circuit Board (PCB) plants even created an interface using the Google Drive API to programmatically create Google Spreadsheets from their PCB engineering design system for sharing with customers as part of the quoting process. We’ve been using the Google Search Appliance since 2009 and added 2 new Google Search Appliances 7.0 this year to index our intranet, our Google Apps content, and a few other internal content stores.

We exceeded our original goals of cutting costs and reducing IT infrastructure by more than we could have conceived of at the time, but the real benefits of “going Google” have emerged over the past four years. It’s much easier to quantify server reduction than the more intangible benefits of using Google Apps: employees working together seamlessly, testing creative solutions without investing in expensive hardware, and in the job satisfaction that I can provide my team by letting them focus on strategic projects. But, it’s exactly these types of activities that have evolved our business culture from a collection of independent teams into an agile multicellular company leading the industry with collaborative communication solutions.

Whirlpool moves to Google Apps to build its “winning workplace”

Editor's note: We spoke with Google Apps customer Mike Heim, CIO of Whirlpool Corporation, the world’s leading manufacturer and marketer of major home appliances. See what other organizations that have gone Google have to say.

Can you tell us about Whirlpool, your business and your decision to move to Google Apps?
Whirlpool is in a very competitive market. We’re the world's leading manufacturer and marketer of major home appliances with 68,000 employees and 66 manufacturing and technology research centers around the world. We market Whirlpool, Maytag, KitchenAid, Jenn-Air, Amana, Brastemp, Consul, Bauknecht and other major brand names to consumers in nearly every country around the world. Our products are very different globally, but the design principles and the ability to scale depend on our ability to interact and move at pace.

One of the challenges we face is the need to innovate faster. We believe Google Apps is critical to helping us do that — to collapse geography and take the best of the global ideas and apply them locally. Google Apps is a simple solution in many ways, but the features are actually very sophisticated, enabling us to surround our business processes with the right tools to connect people. It allows us to unleash the talent in the company, without a lot of IT support, which is very helpful. The move to Google Apps isn’t just a change in IT strategy, it’s a shift in our company culture. We need to think, share, and move faster to bring our products to the marketplace.

Can you tell us about your vision for cultural transformation and how the move to Google Apps plays into that?
We are becoming much more of a customer company in terms of how we think and act. We want to move to where the consumer is headed, not where they are today. This isn't always easy because we operate across so many locations internationally. I believe that our future success depends on our ability to build strong relationships and share and work together across the team. We spend lots of time building trust and sharing, so we can stay true to our mission. We believe Google Apps is helping us break down our geographical barriers and work together quickly, from anywhere—keeping us on track to help build what we call, "the winning workplace."

What will make Whirlpool thrive in the years to come?
I think that comes down to product leadership. Great products and great brands create desire in the marketplace. The challenge is being able to sustain the excellence at an increasingly rapid pace. We have global competition and our ability to innovate is critical. We need to focus on bringing products to market sooner and at the level of quality our customers expect. It’s also key for us to accelerate the process of collecting customer insights, so we can provide the best customer service at scale. Creating new ideas is critical to the success of our business in the coming years.

SeaPort Airlines takes off with Google Apps

Editor's note: Our guest blogger today is Dan Shearer, Director of Safety of SeaPort Airlines Inc., a regional commuter airline operating flights to 21 destinations across 9 states. See what other organizations that have gone Google have to say.

Planes are a way of life in the rugged inlets of Southeast Alaska. While cars and roads rule the terrain in the lower 48 states, flying is often the easiest way to get around the mountains, moose and water that dominate the North. SeaPort Airlines Inc. was born in these rugged outdoors -- we’ve been flying short routes in and around Juneau, Alaska since 1982, back when the company went by Wings of Alaska -- and have since added commuter routes in Oregon, Southern California and six states in the Midwest and South. Altogether, our staff of approximately 225 is spread out across the country and operates a fleet of 20 planes.

You can’t underestimate the importance of communication in the aviation world. Everyone has to be on the same page at all times, so we can accurately communicate weather reports, passenger lists, flight times and other critical information. For years, we did this on paper, by emailing attached spreadsheets or using an outside file-sharing service. While we were meticulous in our method, there was always the risk of grabbing an out-of-date document with incorrect details. We implemented two or three different hosted email systems over a four year period, but none of them lived up to our expectations; we faced ongoing problems with outages, lost emails and not enough storage.

We knew we needed a more stable and collaborative platform. With help from Google Apps Reseller ViWo, we switched to Google Apps in January. ViWo was instrumental in getting us up and running. They showed us the best way to roll out and set up Apps to our 225 employees, pointed out tools for transferring data and helped with ad hoc technical support.

With Google Apps, we got a reliable email system with built-in collaboration tools that all our employees can access with a single login. Best of all, it was easy to use. It took me just a few hours one night to create a Google Sheet that’s become the main way we track our departure and arrival status and performance to make sure our flights are running on time and scheduled efficiently. Dozens of agents can update the master Sheet at the same time without us worrying about losing any data or getting a detail wrong. Sheets even translates time zones and lets us easily process monthly reports. We also use Google Docs for internal information like reservation instructions and contracts. We can update these details instantly for the whole company, without printing off hundreds of new pieces of paper.

In the past, IT was best described as reactive, and our technology problems took valuable time and energy away from our primary focus: delivering customers and their baggage safely and on-time to their destinations. Google Apps is changing that. Now, it’s simply a matter of people getting more comfortable with using the system. Just like flying in Alaska, IT managers know they’re going to run into pockets of turbulence. Google Apps ensures that at least our email and collaboration experience is a smooth ride.

Mexico’s Secretaría de la Función Pública brings government data to citizens using Google Earth and Google Maps

Posted by Alberto Herrasti, Consulting Director of Digital Government Projects at SFP

Editor's note: Our guest blogger this week is Alberto Herrasti, Consulting Director of Digital Government Projects at the Secretaría de la Función Pública (Secretary of Public Administration, SFP) from the government in Mexico. See what other organizations that have gone Google have to say and discover our interactive demos.

As the Consulting Director of Digital Government Projects of SFP, I work to bring tools that make information easily accessible to Mexican citizens. We recently deployed Google Earth and Google Maps to solve a long-standing problem.

In the past, both our local population and our government workers had trouble finding official documents and records about government agencies and services because this information was distributed across various websites in a fragmented way.

Finding something as simple as the opening hours of a state-owned gas station, or the location and address of a nearby hospital would require a search across many official sites. The only alternative would be to physically visit the offices likely to have the information and spend more time waiting in long queues.

In 2010, the President’s office directed us to address this problem, and we set out to create a consolidated website (now known as mapas.gob.mx) that would serve as a central repository of geo-indexed data, allowing citizens to easily retrieve up-to-date information overlaid on the map data of Mexico.

We reached out to a number of mapping technology providers to evaluate their offerings but the Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía (INEGI) -- Mexico's offical mapping and statistics institution -- identified Google Earth and Google Maps as our best option. We completed and launched the new site by 2012. The site integrates data from more than 70 public organizations and aims to place useful and helpful information in the hands of our local population.

Now, with the new Google Maps-integrated site, any user can find information by viewing it on a familiar, easy-to-navigate “globe”. We’ve also added a lot of useful information. The site now consolidates more than 900 maps with government-related information and covers every region of Mexico. As of 2013, more than 300 people use the site daily, and both awareness and use continues to grow rapidly. Instead of waiting in long lines or spending hours searching online, citizens can simply point their browsers to the new site and use maps to quickly find nearby resources and information.

Since we launched the tool in 2012, we’ve had more than 16,150 downloads of the geolocalized data and this tool allows government agencies to respond more effectively and efficiently. Thanks to t Google Earth and Google Maps technology which made the tool easy to build and easy to use, we’re able to better serve our citizens and respond to their needs with the right information at the right time.

CAN Telematics and Google Maps enhance compliance and keep mobile workers safe

Posted by Duncan Ford, CTO at CAN Telematics

Editor's note: Our guest blogger today is Duncan Ford, CTO at CAN Telematics in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. CAN Telematics provides Mobile Resource Management solutions to a range of industries—notably, the oil and gas industry concentrated in western Canada. See what other organizations that have gone Google have to say and learn more about how Google Maps for Business can help businesses in the transportation industry.

Oil and gas companies face an unusual set of challenges in their everyday operations as a result of having a lot of equipment, assets and people spread throughout a large territory. These companies need to track the location and status of all their drill rigs, pipelines, trucks, crews and other assets.

Our company, CAN Telematics, helps oil and gas companies address these challenges with solutions that track their assets, operating status, maintenance history, financial information and more. For example, one device monitors a well pump or a generator to sense the presence of certain gases or poll for other engine data. Another, mounted in a truck, logs location, speed, acceleration and braking habits. A third provides an “SOS” button for remote workers. Some devices incorporate accelerometers to detect falls or lack of movement.

The data is collected by GPS-equipped monitoring and sensing devices, then stored in the cloud. Our solution is based on Google Maps and retrieves data from Google Maps Engine, offering a familiar interface for our users as well as huge scalability. We also save our customers time and money by making information more accessible, and immediately meaningful. This video about Trakopolis shows how the sensing devices and maps work together to help companies track their assets and related data.

The benefits to companies are significant, starting with cost savings. They can add their privately built roads to the public roads in Google Maps, so it’s easier for them to determine which truck is closest to a facility that needs assistance. The maps also enable more efficient routing, saving time and fuel. These companies can also earn rebates on fuel taxes by easily determining the portion of their trucks’ travel that occurs on private roads -- with a fraction of the tedious, error-prone, manual record-keeping effort formerly required.

Driver’s history plotted on Can Telematics’  Trakopolis map interface. Dispatchers can enable Geofencing capabilities to  receive alerts when certain assets enter or leave an area.

Even more savings can come from tracking average speeds and driving habits: once monitoring begins, truck drivers tend to slow down and drive more carefully, so there’s a big safety benefit along with fuel and vehicle maintenance savings.

Our overall goal is an easier, more efficient and cost-effective way for far-flung companies to keep track of their extremely valuable assets. As we deploy our solutions to other continents and other industries, Google Maps is the natural choice for delivering critical information to the people who need it.

Hangout On Air: Speedway Motors Builds a Better Storefront with Google Search Appliance

Posted by Meghdutt Brahmachari, Product Marketing Manager, Google Enterprise

No wonder the customers of Speedway Motors love the retailer so much. The world’s largest manufacturer of specialty hot-rodding and racing products is using Google Search Appliance (GSA) to help car-racing fanatics quickly find and buy the hard-to-find parts they need from among thousands of items. Fast, relevant search creates loyal customers, including a handful who have been getting their parts from Speedway Motors for more than 30 years.

In our upcoming Hangout On Air with Speedway Motors - taking place Thursday, September 19th at 10 a.m. PT - you can hear Chris Chance, Speedway’s Director of IT, chat with Joe Davidoff, North American Sales Manager for Google Commerce Search. Also, Dwayne Remekie, Practice Director for enterprise solutions consultant GroupBy, will show a demo of GroupBy's product that uses Google’s relevance model to provide a best-in-class merchandising tool that integrates with GSA.

Chris and Joe will talk about the role that Google Search Appliance plays in the Speedway customer service story, and Chris will also share his insights on these questions:

• How has better search helped Speedway increase conversions by 45%, and boost search revenue by 116%?
• Why is search relevance so important to customers?
• What search features help customers quickly find the products they need?

If you missed our previous Hangout On Air with Ocado, the world’s largest online grocer, you can catch up on the details.

RSVP for the Speedway Motors Hangout On Air, and take part in the Q&A by posting your questions on Google+ or Twitter using the the hashtag #GoneGoogle.

New Hangout On Air Series: How Retailers Innovate with Google

Posted by Meghdutt Brahmachari, Product Marketing Manager, Google Enterprise

Attending our new Hangout On Air series with the world’s most innovative retailers is like having a super-smart business consultant sitting at your desk. Over the next several weeks, we’ll be talking to companies like Ocado, the world’s largest online-only grocer, and Speedway Motors, an online retailer of street racing products, to find out how they’re ramping up business productivity and winning the love of their customers.

Our first Hangout features Ocado on Thursday, September 12, at 8 a.m. PT, with Paul Clarke, Ocado’s Director of Technology, and Rhonda Stites, Head of Industry for Google Enterprise. Ocado offers same-day delivery of groceries to UK households and ships more than 150,000 orders per week. They use Google Apps for Business, Google Cloud Platform, and Google Maps for Business to stay agile and collaborate on projects, easily create and test new apps, and inform customers about shipping and delivery.

Paul will cover these questions:

• How is Ocado using technology to drive innovation and business productivity?
• How do you manage and use all the data you’re collecting to make better business decisions and direct strategy?
• What are you doing to create amazing customer service?

RSVP for the Hangout On Air – and post your questions on Google+ or Twitter using the hashtag #OcadoGoneGoogle since there will be opportunity for Q&A.

Synergyse Training for Google Apps

Posted by Majid Manzarpour, Founder & CTO, Synergyse

Editor's note: Our guest blogger today is Majid Manzarpour, Founder and CTO of Synergyse, a company that provides training solutions for Google Apps. See what other customers that have Gone Google have to say. And learn more about Synergyse on our Cloud Platform Blog.

Synergyse is on a mission to teach the world how to use Google Apps. We built Synergyse Training for Google Apps, a fully interactive, measurable and scalable training solution that has been deployed throughout organizations and educational institutions globally.

There are new features introduced to Google Apps on a regular basis, and we take extra care to keep our customers educated whenever any product updates happen. Our solution provides in-application training that delivers lessons with audio and visual guides in your existing Google Apps account, allowing you to remain in your applications, learning how to use them simultaneously.

We aimed to build a solution that could deliver the same level of scalability, security and reliability that more than 5 million businesses have known to expect from Google Apps. In order to make sure our training software could run seamlessly, we chose Google Cloud Platform to support our backend.

We run on Google App Engine, and can automatically scale up to accommodate organizations of any size, anywhere in the world. Google Cloud Storage and Google Cloud SQL handle all of our data needs and provide cost-effective integration with App Engine. We can rely on the 99.95% uptime delivered by App Engine to ensure our customers have training available when they need it. When we deliver automatic training updates for new applications and features to our clients, they can trust us to provide the same level of security that they find with Google Apps. The Google Cloud Platform is powered by the same Google data centers that power Google Apps; it takes care of our backend infrastructure and enables us to focus on our product.

We chose to develop our solution as a Chrome Extension because we can deeply integrate with Google Apps through the browser, as well as provide IT administrators with rapid software deployment options. This allows us to layer our interactive training on top of real Google Apps and provide automatic software updates. With the Chrome Management console, the extension can be deployed to an entire fleet of Chrome browsers and Chromebooks with a few simple clicks.

When we went live with our first enterprise client, we were both impressed with how effortlessly our software deployed to the entire organization and scaled up to support them. By choosing Google Cloud Platform and Chrome, we can focus on providing scalability, security and reliability to our clients who have chosen to run their organizations on Google Apps.

ILCEA Education makes global learning easier with Google Apps

Posted by Jean Charles Bully, Chairman of ILCEA Education

Editor's note: Our guest blogger today is Jean Charles Bully, chairman of ILCEA Education, a leading provider of educational programs and services around the world. See what other organizations that have gone Google have to say.

With today's technology, the world can seem pretty small. However, language barriers can still form a big obstacle for global communication. At ILCEA Education, our goal is to bring the world together by teaching people new languages. Founded in 2001, we serve 1.5 million students in 50 countries around the world. We help our students learn about new cultures and languages with diverse in-country work programs, student exchanges, internship opportunities, online training, and even coordinate vacations to help people learn new languages. We get to work with all types of students, but we find that it’s not so easy to coordinate our work globally.

To help our students learn, we partner with more than 500 international schools around the world to teach and coordinate our programs. This requires a standard platform for communication, so we’re switching to Google Apps with help from Cloudreach, a Google Apps reseller. Before Apps, our education affiliates sent out emails from various addresses, making tons of phone calls and in some cases even mailing printed letters or printed forms to communicate with us. By bringing everyone in our network onto Google Apps under a single ILCEA Education domain, we’re creating a unified internal communication strategy, ensuring that all of our partners can participate in every conversation. It gives our partners access to Google+ Hangouts, Gmail, and shared Google Docs to foster easy communication no matter where they are or what device they’re on.

Google Apps will upgrade our student’s educational experience. Learning a new language and living in a new place can be overwhelming, so we want to make sure all of our students have a smooth start. All of our students will have an ILCEA Education branded Google Apps account, providing easy access to the resources, communication and social tools they need. Students will be able to interact with course materials from anywhere with an internet connection in an intuitive way using Google Drive. Google Hangouts will also provide an important opportunity for students to practice their language skills from anywhere with an internet connection, transforming the learning experience with active participation.

Because teaching is at the heart of what we do, our learning resources will get a major digital makeover with Google Apps. Sharing lesson plans, curriculums, and other resources on Drive allows our educators have access to the materials they need, without having to worry about cumbersome downloads or printed manuals. Drive allows our teachers and partners to simultaneously edit materials with ease, so our lessons will always be current, including the latest information as well as any updates based on student feedback.

Learning requires consistency and practice. By providing easy-to-use collaboration tools and access to educational resources, ILCEA Education is helping our affiliates provide a better education to millions of students worldwide. With Google Apps, we can work toward breaking down obstacles in communicating and obstacles for learning.

St. Joseph students create their own education with Chromebooks

Posted by Lisa DeLapo, Director of Technology at St. Joseph School

Editor's note: Our guest blogger today is Lisa DeLapo, Director of Technology at St. Joseph School, part of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Oakland. See what other organizations that have gone Google have to say.

Learning shouldn’t be limited to pen and paper, nor the computer lab. Rather than taking tests or filling out worksheets, the 270 students at St. Joseph’s spend most of their time creating projects using digital tools that show off their knowledge. Whether they’re telling stories of famous heroes using Google Sites, making group study guides with Google Forms, or listening to voice comments on their science fair projects in Google Docs, our students learn more from creating than they ever could from only consuming information.

My job as Director of Technology at St. Joseph’s is to make sure our educational tools are available everywhere. We have found Chromebooks to be the perfect tools – they’re portable and easy to use, have a keyboard and a large screen, and are secure. We’re piloting Chromebooks with several teachers now, and soon our entire faculty and staff will use them exclusively. We will also supply carts for the Chromebooks so students in different classrooms can share computers as freely as they swap lunches.

Because our teachers already use the Chrome browser and work largely in Google Apps, moving to Chromebooks has been easy. In addition to Google Apps, we also use Pearson PowerSchool to track grades, test scores and attendance, along with giving us a collaboration platform for parents. Accessing PowerSchool is extremely important but because it uses an older Java technology that is not supported in Chrome, I had to find a way to access it securely and easily from the Chromebook. I found out about the Chrome RDP app by Fusion Labs; it was exactly what we needed.

Chrome RDP lets users connect to any Windows desktop or server directly from within the Chrome browser. Since it uses Microsoft’s native Remote Desktop Protocol, no additional configuration or setup is needed after you install the app. It gives us secure access to PowerSchool and other legacy applications, and it’s straightforward for teachers to use. They download the Chrome RDP app from the Chrome Web Store, open up the app, and enter their login information for secure access to PowerSchool through the school’s firewall.

The introduction of Chromebooks to St. Joseph's has broadened what our teachers and students are able to achieve in the classroom. Chromebooks have helped everyone at St. Joseph’s enjoy the benefits of technology without expensive, complex maintenance. And now our students will have a new outlet for learning that helps familiarize them with technology and what we see as the future of learning.

Ocado Delivers Your Groceries with Automation... and the help of Google technology

Posted by Paul Clarke, Director of Technology of Ocado

Editor's note: Our guest blogger this week is Paul Clarke, Director of Technology at Ocado, the world’s largest online-only grocery retailer based in the UK. See what other organizations that have gone Google have to say.

Ocado isn’t your typical corner grocery store. For one thing, there’s no corner as we’re the world's largest online-only grocery retailer reaching over 70% of British households, and now with a fast growing non-food business alongside. Our customers shop online using our award winning webshop or mobile apps and then their orders are picked and packed in one of our huge automated warehouses, the largest of their kind in the world; hours later, our vans deliver to their kitchens in one hour delivery slots. On a normal week we ship over 150,000 orders - that's over 1.1 million items each day. Google Enterprise solutions are playing a major, and expanding, role in helping us run such a time critical 24/7 operation across multiple sites.

Google Apps allows us to do things our way, wherever and whenever we want. Our staff use Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Drive to stay on top of their day to day work, and Google+ is helping our teams stay in touch, share information and build local communities. Ultimately, all of these tools help to make sure our customers get the groceries they order, on time and in the best possible condition.

But we didn’t stop there. We looked at other ways we could use Google’s technology to help us run our business and started using Google App Engine for building internal applications. For example, we used App Engine to create a new version of our "Where's My Order” application, which our customers will soon be using to find out where their orders are within our production cycle. Once their order is on the road, the integration with Google Maps allows them to see exactly where their delivery van is. So we’re taking what used to be a chore, grocery shopping, and making it a simple experience that you can do from the convenience of your own home, or wherever you may be.



Our most recent project was on Google Compute Engine. Within our warehouses there are certain tasks that are repetitive and arduous for humans to do, like picking heavy six packs of bottled water into customer orders. So our robotics team is developing solutions that use robots to automate these sorts of tasks and thus release staff for other more important work. But these robots need sophisticated 3D vision systems to enable them to see what they are doing. These are very computationally intensive applications and by providing the instantly flexible and scalable computing power to crunch all those numbers, Compute Engine provided the perfect solution. And, we are already using the cloud to store and process some of the huge volumes of data that our business spits out every minute. But with an eye to future growth and international expansion, we have plans to use Compute Engine and Cloud Storage to move other parts of our production systems to the cloud.

So walk into an Ocado warehouse in the future and you might run into a robot if you’re not careful. Like I said, we’re not your typical corner grocery store.

Travis County Sheriff’s Office helps to ensure officer safety with Google Maps Coordinate

Posted by Jim Sylvester, Travis County Sheriff’s Office

Editor's note: Today’s guest blogger is Jim Sylvester, Deputy Chief, Travis County Sheriff’s Office. When the Travis County Sheriff’s Office needed to track officer's positions and dispatch additional aid, they turned to Google Maps and Google Maps Coordinate. See what other organizations that have gone Google have to say.

I’ve spent 27 years working for the Travis County Sheriff’s Office in Austin, Texas, and I’m a third-generation law enforcement officer. Since I’ve been on the job, the county population has nearly tripled in size from about half a million to approximately 1.3 million citizens today. We consider ourselves a family at the Sheriff’s Office, and my paramount concern is keeping our law enforcement officers safe so they can protect the county’s citizens.

Until recently, we didn’t have technology that could give us the precise location of our deputies, which made it difficult to ensure their safety at all times. For instance, when deputies left their patrol cars to pursue a suspect on foot, we were not able to track their movements in real-time to dispatch additional assistance. For that reason, we decided to try Google Maps Coordinate.



It didn't take long for the team to pick it up: our deputies needed less than 10 minutes of instruction before they were ready to start using the product themselves. We put it to the test during the Formula One U.S. Grand Prix weekend in Austin in November 2012, which drew more than 120,000 attendees. With Google Maps Coordinate running across all our devices, our dispatchers were able to interface and organize the deputies throughout the event in real-time. Our personnel knew the exact locations of all available law enforcement resources in the area at any given moment.

What we saw at the Formula One event has prepared us for the future, and we’re making this a regular part of our toolset to fully maximize officer safety while serving our citizens. We plan to use this product at the Republic of Texas biker rally in Travis County this June, which will draw a huge crowd. We also plan to use it for more special events and also daily to keep deputies safe while they are on bike or foot patrols.

Thanks to Google Maps Coordinate, we feel much more in sync and aware of the situation at hand, and—above all—we have better ways to safeguard our law enforcement officers.

Schumacher Homes uses Chromeboxes to help customers build dream homes

Posted by Christopher Anderson, Director of IT for Schumacher Homes

Editor's note: Our guest blogger is Christopher Anderson, Director of IT for Schumacher Homes, a custom home builder based in Ohio. See what other organizations that have gone Google have to say.

At Schumacher Homes, we design and build houses that fulfill our customers’ dreams. Building a custom home has the potential to feel overwhelming so we strive to make the process as easy as possible and deliver great value, with local teams in 20 stores spanning 14 states.

When customers walk into one of our stores, our systems and staff are ready to guide them through the home building process. Customers can access our web app on in-store kiosks, powered by Chromeboxes, where they browse home designs and options. We used to rely on PCs to run the kiosks but they were costly for what we needed, required in-person management at remote stores, and broke down often by overheating. With Chromeboxes, we get simple, easy-to-use computers that cost 60 - 65% less than our prior PCs, plus we’re saving on upkeep and administration, as we can manage them remotely via the web-based Chrome management console.

Since the kiosks run on our corporate network and are publicly accessible in our stores, we’re extra cautious about security. Chromebox’s verified boot, and OS and browser sandboxing protect us from viruses or spyware that could infect our internal systems. Also, because Chrome auto-updates, we get the latest security patches and save time previously spent manually updating our machines.

Building the home of your dreams should be easy, so we don’t want to add any complication for our customers or our team. With Chromeboxes, we can give our customers an easy, hands-on experience without worrying about security issues. And, on top of it all, we’re saving money. Now, that’s simplicity.