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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Editor’s note: Whether it’s taking a meeting over Hangout from the airport before escaping to a much-deserved vacation or sending work e-mails from an air-conditioned neighborhood cafe, technology should help you get your work done faster so you can enjoy the summer months. To celebrate the season of sun, we’re sharing stories from customers who know all about the importance of technology when fostering a culture of mobility and flexibility. Today, we hear from Camille Ricketts, Editor in Chief at First Round Capital, a leading early-stage venture capital firm founded in Philadelphia with satellite offices in San Francisco and New York.

What do mega-startups Square, Uber, Warby Parker, and the unassuming town of West Conshohocken, Pennsylvania, have in common? One of the most influential seed-stage VC firms in the world, First Round Capital, which first started at a small office in the small suburb outside Philadelphia, has invested in them. In 2004, entrepreneur and investor Josh Kopelman set out to reinvent seed-stage funding and opened our first office in West Conshohocken. Since then, we’ve moved our headquarters to Philadelphia, grown to over 30 employees and three offices, and funded close to 400 startups. As we’ve expanded, though, we’ve consistently kept a premium on staying nimble and having a platform that both helps us work efficiently and stay connected.

Mobility, security, and accessibility are essential features when we set out to improve any process, so switching to Google Apps earlier this year seemed natural — after nearly a decade of working with other solutions. Most of our staff members are used to using Google Apps like Gmail, Drive and Docs in their personal lives, so moving to Apps made perfect sense for the company as a whole.

Constant travel, meetings with entrepreneurs, and supporting the companies we fund demand reliability and security every step of the way. We move quickly because we’re on-call much of the time. It’s crucial to know that our e-mail is supported by Google’s infrastructure and doesn’t suffer from server downtime. Security matters are central to our efforts, as we’re handling significant investments and often working with companies that are operating in stealth mode. Our IT managers are able to easily manage access to sensitive documents — and two-step authentication adds an extra layer of much-needed security. If I leave my laptop on an airplane, it’s nice to have complete confidence that no one can access sensitive emails or documents.

With Google Hangouts, we’re able to video chat with our employees and entrepreneurs across offices, and to conduct interviews for the First Round Review — our hub for entrepreneurial advice. Before Google Hangouts, we used used a variety of solutions with poor sound and video quality. When I only have 30 minutes to interview someone, I can’t afford to spend even five minutes worrying about whether or not the video will work.

First Round is on the move all the time serving the entrepreneurs we support, and we can’t have technology get in the way of the fast-paced nature of our work. We need technology that makes our jobs easier so we can continue helping startups build companies and products that will change the world. Sometimes we even forget we’re using Google Apps because it lets us focus on what we love to — inventing new ways to connect entrepreneurs with the resources they need to succeed.

Since launching Google Earth in 2005, imagery has become a powerful tool to virtually visit almost anywhere in the world right from a computer, tablet or phone. Organizations also need this type of imagery for their business—whether they’re mapping public service projects, reviewing the environmental impacts in a region or evaluating a property.

Today, we’re launching Google Maps for Business imagery, offering businesses the chance to purchase and use Google Earth imagery for the first time. This gives them access to high-resolution aerial imagery covering the continental U.S. And it will help customers like government agencies get the imagery they need without collecting their own aerial photography.

Using Google Maps Engine, organizations can quickly obtain Google Earth imagery as soon as it’s available and share it with colleagues or customers. By relying on Google’s cloud, they can bypass traditional delivery systems, such as an FTP or disc, while also avoiding the costs of maintaining their own data centers.

Organizations using Google Maps for Business imagery can access the imagery in several ways:

• View it on a desktop GIS system via WMS
• Include it with your Google Maps v3 JavaScript API web application
• Overlay it directly within Google Earth
• View it on native mobile applications and mobile websites.

Businesses want accurate, comprehensive and useful maps, and with Google Maps for Business imagery, organizations now have better access to commercial, high-quality satellite photography. Read on or contact our sales team to learn more about Google’s commercial imagery offering.

Whether you’re driving with the top down, escaping the scorching heat by stepping into an air-conditioned building, or grilling burgers and brats with family and friends as the sun goes down — it’s clear that summer is here. And the truth is, we all have things we’d rather be doing than sitting inside an office while the summer passes us by. That got us thinking about how technology can help us spend our time more efficiently. How can we make the most of our days during these fleeting summer months?

We’re asking you — companies, colleagues and friends — to consider how technology can help you get your work done faster so you can enjoy summer even more. With tools like Google Docs and Google+ Hangouts, people can get their work done from wherever they are, from any device, so they’re not forced to watch the sun-soaked days fly by from their desks. As we continue into those long summer days, we want to celebrate the independence that technology affords. So we’ll be working with a handful of our Google Apps customers, like Uber, Thrillist and Federal Donuts, to highlight how technology can make life easier and let us do our work when on the go.

And this is just the start. We’ll continue to find more ways to help bring mobility, freedom, and fulfillment to your workplace and workday. We want you to work the way you live, which means bringing your technology from life to work — whether it’s e-mail, spreadsheets or meetings —and finding that sweet spot between work and play.

In case you’re wondering how I plan to enjoy the summer, well, let’s just say that I’ll be taking my Friday afternoon meetings via Hangouts before heading to the beach. Here’s to celebrating the spirit of summer — at work, at home and on the go.

(Cross-posted on the Google Cloud Platform Blog)

We’ve had a great time giving you our predictions for the World Cup (check out our post before the quarter-finals and semi-finals). So far, we’ve gotten 13 of 14 games correct. But this isn’t about us picking winners in World Cup soccer – it’s about what you can do with Google Cloud Platform. Now, we are open-sourcing our prediction model and packaging it up so you can do your own analysis and predictions.

We used Google Cloud Dataflow to ingest raw, touch-by-touch gameplay day from Opta for thousands of soccer matches. This data goes back to the 2006 World Cup, three years of English Barclays Premier League, two seasons of Spanish La Liga, and two seasons of U.S. MLS. We then polished the raw data into predictive statistics using Google BigQuery.

You can see BigQuery engineer Jordan Tigani (+JordanTigani) and developer advocate Felipe Hoffa (@felipehoffa) talk about how we did it in this video from Google I/O.

Our prediction for the final
It’s a narrow call, but Germany has the edge: our model gives them a 55% chance of defeating Argentina due to a number of factors. Thus far in the tournament, they’ve had better passing in the attacking half of their field, a higher number of shots (64 vs. 61) and a higher number of goals scored (17 vs. 8).

But, 55% is only a small edge. And, although we’ve been trumpeting our 13 of 14 record, picking winners isn’t exactly the same as predicting outcomes. If you’d asked us which scenario was more likely, a 7 to 1 win for Germany against Brazil or a 0 to 1 defeat of Germany by Brazil, we wouldn’t have gotten that one quite right.

(Oh, and we think Brazil has a tiny advantage in the third place game. They may have had a disappointing defeat on Tuesday, but the numbers still look good.)

But don’t take our word for it…
Now it’s your turn to take a stab at predicting. We have provided an IPython notebook that shows exactly how we built our model and used it to predict matches. We had to aggregate the data that we used, so you can’t compute additional statistics from the raw data. However, for the real data geeks, you could try to see how well neural networks can predict the same data or try advanced techniques like principal components analysis. Alternatively, you can try adding your own features like player salaries or team travel distance. We’ve only scratched the surface, and there are lots of other approaches you can take.

You might also try simulating how the USA would have done if they had beat Belgium. Or how Germany in 2014 would fare against the unstoppable Spanish team of 2010. Or you could figure out whether the USA team is getting better by simulating the 2006 team against the 2010 and 2014 teams.

Here’s how you can do it
We’ve put everything on GitHub. You’ll find the IPython notebook containing all of the code (using pandas and statsmodels) to build the same machine learning models that we’ve used to predict the games so far. We’ve packaged it all up in a Docker container so that you can run your own Google Compute Engine instance to crunch the data. For the most up-to-date step-by-step instructions, check out the readme on GitHub.

Editor’s note: Today’s post comes from Sara Aschheim, Media Manager at Crunch Fitness. See how other forward-thinking organizations are investing in mapping technology and transforming their business by viewing our Maps are Going Google series.

At Crunch, we’re all about making fitness fun. From our humble beginnings in a New York City basement, to full-service gyms with signature classes like B-Method and Cycle Karaoke, we realize that staying fit doesn’t just mean having access to a treadmill. This year, we’ve already opened over 13 gyms and plan to add several more this year.

The gym industry often relies on outdoor advertising and direct mail to spread the word about its offerings, like new locations, classes, and pricing. At Crunch, we firmly believe in making sure our advertisements are relevant and targeted. With Google Maps Engine Pro, our marketing and sales departments can make smarter, data-driven decisions by visualizing business-critical data.

As someone responsible for making sure we get the most from our media investments, I can use Maps Pro to map potential outdoor advertising placements in the more than 70 cities where we’re currently located. I do this by importing an Excel spreadsheet filled with information like price, geographic coordinates, and vendor name to a Google Map. Using Maps Pro, I can customize icons so anyone can quickly glance at the map and understand exactly where the advertising opportunities lie.

We also use Maps Pro to overlay customer location data around our franchise locations. Although some customers are willing to travel across town for a particular class, it’s important to us that we make the Crunch experience as convenient as possible. We also use these maps to figure out where potential customers are located and where we should launch direct mail campaigns.

The best thing about Maps Pro is that it’s simple to use for anyone who has used Google Maps. It’s easy to share and customize our data in Google Maps, such as changing the icon of one of our club’s to include hours. This has increased our level of cross-departmental collaboration and cut down on the time typically required to implement marketing campaigns. With our previous mapping partner, we had to send maps as email attachments, creating different versions for each change, and as a result people were discouraged from collaborating.

Convenience and location play a huge role in making Crunch, one of the most popular, recognizable fitness chains today. Maps Engine Pro helps us know who our members and potential customers are, and where they are, so we can be smarter about how we communicate with them.

(Cross-posted on the Google Cloud Platform Blog)

Kubernetes is an open source manager for Docker containers, based on Google’s years of experience using containers at Internet scale. Today, Microsoft, RedHat, IBM, Docker, Mesospehere, CoreOS and SaltStack are joining the Kubernetes community and will actively contribute to the project. Each company brings unique strengths, and together we will ensure that Kubernetes is a strong and open container management framework for any application and in any environment – whether in a private, public or hybrid cloud.

Our shared goal is to allow a broad range of developers to take advantage of container technologies. Kubernetes was built from the ground up as a lean, extensible and portable framework for managing Docker workloads. It lets customers manage their applications the way that Google manages hyper-scale applications like Search and Gmail.

Containers offer tremendous advantages for developers. Predictable deployments and simple scalability are possible because Docker packages all of a workload’s dependencies with the application. This allows for ultimate portability; you can avoid vendor lock-in and run containers in the cloud of your choice. It is just as important that the management framework has the same properties of portability and scalability, and that is what the community will bring to Kubernetes.

We look forward to the contributions of the expanded Kubernetes community:

• Microsoft is working to ensure that Kubernetes works great in Linux environments in Azure VMs. Scott Guthrie, Executive Vice President of the Cloud and Enterprise group at Microsoft told us, “Microsoft will help contribute code to Kubernetes to enable customers to easily manage containers that can run anywhere. This will make it easier to build multi-cloud solutions including targeting Microsoft Azure.”
• Red Hat is working to bring Kubernetes to the open hybrid cloud. Paul Cormier, President, Products and Technologies at Red Hat, told us, “Red Hat has a rich history of contributing to and maturing innovative, open source projects. Through this collaboration with Google on Kubernetes, we are contributing to the evolution of cloud computing and helping deliver the promises that container technologies offer to the open hybrid cloud.”
• IBM is contributing code to Kubernetes and the broader Docker ecosystem to ensure that containers are enterprise-grade, and is working with the community to create an open governance model around the project.
• Docker is delivering the full container stack that Kubernetes schedules into, and is looking to move critical capabilities upstream and align the Kubernetes framework with Libswarm.
• CoreOS is working to ensure that Kubernetes can work seamlessly with the suite of CoreOS technologies that support cloud-native application development on any cloud.
• Mesosphere is actively integrating Kubernetes with Mesos, making the advanced scheduling and management capabilities available to Kubernetes customers.
• SaltStack is working to make Kubernetes a portable container automation framework that is designed for the reality of the platform-agnostic, multi-cloud world.

You can view the source and documentation for Kubernetes on GitHub. We look forward to the contributions of these companies alongside the already vibrant open source community.

Editor’s note: In today’s digital age, information overload is a common problem, both in our lives and at work. That’s why forward-thinking organizations are investing in map visualization tools to help them manage and use data more effectively. Read more about the six ways Maps are Going Google.

Data is critical for businesses, helping to steer day-to-day operations as well as future strategies. But when it comes to using data at work, there’s a fine line between empowered and overwhelmed. Unless your team can analyze and interpret all the information available to them, they’re far more likely to end up on the wrong side of that line.

According to a recent study* that surveyed 300 enterprise professionals, data of all forms — internal, external, structured, and unstructured — has grown by 38 percent over the past two years. With so much information available, companies need a real-time mechanism to understand fresh data, make decisions and communicate those decisions internally.

To stay ahead of information overload, savvy business leaders, like those at BioSolar, are realizing the benefits that maps can bring. Based in Australia, the solar company’s mission is to make renewable energy affordable for the folks “down under.” But with 23 million residents spread across nearly 3 million square miles, selling and installing solar panel systems isn’t easy.

Rather than asking sales and marketing reps to pour over the data needed to identify solar candidates, BioSolar puts prospective customer information on a map. This lets the team see exactly where they need to be and who they need to target. Since deploying Google Maps, BioSolar’s total sales appointments per day have increased from 20 to 180.

Biosolar is just one company who is realizing the benefits of seeing data in context to its location. Whether reporting to senior executives or doing your own analysis, overlaying dispersed data sets on a map allows an organization to present their information in one clear picture. This lets employees gather insights more effectively and improve communications.

As a business grows, finding better ways to use data is essential. For more information about how maps can help your organization glean instant insights, sign up for our “Maps are going Google” series or read Chapter 2 now.

* Map Data@Work Study, 2014

Editor’s note: A few weeks ago, we announced Google Drive for Work, a new premium offering for businesses that includes unlimited storage, advanced audit reporting and new security controls. To celebrate the announcement and show how Drive helps businesses around the world, we’re sharing a few stories from a handful of customers using Drive (and the rest of the Google Apps suite) in innovative ways. Today we hear from Greg Hohenbrink, Enterprise IT Manager at Scotts Miracle-Gro, which provides lawn and gardening products to customers around the world.

Scotts Miracle-Gro was founded in Marysville, Ohio, in 1868 as a premium seed company. By 1940, the company reached $1 million in sales and expanded to 60 associates. Today, we have more than 10,000 associates across North America, Europe and Asia, and we sell about $2.8 billion in lawn and gardening care products and services annually. We manage the entire supply chain, from raw materials to shipping, and we’re always looking to streamline the process to become faster and more efficient as the company expands.

In 2012, we took a good, hard look at the IT department and realized that associates spent too much time managing files, folders and emails. We were using a combination of Exchange 2007 and 2010, with teams using a mix of products for cloud-based storage that made our processes disjointed and cross-team collaboration difficult. Our associates needed a platform to be efficient with documents and information. We spent a year evaluating productivity suites with an internal focus group of 100 associates. The overwhelming majority wanted Google Apps and, with help from Onix, we made the move quickly and smoothly.

We’ve seen organic adoption and satisfaction with Google Apps across the company. Most people were already familiar with Gmail, Docs and Drive, so collaboration happened naturally with teams of associates working in the same document instead of saving different versions on the server.

We’re now able to centralize our storage needs with Drive. Most teams use Docs, Slides and Sheets, while relying on Word, Excel and Powerpoint as needed. Since Drive supports all file types, we can store and share everything in one place. We’re seeing growth in adoption of the Drive desktop sync client, which lets associates drag and drop files into a folder in their home drive and have it automatically sync with Drive on the web.

With Drive, we can access all of our files and documents on the go. Recently, I was at an event and my colleague needed me to edit something immediately. I was able to find and open the file through my smartphone and address his concerns on the spot. In the past, I would have had to find a computer, VPN in, and fumble with a log-in. Thanks to Google Apps, what used to take half a day now only takes 30 minutes.

Hangouts is spreading across the organization as well. Our engineering team uses it twice a week to hold video calls with a developer in Hawaii. They also appreciate being able to share code in the same screen. Using a Chromebox in his office, our CIO holds daily standups with the Business Transformation leadership team, which makes videoconferencing quick and easy.

We’re also building applications on top of Google App Engine, which has been surprisingly easy to pick up. Our first big application was a CRM app, which we developed and rolled out with our sales force in a relatively short timeframe. With App Engine, we’re able to support this application without having to think about any of the underlying infrastructure.

For more than a century, Scotts Miracle-Gro has used innovation to help consumers create beautiful, healthy lawns and gardens. With Google Apps, we continue to find innovative ways to empower our associates to support this mission.

Editor’s note: A few weeks ago, we announced Google Drive for Work, a new premium offering for businesses that includes unlimited storage, advanced audit reporting and new security controls. To celebrate the announcement and show how Drive helps businesses around the world, we’re sharing a few stories from a handful of customers using Drive (and the rest of the Google Apps suite) in innovative ways. Today’s guest blogger is Justine Bienkowski, IT Team Lead at BuzzFeed, a social news and entertainment company.

BuzzFeed is a content-heavy company—from our popular list posts to in-depth news features to lifestyle surveys, GIFs and videos, we have something for everyone. As our founder, Jonah Peretti, likes to say, our publishing is a lot like a Paris cafe: you may be sitting around reading a philosophy book or something equally mentally stimulating, but if you see a cute dog under the table next to you, you’re still going to want to pet it and enjoy that interaction. People are a lot more complex and multidimensional than liking just one or the other: as with everything, a balance is important.

In order to be able to manage that steady stream of material and get that balance, we need a platform that keeps us organized and helps us collaborate (because sometimes it takes a team to collect the 40 greatest dog GIFs of all time). That’s where Google Apps comes into play.

Justine Bienkowski, IT Team Lead, Buzzfeed

Each day, our team shares, submits and receives over 400 ideas for posts, which come from our editors, our reporters, and our community, and come in all sorts of formats, from .docx, and .zip to .jpg to .mpeg. And no matter the file type or source, we use Drive to store the constant flow of material and ideas, so we can stay organized and the right people can access them from one central place. When an editor receives a proposal or piece they know is perfect for a certain group, they’ll drop it into a Drive folder and share it with the appropriate email alias.

My IT team relies on Drive to share all sorts of documents, spreadsheets and other files. I receive vendor price quotes throughout the week, typically as PDFs, which I store in a shared folder with my group so they can review and comment on them whenever they have the time. We use Drive for important work functions like setting up new hires — what equipment & software they need as well as what email aliases they need to be added to. We use Drive to keep track of inventory in the office as well, so if I need to reference a software key and compare it to an invoice, I have everything where I need it. The Drive mobile app allows me to access all my files when I’m away from my laptop, saving time and encouraging efficiency within the team; just the other night, I received an updated floor plan for our office, which I was able to pull up and approve without having to run home, find and boot up my laptop.

The Google Apps suite as a whole makes us work better and also nurtures the culture we pride ourselves on (you can probably tell from our listicles that we like to have fun—did you see what happened when a member of our edit team accidentally emailed the whole company recently?). BuzzFeed’s editorial team organized a Jorts Week celebration in honor of the revival of the mid-70s uber-short jean shorts, and employees voted for team activities and customized their jorts designs with Forms and tracked jorts sizes in Sheets. The editorial team similarly used Forms to collect submissions for our “What Secrets You Want to Tell Your Mother” feature for Mother’s Day.

From an IT perspective, another major strength of being on the Google platform is the marketplace of third-party tools that make systems management so much easier. We use FlashPanel by BetterCloud to streamline Google Apps management and add security to our Apps domain. We can prompt employees to reset passwords on a regular basis, see which third-party applications people have installed and view publicly shared Drive documents to make sure nothing is public that shouldn’t be.

With Google Drive, we have an easy, reliable way to store, manage and share all the different types of content and information we get from sources around the world. And with the full Apps suite, our editorial team can focus on publishing even more great content while my IT team can focus on giving our company the best tools for their jobs. Google helps us to turn that raw material into the amusing, provocative and quirky posts that make people laugh, cry and keep coming back for more.

Editor’s note: Last week, we announced Google Drive for Work, a new premium offering for businesses that includes unlimited storage, advanced audit reporting and new security controls. To celebrate the announcement and show how Drive helps businesses around the world, we’re sharing a few stories from a handful of customers using Drive (and the rest of the Google Apps suite) in innovative ways. Today’s guest blogger is Scott Crowley, SVP & Chief Information Officer at Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices (BHHS) Fox & Roach, REALTORS®, a part of HomeServices of America, the nation’s second-largest provider of total home services.

Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Fox & Roach, REALTORS®, is the largest REALTOR® in the tri-state area of Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware. We’re constantly looking for competitive advantages to recruit and retain experienced agents, while also appealing to the next generation entering the workforce. Because our more than 4,000 sales associates spend most of their time on the road, all the tools need to be available on mobile phones and tablets. They need to access important information at their fingertips, whether they’re in the car, a property site or at one of our 65 offices.

A little over a year ago, we realized that not only was our technology platform lacking the mobility our workforce needed, but our sales associates and employees were not solely using the technology we provided them. They were looking elsewhere for IT solutions, forwarding work email to personal third party accounts for additional storage and using third party cloud storage providers. We needed a solution that could provide the same quality of technology tools to our users without them going outside of IT — and knew Google Apps was the answer. After running a pilot with our IT department last July, we migrated our more than 5,000 users to the new platform throughout with winter with the help of Cloud Sherpas, our Google Apps reseller.

The move to Google has enabled us to provide our users with an all-in-one communication and collaboration platform to increase productivity and efficiency by bringing our tools together in one place, with one login. Among the additional benefits that Google Apps provides, it’s easy to use, works seamlessly with mobile devices, and offers significantly more storage space.

Google Drive allows us to share documents instead of sending attachments back and forth, making it easier for teams to work together on projects more effectively and collaborate on live documents. Not only is Drive transforming how we collaborate and collect information from around our footprint, but it also provides a great cloud backup, especially as a personal disaster recovery solution in case hardware fails or mobile devices are lost or stolen. Google Drive works for any kind of file type, not just Google Sheets, Slides and Docs — which is important in a business where we still work heavily with PDF contracts and photos for listings. Today, everything is automatically stored in the cloud for access from any device, anywhere.

We’ve been using the shared Google calendar to revamp our closing process. Instead of calling remote offices to book rooms, our coordinators can now schedule the settlement, invite all parties involved and book the room all at the same time. If the settlement gets postponed or moved, all participants are notified immediately, saving critical time and making us more efficient.

With the flexibility of Google Apps, it’s much easier for us to integrate with other systems. Via Google Sync, we can push and pull contacts directly to and from our CRM, providing our sales associates constant access to all leads as they arrive, particularly on their mobile devices. Our transaction management system allows documents to be uploaded directly from Drive, which eliminates the need for local storage and makes working from a mobile device a true advantage.

We’re constantly growing our usage of Google Apps products. Our IT department uses Hangouts to help diagnose problems for remote staff, allowing them to resolve issues faster and provide better support. Later this year, we plan to use a combination of Google+ and Sites to replace our existing Sharepoint based intranet.

With Google, we get a technology partner, not just a vendor. We receive several updates a month, instead of waiting for bi-annual releases, each providing new innovative functionality to our company. No one asks
“what version of Google apps are you running” — everything is up to date without IT intervention. Our sales associates and employees now have the ability to work and communicate in one platform, making the entire company more efficient, integrated, and successful.

As giddy students in the US are beginning to enjoy their summer break, we’re feeling nostalgic looking back on the school year and are equally inspired by all the teachers we’ve had the chance to work with.

For example, the educators at Fairfield County Schools — a rural district in South Carolina — are committed to helping each and every student achieve success in academics and dedicated to helping them pursue their personal passions. The IT team may be small, but their achievements are not. And while the district is using Google for Education tools, it’s really the teachers there that make the difference.

It’s because of inspiring educators, like those at Fairfield, that we work closely with teachers to build new tools made just for the classroom — to enable them to spend more time teaching & less “tech-ing”. And we’re now expanding the availability of these tools, giving even more teachers new ways to engage students when school starts in the Fall.

One destination to find the right content for students
To make it easier for teachers to find content that inspires their students, we announced last week that we expanded Google Play for Education — creating a single destination for US K12 schools to find and distribute educational content — whether students are using Chromebooks, tablets, or both. Schools that use Chromebooks can start using the site for flexible book rentals, to distribute a selection of free Chrome apps and to share YouTube EDU videos. Administrators for Chromebooks can enable Google Play for Education today by visiting google.com/edu/play. If you do this by July 15 you’ll get a $20 credit for your school to use for book rentals. Learn more.

New tools to enhance Google Apps for Education
Last month we announced Classroom, a new tool coming to Google Apps for Education. We designed Classroom side-by-side with teachers to help them better engage their students and make time-consuming tasks like managing assignments easier. Classroom is currently in an invite-only preview but we are working to make it available to all Google Apps for Education schools in August. In the meantime, teachers can view the demonstration video. Administrators will also gain a new tool that saves them time: Google Apps School Directory Sync. It allows a school to export data from their student information system and quickly sync it to their Google Apps for Education domain. With this tool, it’s easy to create users, organizational units, and Google Groups, and also to keep everything in sync. Learn more.

More value and flexibility from tablets
Based on feedback from schools, we’ve made a few changes to help schools gain more flexibility to meet classroom and student needs with tablets. Schools told us they want students to be able to share devices so we’ve made some changes and now our tablets can be shared with up to 5 students. We’ve also taken the first steps to make tablets compatible with standardized testing for the 2014-2015 school year, releasing a single-task-mode tool for developers so they can design apps that restrict the device for assessments only. Partners like Pearson (a PARCC assessment provider) have already started implementing this functionality with their on-line assessment delivery system, TestNav. Learn more.

Connect with other teachers
Educators at the ISTE conference can visit booth #2414 to demo Google for Education and see over 50 presentations in our teaching theater. If you are not at ISTE, follow along online by searching #googleedu. We’re asking educators to share tips each day to surface great ideas for when school starts.

Google I/O, our annual developer conference, kicked off this morning in San Francisco with more than 6,000 developers in person and millions more on the livestream. This year, 41 percent of live attendees represent companies that develop business-to-business (B2B) applications, which validates what we’ve known for a while: there’s great demand for better apps in the workplace. People want to work the way they live and use the apps and tools they love, whether they’re at home or in the office.

This drives so much of what we’re doing to bring the best of Google to our users at home to work. For those who missed it, earlier today Sundar Pichai, SVP of Android, Chrome & Apps and Urs Hölzle, SVP of Technical Infrastructure, announced and showed off a lineup of new products and features for Apps, Android, Chromebooks and Cloud Platform. Here are some of the highlights:

Introducing Google Drive for Work and updates to Google Docs

• Already, 190 million people actively use Drive at home, school or work, while companies like Crate & Barrel, HP, Jaguar Land Rover, Seagate and Tory Burch and rely on it to work faster and to connect employees and customers. Now, we’re making Drive even better for business with Google Drive for Work — a new premium offering for businesses that includes unlimited storage, advanced audit reporting and new security controls for $10/user/month.
• As of today, all files uploaded to Google Drive will be encrypted, not only from your device to Google and in transit between Google data centers, but also at rest on Google servers.
• Quickoffice is now full integrated into Docs, Sheets and Slides, so you can open and edit those documents in Office Compatibility Mode directly on Android, your Chrome browser and coming soon to iOS. This means you can open, edit, save and send Microsoft Word, Excel® and PowerPoint® files from your favorite device. You no longer have to buy additional software — it just works.

Reimagining developer productivity and data analytics in the cloud with Google Cloud Platform

• Google Cloud Dataflow, a managed service designed to help developers and companies process large datasets quickly and efficiently, was introduced today at Google I/O. Based on ten years of internal research and development, Cloud Dataflow is designed to let you focus on getting actionable insights from your data, while leaving the management, tuning, sweat and tears to Google.
• To enhance application management and operations in production, we’re launching Google Cloud Monitoring, built on the technology of Stackdriver, a company that recently joined Google, and introducing new tracing and debugging tools to increase developer productivity.
• We’re making it easier for mobile developers to build on our platform with a new version of Google Cloud Save and improved integrations in Android studio.

Today we also announced new features that are slated to launch in the next Android release — “L” — that are intended for enterprises. These features will make the transition for users from work to play more seamless, and provide IT administrators with more options to keep their employees’ data secure and easy to access. Businesses will also be able buy apps in bulk on Google Play and make them available to employees — great for admins, great for developers. You can also read more about some of the updates coming to schools here.

Today has been exhilarating, but it’s still just the beginning. Google I/O continues through the end of tomorrow, so tune in at google.com/io for more news and check back here for more updates and news throughout the week.

The workplace is full of files that capture your best ideas or your team’s most productive collaborations. But those files aren’t useful if you’re unable to access or share them effectively. That’s why, just two years ago, we introduced Google Drive. Today more than 190 million people actively use it at home, school and work. Drive keeps all your work safe, and makes it available everywhere and easy to share. Companies around the world like Crate & Barrel, Seagate, Tory Burch, HP and Jaguar Land Rover rely on Drive to work faster and collaborate better with their coworkers and customers.

But we’ve also heard from businesses that they want more control and security, visibility into how files are shared, and a product that will grow with them. So we’ve been working to make Drive even better for business, and today at Google I/O we announced Google Drive for Work — a new premium offering for businesses that includes unlimited storage, advanced audit reporting and new security controls for $10/user/month.

More control, more visibility
Google Drive for Work combines the familiar storage, sync and share experience of Google Drive with new admin controls, advanced file audit reporting and eDiscovery services. New fine-grained controls let admins customize the Drive experience, such as which employees can install the desktop sync client. With the new audit view you can see activity like moving, deleting or sharing a file within or outside the company, and an audit API will also be available for developers. Google Apps Vault, our solution for search and discovery for compliance needs, is also included with Drive for Work, expanding to cover all content stored in Drive, including Docs, Sheets and Slides, as well as any other file type.

More than enough space for all your work
Every year companies create more data than the last, adding megabytes, gigabytes and terabytes. Well, today, we’re taking bytes out of the conversation. For $10/user/month, businesses get unlimited storage for all their employees and can store files up to 5 TB in size (To put that in perspective, no desktop or laptop on the market today even has a hard drive big enough to capture and store a file that size).

More security
As of today, all files uploaded to Google Drive will be encrypted, not only from your device to Google and in transit between Google data centers, but also at rest on Google servers.

More productivity
Some of the most common file types stored in Drive are Microsoft Word, Excel® and PowerPoint® files. We’ve now built the power of Quickoffice into Docs, Sheets and Slides, so you can open and edit those documents in their native format using Office Compatibility Mode directly on Android and Chrome browser today, and coming soon to iOS. No need to buy additional software or decide how to open your file. Editing Office files is just a click or tap away from Drive on your computer, tablet or phone.

Ready for your business, available today
Google Drive for Work includes the benefits and guarantees of Google Apps for Business, like 24×7 phone support and a 99.9% uptime guarantee. You also get access to all of Google’s productivity apps like Docs, Sheets, Slides, Sites and Hangouts, so you collaborate in even more ways. Drive for Work also offers enterprise-grade security and compliance, including a SSAE 16 / ISAE 3402 Type II, SOC 2-audit, ISO 27001 certification, adherence to the Safe Harbor Privacy Principles, and can support industry-specific requirements like HIPAA.

Drive for Work is available globally, today. If you’re a current Apps customer you can upgrade from the Admin console to get new features like unlimited storage. If you’re new to using Google at work you can learn more about Google Drive for Work on the web, or contact us for more information.

Whenever I visit schools and talk to teachers, I’m reminded of the innovation that happens every day in the classroom. The English teacher who knows just the book to send a curious student’s mind racing, or the Physics teacher who shows how force and acceleration factored into the goal that tied the US vs. Portugal World Cup game.

Google for Education aims to make technology easy for students to use, simple for schools to manage, and affordable. But these tools don’t make a difference without the teachers who bring them to life. That’s why, in the last year, we worked closely with teachers to build tools that save time and provide flexibility — tools like Google Play for Education.

Google Play for Education helps teachers find and share exactly the right educational content — giving them the freedom to adapt their approach based on students’ current needs and interests. Google Play for Education started with tablets, but teachers told us they wanted to use it to find apps, books, and videos for Chromebooks too. So today we’re expanding Google Play for Education to US K-12 Chromebook schools.

The landing page for Google Play for Education helps schools find the perfect content for their students across Android apps, Chrome apps, books and videos.

Chromebook teachers can use Google Play for Education to:

• Share Chrome apps instantly, with the whole class or with individual students — starting with favorites like GeoGebra, TechSmith SnagIt and CK-12. Soon we’re adding brand new apps from partners like Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Discovery Education and Scholastic.
• Adapt classroom reading to students’ current interests as they choose from thousands of K-12 books, from the latest non-fiction to free classics like Huckleberry Finn and Jane Eyre.
• Create custom YouTube playlists for students using videos from educator-approved channels.

As a result, districts like Council Bluffs in Iowa are trying new things. David Fringer, the Director of IT for the district, has seen a change in the way teachers are approaching classroom reading:

“With Google Play for Education, we’re no longer limited by the number of hard copies of books available. It’s easy for teachers to find appropriate reading, then assign it to individual students or the whole class. As a result, we’re saving time and money as we make the transition to digital.”

Two students in Fresno, CA, work together on a Chromebook. When they head back to school next year, their teachers will be able to send them apps through Google Play for Education.

If you’re a domain administrator managing Chromebooks, visit play.google.com/edu to turn on Google Play for Education. Enable by July 15 and we’ll send you a $20 credit for your school to use on paid books and other content purchases. If you’re an education developer for Chrome or Android interested in participating in Google Play for Education, learn how to get your app included.

If you’re coming to the ISTE conference this weekend, check out the sessions in our teaching theater at booth 2414, which include more information on the expansion of Google Play for Education. Stay tuned for more information next week on this blog, at ISTE, and by following #googleedu.