Transcript

Hailee Zapata: 

Welcome to our webinar on modernizing your legacy devices with ChromeOS Flex.

I'm Hailee Zapata. I'm the Alliance Marketing Manager here at Promevo, and I will be your host and moderator today.

So, over the next 45 minutes, we're going to talk about what is ChromeOS Flex and how its value comes to your organization; how ChromeOS Flex can help your organization by reducing downtime, e-waste, lots of benefits; how to install ChromeOS Flex on your legacy device. And then as always, we do a live question and answer at the end of the session.

So real quickly, I'd like to talk to you about Promevo. We are a Google Premier partner. We sell, service and build Google products. We are 100% Google focused, and we specialize in ChromeOS, Google Workspace, Google Cloud. And we have our own proprietary Workspace management tool, gPanel.

Now for the stars of our show, let's go ahead. We're going to meet our ChromeOS experts today. So, joining us from ChromeOS and the Google side is Pete Nevin. He's our Partner Success Engineer. And we also have Brent Cole, who's the Sales Director here at Promevo.

Before I turn it over to these guys, I wanted to let you all know that we are going to run things a little bit different than our normal webinar.

Rashi Dillard, as you see here, our ChromeOS Partner Manager, ended up being out on paternity leave. Congrats, Rashi. So we went ahead and we did a little short pre recorded video for his portion of the webinar. He really does an overarching talk about ChromeOS Flex, the values, the benefits things like that.

So, we'll start the prerecorded video, and then we'll come back to the live portion and do our panel discussion and conversations. And then our q and a.

Rashi Dillard:

Hey, Rashi Dillard wanted to talk about ChromeOS Flex. And how you guys can upgrade and modernize your devices and upgrade your PCs and Macs.

How it works. So it's fairly easy. It comes from a bootable USB drive that you can put on any type of old PC and Mac device. When you're ready to install it, it would completely wipe the existing operating system and replace it with ChromeOS within minutes.

You're able to deploy ChromeOS Flex to all kinds of different devices in your organization via this USB drive or also network deployment. By upgrading your devices to ChromeOS Flex, you can get a number of great benefits. Proactive security, easy deployment and management across all of your ChromeOS and ChromeOS Flex devices. A very light, fast, modern cloud first experience. And you get to make the most of your existing hardware without having to rip and replace when you've already invested so much in your devices.

I wanted to talk a little bit on the proactive security. You're able to safeguard all of your devices from growing threats, such as ransomware.

Just a quick note, ChromeOS has no reported ransomware attacks ever. Malware and employee errors.

Some of the key points here, Google Safe Browsing. Everything is also web based applications. Creating an innate secure environment, built in protection, as I alluded to, no need for virus protection, and no reported ransomware attacks ever.

As well as automatic updates in the background, security updates, and critical updates are all happening. To touch on the easy deployment and management, you can deploy Chromos Flex across your entire fleet. Using a USB or network deployment, you can set up cloud profiles. You sync settings across users, across organizations, files, and policies are all also put out instantly.

There are over 600 configurable cloud based policies from the Google admin console, and it's all managed from one pane. You can easily deprovision devices, remotely wipe, and also push out updates across an entire fleet of devices through this admin console. Making setting up new employees very easy.

This is a very fast modern work experience that we are seeing a lot of organizations moving towards. You can transform any older devices such as PCs and Macs that you're not currently using with a modern OS for ChromeOS.

Some of the key benefits Meeting your employees fast and efficient. These devices boot up very quickly, sometimes under six seconds on average, not slowing down time for your employees to get right to work, fast access to VDI and web apps.

So you're absolutely able to still use some legacy apps if your organization is still dependent on those things. Using VDI and our VDI partners. We work very well with Citrix, VMware, and Cameo, just to name a few, a clutter free and reliable experience, very much a light, fast OS while updates are happening in the background, reducing the downtime for all of your employees. We also have a grab and go type policy where you can log into any device and pick up where you left off with your user.

I want to talk about how we can make the most of what existing hardware you guys have. And extending the lifespan of those devices. The purpose of ChromeOS Flex is very much a value proposition of refreshing older devices with a new fast, modern OS of ChromeOS.

And making this older hardware much more sustainable for your business and reducing the need to purchase new devices. As I said in the last slide, you can manage all these devices in the Google Admin console once they're transferred over to ChromeOS. Make the most of the existing hardware by managing the devices in the Google Admin console.

As I was saying in the previous slide, you're able to deploy and manage all of the ChromeOS Flex devices. The admin console, very much an innate way to support these old, older PCs and Macs that have stacked up over the last 10 plus years. Chromes is the most sustainable device that you could possibly own.

Chromes Flex prevents existing devices from entering landfills by extending the devices life. So we talked about how CMO is Flex can extend the life of your PCs and Macs. It's a great way to create a sustainability story for your organization. Where all those older devices that cannot be moved over to the new version of the OS are being repurposed and they're being extended and creating a sustainable story, reducing your e waste, reducing your emissions and most importantly as well for organizations is the cost savings aspect of it.

Here's a few key points here. You may have not known, but in the first year of transitioning 10K devices in ChromeOS Flex. Instead of organization buying new devices, the sustainability impact of reducing CO emissions is equivalent to 825 passenger vehicles off the road and saving energy to power, average American households for 40 years.

So just a quick snapshot of the sustainability impact that ChromeOS Flex can have. Here's some common ways that Customers are implementing ChromeOS Flex, they're enabling this new age of remote and hybrid workers as companies are increasing their workforce and having more Flexibility around what kind of workers they're deploying.

ChromeOS Flex is a great way to manage those devices and deploy from the Chrome admin console, accessing virtualization. As I was talking through with VDI, being able to still use those legacy apps and being able to do it through remote desktop and VDI securing and optimizing contact centers, contact center is a great use case for ChromeOS, mainly around the efficiency aspect, the security aspect, and being able to quickly boot up and deploy devices as well.

It reduces a lot of time and increases efficiency for those contact center workers to get right to work. Powering digital signage. We do have a kiosk and digital signage solution as well being able to power displays and small form factor devices that go with displays for the kiosk and digital signage use case.

Customer employee facing kiosks. A lot of organizations are also increasing customer friendly ways to interact with, filling out forms or being able to have some self service within the organization. This is a way that, ChromeOS can be used as well with kiosk and digital signage.

Just wanted to highlight a couple of companies that are moving to the cloud with ChromeOS Flex. These are some of the companies that have adopted it and all kinds of different verticals. Hospitality, retail, healthcare, financial services, and even manufacturing.

From a hospitality aspect, being able to have wayfinding with digital signage and kiosks, self service patient checkouts. From a retail perspective, back office, front office, anywhere really that you can implement ChromeOS.

Healthcare, clinician devices. I know that companies are a little bit hesitant on moving and pushing out new devices due to budget concerns, or even security concerns with ransomware attacks going around. ChromeOS directly addresses that.

Financial services. Like I said, self service kiosk, being able to access pretty confidential information and having that reliability of security as well as managed guest session, which is a feature of ChromeOS as well.

Being able to go in, fill out the forms that you need and it being completely wiped for the next customer. Manufacturing, on the floor, inventory management, the workers being able to also display any kind of analytics and reports through digital signage and kiosk. All great ways to implement ChromeOS and ChromeOS Flex.

Here's the questions that you want to ask yourself when you're considering a ChromeOS Flex. You're trying to move more toward cloud based management, without making additional device purchases and investments. You want to reduce e waste and have that sustainability story, extending the lifecycle of your devices.

And you also want to consider deploying a cloud first OS that's moving more towards a modern device using kiosks, digital signage, or just a few use cases for a modern device.

Brent Cole:

Thanks, Rashi. Really great to hear when some clients should consider ChromeOS.

As I'm interacting with our prospects and clients on a daily basis, one thing that I hear consistently is our the Windows migration happening in October of next year.

What recommendations would you have for someone who knows there's a looming migration happening with Windows in Q4 of next year, but they're considering ChromeOS; what recommendations would you have for that individual?

Rashi Dillard:

Yeah, absolutely. I would definitely have organizations take a look at ChromeOS Flex. And the simple fact of the three value propositions that I mentioned.

The security aspect, right? So a lot of organizations, security is a very key point for them. Number two, sustainability, that aspect is very important. Those older PCs and Macs, they still may have some life and extending that life with the organization.

Through the use cases that they currently use are important. And then ease of manageability and deploying those devices through the Chrome admin console. And it's very easily and seamless for you to manage those devices. And you can see those values and then consider ChromeOS as an alternative.

If you're not looking to move to Windows 11.

Brent Cole:

That sounds pretty easy, Rashi.

Rashi Dillard:

Yeah, definitely. It's a great value prop and ChromeOS Flex is a great entry point to consider that OS move. We also do have ChromeOS devices that you can easily deploy.

And they go across a breadth of different form factors. We do have devices that are already have ChromeOS licensing on them.

We have Chromeboxes, which are small form factor devices, traditional Chromebooks that are built for enterprise use cases.

Also, you can install ChromeOS Flex directly on the devices you already own. And there is a number of lists of devices that are ChromeOS Flex ready. It's very easy to transition from ChromeOS Flex to ChromeOS devices.

It's the same base code, same user interface, And IT can manage those devices side by side in the Google admin console.

Brent Cole:

There's obviously a large fleet of devices here that are certified. And maybe I have a selfish question here, but I've got a few devices that might be a little bit older, or I'm thinking about some of the organizations we work with that just have some technology and devices sitting around.

And a question that I have, and I'm sure others do, is what's the cutoff? Is there a line where some of these devices would not be supported by ChromeOS? And what recommendations would you have for anyone that's thinking about maybe some older devices and if they're compatible?

Rashi Dillard:

Yeah, that's a good question. I would definitely wouldn't count out any kind of device that could run ChromeOS Flex. Like I said, we have 550 plus devices that are currently certified, but that number is growing every day. And you can see, it's across all kinds of different scopes of devices.

There are some digital signage and kiosk devices here that you could pop ChromeOS Flex on, try and make it seem to work. And then we also do have a team that is taking on recommendations for ChromeOS Flex certified devices as well. In my opinion, I would try it and test it out. It might work on, some of the older iMacs that you have and some of the older Windows devices that you have.

It's a definitely a great way to step in and extend the life cycle of these devices. So definitely just try it out.

Brent Cole:

I appreciate that, Rashi. And I think the number one thing I heard there is there's Flexibility. So from a client perspective, I would recommend you to reach out to Promevo.

We can troubleshoot behind the scenes, determine if We are able to support your device from a ChromeOS Flex perspective and allow us to do the work on the back end to determine if your device is supported and the best path forward, assuming it is.

Rashi Dillard:

As I was talking about earlier, there's over 550 plus devices that are certified for ChromeOS Flex.

This number is increasing and we are adding new devices every day. It's very easy to get started and try it out. It's a free service that you can get a software online at our site, Google ChromeOS Flex, put it on a USB drive and pop it into any older PC or Mac devices that you have. And get started right away.

Hailee Zapata:

All right. We want to thank Rashi for jumping in and doing that prerecorded video for us. Now that we got that overview and we got to learn the value points of ChromeOS Flex and all that good information.

I'm going to hand it over to Pete real quick, and we are going to talk about a few projects that go along with ChromeOS Flex.

We have ChromeOS Flex, and then a couple options you can pair with it, or we just want everyone to know about that goes really well with it.

Pete, can you just tell us about those projects real fast?

Pete Nevin:

Yeah, sure. Thanks, Hailee. The first thing I want to talk about, I think Rashi mentioned this in the video, is that, ChromeOS Flex is a great way to try out ChromeOS. You don't need to buy a piece of hardware. You can just, install an existing piece of hardware. And to go along with that idea of trialing ChromeOS we have this service offering called the Jump Start.

ChromeOS Jump Start is a is a service that is Google designed. And has been shared with a number of service and deployment partners. Remevo being one and Jump Start is a professional service offering designed for new customers. Customers are new to ChromeOS to successfully deploy the devices into their enterprise or into their educational institution.

Pete Nevin: It includes all of the tasks you need to set up the admin console, which is the cloud based MDM that we use to manage these devices. It's a services per person. Performed by certified professionals. So I'm going to talk about that in a second, but these are folks who have trained on ChromeOS and they know how to deploy and all these different all these different partners that we work with.

What is a Jump Start? Essentially a Jump Start is a series of meetings that, that the certified professional have with your staff. They'll admin console, verify your domain, enroll devices. Help to integrate your identity so that your users can sign into the devices with their existing identity, whether that's a Google identity, or it could be it could be a intro for Microsoft, or it could be Okta, or it could be Ping.

Those just integrate smoothly in and your users will sign in with their existing identities and these devices the, they will go through and enforce security policies to make sure that you're all the devices and all your employees are up to date with the proactive security that comes with ChromeOS. Your admins can deploy and configure applications that come down from the cloud.

In the video, Rashi talked about this being a cloud first cloud first operating system. That means that everything that goes on that device comes down from the cloud. You don't have to image devices. You don't have to go and install applications. That'll all happen automatically as soon as the device enrolls into your into your domain.

And the final step is to prepare the team for a mass deployment. Essentially, Jump Start is like a pilot for ChromeOS. And you can. You can do that with purchasing, a handful of devices, a handful of licenses and just testing it out.

And as, as we mentioned with ChromeOS Flex, you don't even have to buy the devices. All you have to do is purchase some licenses ask Promevo to do a Jump Start, and you'll be off and running with a very strong deployment.

The other thing I want to talk about is this certification.

So, ChromeOS administrators can go and take a certification exam and get a professional certification. It's a legally defensible certification. If you go to the first slide, talk a little bit about that. It's a 120 minute multiple choice exam. It is available to partners. It's available to customers.

It's available in English and Japanese. Essentially, it it helps you learn how to set [00:18:00] up devices and manage them from the admin console, how to configure policies, how to push applications, and just understand some of the value proposition around ChromeOS. And there's an exam guide, there's a link there in the slides, an exam guide to help you study for it.

For folks considering certification, here are three reasons to take this professional administrator exam. One is that we're offering it for free. At least until January 2025, there's no exam fee. You can just go and sign up and take the exam. The exam is designed for folks who have about a year's worth of experience of working in the admin console.

So it's folks that are have had the experience, they know how policies work. And then you can also use that exam guide to study for what you need to know. Once you pass the certification exam you show up in a directory. It's a, as I said, it's a legally defensible certification.

You show up in this online directory and then for partners who like Promevo that work with Google and deploy ChromeOS devices these certifications are necessary to achieve certain levels within our partner to get access to funding and to and to work with Google on a daily basis.

So that's just the one I wanted to talk a little bit about along with ChromeOS Flex and, uh, Hailee, I'll pass it back to you.

Hailee Zapata:

Those are great programs. It's really interesting and we'll get more into this in the panel discussion, but did I hear that right? The Cremwell certification process is free for now.

Pete Nevin:

That is correct. We have we've been offering this Certification for a couple of years now and there is no certification exam. We've waived that for the first three years now certification

Hailee Zapata:

Okay, that's fantastic. So if they want to start that process should they reach out to Promevo? It's like how do you start the certification process?

Pete Nevin:

Yeah, there's a link on that on that prior slide that they can go to that has how to sign up for the exam, how to take the exam, and then also the exam guide. So there's a website with a number of videos and articles to read that helps you brush up on your skills and the admin console so that you can pass the exam.

Hailee Zapata:

Okay, fantastic. And just so everyone knows you will get this deck with all the links So if you're interested, you'll have everything you can also reach out to Brent or Pete here and i'm sure they'll walk you through it.

Pete Nevin:

Absolutely.

Hailee Zapata:

Let's get into this panel discussion. I want to see how do you see customers using ChromeOS Flex, like, as a priority in their organization. Like how do they use it moving forward?

Pete Nevin:

Yeah, that's a good question. I would say that they're the two most common ways the two ways that I see customers like deploying ChromeOS Flex and why they're deploying it, why they're testing out.

The first is, it's this idea of trialing ChromeOS. There are a lot of organizations out there, they've been relying on Mac, they've been relying on Windows for a long time, and they've heard a lot about ChromeOS, but there's always, there's a hurdle, right? You have to work with Google and certify your, verify your domain.

And there's steps that you have to take. And one of the biggest ones obviously is the financial cost. You have to go out and buy a bunch of new devices and it's a, maybe something you're not sure about. So ChromeOS Flex allows you to take some old, dusty old Windows, laptops that everybody's got sitting around in a storage facility, somewhere.

Goes off, flash them. It takes a couple of minutes. I think they said that in the video, like, installing ChromeOS Flex. I've done it as if you have a machine with USB three and he used a fast USB stick, I've done it as little as 90 seconds to go from like Windows to a sign in screen to welcome screen for ChromeOS.

And then the second most common use I see with our customers is just to extend the life of older hardware, right?

This is, I think Rashi mentioned contact center. Contact center is one of those places where, you've got a room with devices and people and their business is reliant on them, but it's also an area where you want to keep costs low. And so device refreshes in a contact center is a perfect area where there's devices in there that are five, six, seven years old.

Maybe you're coming up on your Windows refresh next year and you've got some of those devices don't meet the specs you need to migrate to Windows 11. And so those can be flashed with ChromeOS and get an additional 2, 3, 4, 5 years of useful life out.

Hailee Zapata:

Very nice. So Brent, I know in our video you'd mentioned the migration process is coming up and you and Rashi talked about it.

How can Promevo help customers, clients, prospects transfer? Like how does that process work?

Brent Cole:

Yeah, it's a good question, Hailee. If you are on this webinar and you want to visit our site, it will direct a response from one of our sales professionals, whether it's myself or someone on our team that can assist with that process.

And what we've seen historically with working with clients is everybody's at a different stage in their journey. Knowing the migration is coming. We'll understand. Do you need very entry level or first level questions answered? Are you further along in the process where we just need to help you install the USB device and kick off that process?

The value add that Promevo provides is we've likely done something similar with another client, and we can be that voice in the back, working with people like Pete, Rashi, and our team as well, just to ensure that you feel comfortable through that process and answer any questions you have. 

Hailee Zapata:

Okay. Very nice.

So speaking of all these old devices, the migration process we know that there's requirements around which devices. So what, let's say you have a device that isn't in that 550 plus. Can you request a device to be like certified? Like, how do I go about that? I know that's a lot of devices, but somewhere there's got to be someone that doesn't have that specific one.

Pete Nevin:

Yeah. Yeah. No, that's a great question around. Okay, how does Google support these things and how do they get certified? And essentially what certification means I backtrack and say our engineers designed Chromos Flex to run on any Intel hardware that's been built within the past 10, 15 years.

And the certification process. What certification means is that our engineering team is actually going to go out and purchase and acquire some of those devices, one or two of those devices. To put in our lab and to install the software and to run tests against the software and commit to, to fix bugs. And so the certification process just means that we have one of those devices.

We are testing it actively on every release of the software to make sure that things work. Just because it's not on the certification list doesn't mean it doesn't work, and it doesn't mean that you can't install ChromeOS Flex.

So that's what I tell customers and say, Hey, I've got, I've got I've got 500 of these, device X in my call center. Do they work? They're not on the certification. It's try one because it probably will. It probably will work.

And that certification process is a commitment by Google to 13 year from the date that model hits the market. Market as a Windows machine or as a Mac we will test it for 13 years to ensure that it still works with ChromeOS Flex The devices will continue to get updates beyond that 13 years.

So an older device can still work It's just that we don't we'll take it out of the lab and we won't test against it and we won't commit to bug fixes Should something happen that way.

Oh, and I think the other aspect is can you get a new device certified? And yes, there is a process reach out. We've got a we reach out through Promevo they can work with me or someone else on the partner engineering team to get that device added to our list.

And we have a queue of devices that are being added every week. It just depends on, we want to make sure we're putting our effort into the devices that customers actually use and want certified.

Hailee Zapata:

Okay. So is there any type of like brand that it doesn't go with? Or is it any, absolutely any device at all? Reach out, any possible device.

Pete Nevin:

Yeah, it really any intel based Windows or Mac. I would say since we say we, we commit a 13 years worth of updates. If you have a device that's older than 13 years, it might work, but we're not going to commit to, we're not going to commit certifying it.

So it's a trial and error thing. The only devices I see, we work with all major, all the major OEMs, Asus, Acer. Dell, down the alphabet Lenovo, et cetera. HP. But the only devices that we see where we have, and in that certification list, it not only lists that device is certified, but it will give you some caveats like, Oh, this device has a special piece of hardware.

We couldn't get the drivers for, so there, so occasionally they're specialty devices where the device works, but the specialty feature or add on that was added at the device We don't have the driver for in that piece doesn't work. So that's what the caveat typically is. And you can go onto the site the ChromeOS Flex site and see which devices are certified and if there are in fact any, any support issues with it.

Hailee Zapata:

And then I was listening to the ChromeOS Jump Start program and the ChromeOS Flex and it makes sense to bundle those together, especially if you're a large organization. And you and Brent can probably both chime in on this one. What are the benefits of Hey, if you're getting these free ChromeOS devices or... ChromeOS Flex, sorry. We're not giving you free devices.

The ChromeOS Flex for your devices. And then you also have this Jump Start program. What are the benefits of having those like connected and just running simultaneously?

Pete Nevin:

The value of the Jump Start is that a customer that doesn't, it's not familiar with ChromeOS, maybe doesn't even have Google products. You go through all the steps you need to take to get to the point where users have hands on devices and you're testing out your business critical software on a ChromeOS device. And you've got it performed by a a person in the crowd who's an expert right there. They're certified experts in ChromeOS.

And as a way for a new customer to feel, you know, feel some assurance that they've had their devices deployed and they're going to work and they're going to, they're going to work through some of those technical hurdles. I see ChromeOS Flex is a way to do that very inexpensively.

All you really have to pay for is the license. Everybody's got devices sitting out there that they can use. And then Jump Start makes means that they're deployed and they're deployed in a, professional manner. And you're, you don't, you're not missing out on any security issues or things like that.

Brent Cole:

And Hailee, from a sales perspective, the benefit that we see is we can work through everything that Pete just alluded to on a certain subset of people within your organization. So whether you want that to be a small test group, We can flush out any issues that we run into, create a frequently asked question document just to ensure that you feel comfortable.

And then as a mass deployment looks out in the future we've worked through a lot of these issues, but we've done it with a a smaller subset of groups of individuals. And it's not a mass chaos situation. It's a very organized and easy process to follow with people like Pete and Promevo here to support you, as well as people internally that have gone through that process already.

Hailee Zapata:

That's nice. So when they come in to do the ChromeOS Flex, Brent, they can also just with the same sales rep or same team. Hey, I also want to do the Jump Start program, or I also want to do the certification. Like they can just do a one stop shop and kind of nail all these projects in one spot.

Brent Cole:

Yeah, absolutely.

Our goal is to create consistency, create a relationship, create a, an environment where both sides know each other well, we know the best form of communication, how often we want to communicate and that way there's consistency for both teams and really helps them move with speed through the process.

Hailee Zapata:

Now, and this may be more of a personal question for me, but I know I always have IT problems, unplug it, plug it in, doesn't work.

After everything's set up, let's say a couple months down the road, they're having an issue. Can they reach back out to Promevo. Hey, my ChromeOS Flex device isn't booting or something's wrong. Can they come back to you for IT support?

Brent Cole:

Yeah, we're happy to provide support at any point during the lifecycle of a client with Promevo.

We are a very customer driven organization and pride ourselves on creating a good experience. We are here to support you at any point through the journey and life cycle of of your time through the ChromeOS portion of your agreement.

Hailee Zapata:

That's awesome. Okay. Thank you guys for that.

I'm going to go ahead and do a few more slides and I think we should get to our Q and A. I did see some questions in there.

Thank you for walking us through all the things ChromeOS Flex for your legacy devices and the many options the organization has surrounding it.

I know we went over a lot of options today, so if you have any questions, or you're ready to get started today, please reach out to the contact information. We also hope that you'll check out our website for more information on all of our solutions, our services Promevo has to offer. And for more resources, we have a plethora of blogs from ChromeOS Flex that our content manager, Christine, has created.

They are great resource. So feel free to click on those and really deep dive into how ChromeOS Flex can help your organization.

On the right hand side. We have a list of all of our upcoming webinars, including our next gPanel Office Hours webinar on gPanel API.

If you're new here, gPanel is our own proprietary Workspace management tool. So if you're interested in or you have Google Workspace, sign up for a monthly gPanel Office Hours. It's a must. It's very informative.

We also have all of these on demand on our website. If you're interested in learning just what gPanel is, what ChromeOS Flex is. We have so many webinars up there. Please go check them out.

Okay Let's get into our questions from the audience pull these up here. I know we got a couple.

Okay, so are there any limitations on what older devices this can benefit? Our team uses Macs some are fairly old 2019 is this something that can be utilized on devices like this that are upcoming becoming obsolete?

Pete Nevin:

Absolutely. Thanks for the question. You said pretty old and it being 2019 and that makes me think, what? That's not old. I've got a lot of older machines than that in my inventory.

Yeah, so I think I alluded to this during the discussion, but we. For new devices that we are adding in certification, we certify at least 13 years that we're going to be testing against that.

A device from 2019 is, four or five years old. Yeah, absolutely. That device would be supported and certified. I don't know that specific model is on our list yet. It depends on if, a customer has requested. It depends on if it's, we obviously our team focused on machines that have large footprints out there in the community.

But yes 2019 would not be considered, you'd have several years of of updates that would be tested against that device.

Hailee Zapata:

Okay, great. I feel, yeah, I feel like I remember you saying there's no limit. We'll test anything and see what happens basically. 

Pete Nevin:

Yeah. Yeah. And exactly. Unlike ChromeOS devices where we stopped giving updates on ChromeOS Flex, we don't stop giving updates because it's really just one big build that goes out to all those machines with all the drivers laying on them.

It'll continue to get updates and it'll continue to function. We just won't be testing against it and backporting backporting bug fixes and things like that.

Hailee Zapata:

Okay. Yeah. I saw a question pop up here. Will Flex retain the files from the older device? That's a good question. And I was wondering, will they lose any access to files?

Pete Nevin:

That is a good question and probably not the answer you want to hear. But yes, we do basically format the drive essentially. So we're putting partitions in there where the, where ChromeOS Flex is going to live. Before putting the USB in and imaging the device, you would want to upload files that were local into cloud repository.

We view ChromeOS and ChromeOS Flex as a way to get to the cloud. And we should be storing those files in the cloud anyway, right? In Google Drive or or some some online repository. That's the workflow that, that that [00:33:00] we're encouraging users to adapt. But yeah, you would need to back those files up to get them after ChromeOS Flex has imaged the device.

Hailee Zapata:

Brent, if someone like an organization needed help backing up those files. Is that something Promevo could provide support for?

Brent Cole:

Yeah, we're happy to look into it understand the environment of where those files exist, and identify the best way to store that. We can create some custom solutions.

It just really depends on a kind of case by case basis and how you've stored those files and, where they are living in your environment. But that's where our team will come in, stand, deep dive into, in that environment and do our best to help support as long as there is a path forward.

Hailee Zapata:

Okay, wonderful. Thanks, guys. We have another question here. How long does a transition usually take? That's a good question.

Pete Nevin:

Yeah, good question. From the top, if you're talking about just literally the physical act of installing the OS, like if you have a USB stick with that's already imaged with ChromeOS Flex from the time you put it into the machine to the time that you have a, you have a welcome screen. Welcome to ChromeOS. I would say it depends. It depends a little on the USB drive. It depends on the hard drive. I would say an older machine might be a little slower. I've seen it range from like a minute and a half to maybe three or four minutes. Um, typical installation times.

And then once that's once it is imaged, I think Rashi alluded to this too, on the on the video that once you've got an image, this ChromeOS, it boots up really fast, like from the time the device is off until you're at the sign in screen on a Chrome device, it's typically like eight to 12 seconds.

Hailee Zapata:

Oh, wow. And you can do multiple devices at once. Just plug them all in, let them upload. So it shouldn't take too long for an organization, depending on how many devices they have.

Pete Nevin:

Yeah, correct. We usually we have some guidance around it but typically partners that are doing deploy, mass deployments. If you're helping a customer do a mass deployment. You probably get the devices into a, place with a workshop and make 20 copies of that USB stick and just line them up, turn them on, pop 20 USBs.

And by the time you get to the last one, it's time to pull it out of the first one and put it on another one. If if you think about it, you put it into Sort of a mass production mass lot, production line sort of scenario. You can probably do several hundred a day or let's see, I think we timed it out.

If you're doing 20 at a time and they take four minutes each, then you're doing like , several a minute. In, in terms of capacity.

Hailee Zapata:

Wow. You could basically do a whole organization in one day depending on your size.

Pete Nevin:

Absolutely. Absolutely. Once you've got the devices in and they're plugged in and going, then you can go through it pretty fast.

And there are, let's, this is alluded to in the, this is alluded to in the video too. USB stick is not the only way. If you have. If you're a Windows shop and you've already got SCCM and that's how you push out applications and updates and patches and all the various things you've got to push out for Windows.

If you already have that, you can push ChromeOS Flex out with that same infrastructure and flip the device on and in a pixie boot and go into ChromeOS Flex and boom, you've got a ChromeOS Flex device on the wire.

Hailee Zapata:

Okay, great.

Oh, good question. Would that work for remote teams as well? A lot of companies are hybrid remote. How does that work?

Pete Nevin:

Yeah, that's a good question. There are really two paths to go there. We have a great customer story around ChromeOS Flex. There was a hotel over a Nordic hotel, at Nordic choice hotel, which now they're called strawberry.

They changed their name, but Nordic choice hotel is one of our customers that was evaluating ChromeOS. And they were trying to figure out like, Hey, can this work for us? They're hotel and they had, like check in kiosks and, some sort of self, where users could walk up and check into the hotel and get help from the concierge, et cetera. And they had them in all their hotels all over Norway, Finland.

And then they were hit with a ransomware attack. All their Windows machines were basically shut down over the weekend and they decided to go into high gear and our team over to Mia, help them by imaging a bunch of these sticks and printing out a one pager.

And they shipped those sticks out to hotel employees, not IT staff, hotel employees. And those hotel employees imaged all the devices, got them up and running and enrolled and, saved the day and got them, they were writing receipts on paper over the weekend and starting the next week and within 48 hours, they were back on running it on ChromeOS.

So you can do remote remote deployment that way. If you can send the USB stick out to their user, tell them the buttons they have to press, pop that thing in, and they can image their device themselves and enroll it. It's not the way I would recommend to most enterprises. If you have remote workers, I would probably recommend that you stage it.

You have them send their device, you ship them a new ChromeOS Flex device that you're imaging, your IT staff is imaging or promevo's imaging. You ship them a new device and they ship you the old one, and then you take their old one and image it and send it to somebody new.

I would recommend you do that yourself. Partnership those capabilities. But yeah you can take one of those two paths.

Hailee Zapata:

Okay, great. So I think we're gonna have time about one more question And I was curious we talked about security a lot and how safe it is but coming with the hotel like how safe is it with the security of ChromeOS Flex and people giving their information. Everything's very confidential today. So you just plug in this device and I know you guys talked about it. But can you just reiterate like how secure is this for a company?

Pete Nevin:

Yeah. Good question. So I'll start by saying echoing what Rashi said.

ChromeOS is the most secure operating system on the planet today. And it's multi layer security. It's the read only, it's read only operating system. It's automatic updates. It's, the use of the TPM chip, which is a security chip that, that it manages all of the certificates and passwords and log ins. It's a operating system that was originally built in the era of malware and ransomware.

When ChromeOS was written, it was written with an idea of being secure. Most of the operating systems date back decades, their underpinnings and they were built as open operating systems. So ChromeOS and ChromeOS Flex is the most secure operating system out there today.

ChromeOS Flex and it depends, I think that the example you used about the hotel, it depends on how you're what the use case is like in a hotel use case where you've got users walking up and the device is locked into kiosk mode. Basically, that's a it's an ephemeral use case.

So when the user walks away, basically none of their personal devices stored on the machine, it's all been secured in the cloud. It really depends on the, it depends on the use case, but we have some security settings that can make that make that environment more secure.

There's ways to enforce two factor authentic. All data is encrypted in user profiles. Separately. So there's not one encryption key for the hard drive. It's each user has an encryption key for their slice of that hard drive.

So there's a number of security settings in Chrome and ChromeOS Flex that, that make it a very secure and private experience for each user.

Hailee Zapata:

Okay. That's great to hear.

We want to thank everyone for joining us and we did want to let you know, if you are joining us on the webinar today, we have a free ChromeOS Flex kit at Promevo. So if you reach out to Brent and team, they will gladly send one to you so you can test it out, get started.

And they can help you on your ChromeOS Flex journey, hopefully get you into ChromeOS Jump Start, all the things that we have to offer. So just reach out, you can do salessupport@promevo.com and it'll go straight to Brent and he'll make sure you guys get taken care of.

Thanks for joining us today, Pete, Brent. Thank you so much. This is really informative. We enjoyed all the things ChromeOS today.

Pete Nevin:

Thank you very much for the time.

Hailee Zapata:

Have a great day.