Xero keeps global offices connected and nimble using Chromebox for meetings

Posted by Andrew Jessett, IT manager at Xero

Editors note: It’s been just over a year since we launched Chromebox for meetings, and to celebrate the milestone we’re sharing stories about our customers and their approaches to business, culture and productivity that are bringing them success. In today’s post, online accounting software provider Xero tells how it manages to keep its startup-like efficiency, innovation and feel while expanding globally. To learn more about Chromebox for meetings, join us online at Chrome Live on April 22 and see how companies scale face-to-face meetings across the globe.

Xero was started by several developers nine years ago in an apartment above a coffee shop in Wellington, New Zealand. Today, we have more than 1,000 employees in 15 cities across the U.S., U.K., Australia and New Zealand and provide online accounting software to more than 400,000 global customers. With more than 200 percent five-year average sales growth as of June 2014, our biggest challenge now is managing the fast-paced growth while maintaining our nimble, tech-forward startup culture.

We like to keep work in small groups and move quickly. Our teams work closely on projects even when they’re located in different offices around the world. And since we like to stay on the cutting edge of technology, we’re using Google Apps, which allows us to stay coordinated and productive.

Our pain point in IT was finding a way for teams in different cities and offices to meet and collaborate at the same time. We used a variety of video conferencing technologies, including PCs, HDMI/VGA and projectors. They were difficult to set up, meetings were delayed and productivity suffered. As we continued to grow, this struggle intensified, and we realized that we needed to find a solution fast. We needed to streamline our meeting room setups and get the most out of Hangouts. When we heard about Chromebox for meetings, we jumped at the chance to try it out.

We started with six Chromebox for meetings units. Today, we have nearly a hundred. They’re in every meeting room. We use them for room-to-room conferencing and all hands meetings. The global team uses them to connect every two weeks and the CEO addresses the entire company via Hangout on Air.

Chromebox for meetings allow us to keep things simple. There’s very little infrastructure or wireless connections needed on our side, so no cables necessary. Setup is fast and the integration with Gmail makes joining Hangouts as easy as clicking a button. It’s easy to share documents and work on them together. Then there’s the cost savings. Instead of spending between $40,000 and $60,000 on a video conferencing system, we spent one-tenth of that on a Chromebox and a display.

We may be a larger company now, but we still want to move and act quickly. No matter how large we become, our values align with those of fresh innovative companies that respond rapidly to market demand, customer needs and competition. Thanks to Chromebox for meetings, we can keep the startup feel and agility while growing at breakneck speed.

Read More..

Chromebox now bringing face to face meetings to bigger spaces

Posted by Vidya Nagarajan, Senior Product Manager, Chrome for Work

When we launched Chromebox for meetings last year, we wanted to help teams meet face to face, room to room, no matter where they’re sitting. Since then, a variety of companies like Xero and the Climate Corporation have chosen Chromebox for meetings to shrink the distance between remote offices.

Today, we’re expanding to bigger spaces. Chromebox for meetings now supports larger meeting rooms, so groups of up to twenty can seamlessly sync with colleagues around the world and still feel like they’re in the same place. Companies of all sizes, including Whirlpool Corporation, Netflix and Foursquare have tested Chromebox for meetings for the large room and said their users have enjoyed the video quality of the HD meetings.

“Expanding Chromebox for meetings to larger rooms continues to improve Whirlpool Corporations face-to-face collaboration across our global meeting rooms, and with the price point and simple installation, were able to bring room-to-room video conferencing to many more people,” says Troy McKim, Sr. Manager, Collaboration at Whirlpool Corporation. “In addition, Googles continuous enhancements to Chrome device management makes it easy for my team to remotely monitor the status of our global Chromebox for meetings units.”

New hardware to support larger rooms. The new Chromebox for meetings bundle equips rooms with the same instant face-to-face meeting functionalities as the original bundle, but with additional hardware to support larger rooms. New hardware includes:

• Pan-tilt-zoom camera: USB-enabled 1080 HD PTZ delivers professional video quality for larger conference spaces.
• 2x microphone and speaker: Capture conversations in longer rooms with an additional mic and speaker.
• Enhanced dual screen support: Now you can connect two monitors to the PTZ camera and dual microphone and speakers, so your participants can get the richest video conferencing experience.

Better screenshare experience. Full-screen mode in Chromebox for meetings allows for better presentations. This is now available with any sized meeting room powered by Chrome.

More management controls. We’re adding more Chrome management controls to the admin panel. Admins can remotely monitor the health of their Chrome devices in one simple view to see which devices are online or offline. Chrome management also lets admins delegate administration of devices to other users besides the super admin.

Managing and deploying Chromebox for meetings for the large room is still just as simple. Chromebox for meetings runs on Chrome OS, which means it’s fast, secure and easy to manage. And setup and deployment for larger rooms is still just as easy — with Chrome management, admins can deploy devices in minutes and remotely manage tens of thousands of devices.

Chromebox for meetings for the large room is available in the US at $1999, which includes the first year’s management and support fee, with everything you need to get your bigger spaces going — just bring your own display(s). That means that you can get HD video meetings in many more meeting rooms at one-tenth the cost of legacy video conferencing solutions. And later this year, we’ll be expanding availability to different regions.

You can learn more about Chromebox for meetings on our website.

Read More..

Wyoming strengthens top down communication using Chromebox for meetings

Posted by Flint Waters, CIO of the State of Wyoming

Editors note: Today’s guest blogger is Flint Waters, CIO of the State of Wyoming. Since outfitting its conference rooms with Chromebox for meetings, the state spends far less on video conferencing and has transformed how teams communicate and connect with each other and the citizens they serve. See how Wyoming and many other institutions and organizations are using Chromebox for meetings to create a culture of collaboration that translates to greater productivity and better service. 

When I came to work for the State of Wyoming four years ago, five people reported to a contract CIO and operations happened at government speed. The department drew in 300 people from other agencies, and IT teams were assigned to different opportunities. I wanted consolidated IT rather than siloed and needed a culture of urgency and innovation for the state, so we began looking at tools to help us do that. Building on the efforts of the previous administration, the Governor moved all state employees to Google Apps for Work. Today, Chromebox for meetings improves transparency and brings public servants, citizens and elected officials closer together.

Before moving to Chromebox for meetings, we spent $1.5 million a year on a legacy video conferencing system. I felt we weren’t getting enough capability with the technology for the amount of money we were spending. So we phased out all the Tandberg systems and got 178 Chromebox for meetings licenses using a small fraction of our budget.

The cost savings is tremendous, but we’re even more thrilled with the way Chromebox for meetings transforms how we do our jobs and think about public service. Specifically, this technology cuts down on bureaucratic processes and hierarchical protocol. Everyone from the Governor and executives to agency directors use Chromebox for team, cabinet-level and all-hands meetings. Participants can comment and ask questions regardless of their location. We’re also introducing Chromebox for meetings throughout the school system to improve communication between teachers, administrators and students.

With Chromebox for meetings, we’re opening up meetings and making them less formal. We have Chromeboxes in our halls, allowing people to gather around and have impromptu meetings that anybody can join — the closest thing to a watercooler conversation you can get over the Internet. It’s also easier to work together on documents that are viewable on monitors at the stations, making meetings even more interactive and productive.

This technology has also reduced people’s travel time and increased productivity. Wyoming is a large state with a small population and a lot of open road between cities — you can drive for miles on the highway without seeing another car. Chromebox for meetings shortens the distance between offices by allowing people to have a face-to-face interaction without getting in their cars.

I get most excited about the fact that we can be collaborative with Chromebox for meetings. In the future, I’d like to set up an online help desk via live Hangout that’s accessible through the state’s website, so that when web visitors need help, we’d be there to help them right away. We’re connecting people at all levels of government to each other and to the public. With Google tools we can move as fast as our ideas can take us, which is just what we need to bring startup innovation and agility into the halls of government.

Read More..

charity water unifies a global team with Chromebox for Meetings

Posted by Ian Cook, head of IT, charity: water

Editors note: Today’s post comes from Ian Cook, head of IT at charity: water, a non-profit organization that provides clean and safe drinking water to people in developing nations. Learn about how the organization is using Chromebox for meetings to keep the team connected, from its New York City HQ to onsite in Cambodia. 

At charity: water, our mission is to bring clean and safe drinking water to every person on the planet. We have a “100 percent model,” which means every dollar donated goes directly to the field to fund clean water projects. This is made possible by a small group of passionate and dedicated supporters who cover all of our operating costs: everything from staff salaries, to flights to the field, to the ink in our printer.

At charity: water transparency is one of our core values, and with the help of Google we maintain transparency in two major ways. We use the Google Maps APIs to show every supporter exactly what weve done with their donation by giving them the GPS coordinates, photos and community information of the exact projects they made possible. We also rely heavily on tools like Chromebox for Meetings to communicate with our global team; our headquarters is in New York, but we have staff that work remotely in Europe, Asia, and Africa.

We switched to Chromebox for Meetings after testing different products, and gathering feedback from our employees. They found Chromebox for Meetings to be the best solution: powerful, easy to use and seamlessly integrated with Google Apps. When we moved into a new, custom office space, we opted to include screens connected to Chromebox for Meetings in all nine of our conference rooms.

We like when technology enables, rather than interrupts, our natural flow of working. At any time, more than half our conference rooms are booked for virtual meetings, allowing us to connect instantly with colleagues around the world. We even have a 48-inch TV mounted at standing height on a media cart, which we move into the common area for company wide meetings. Remote employees can join via Hangouts and participate as if they were standing beside their colleagues. In fact, our first UK-based employee is connected with our New York City headquarters on Google Hangouts almost every day.

With simpler video conferencing, we’ve improved work-life balance by giving everyone, from interns to executive staff, more flexibility to work from anywhere at any time. Chromebox for Meetings is easy to scale and mobile-friendly, which is important since travel is core to what we do. Using Hangouts in conjunction with Chrome device management also allows us to help out employees with IT issues in real time, which is essential for a global team that often works remotely. I can share screens and fix problems whether at the office, at home or on the road.

Our team’s made up of excited, passionate people, running a non-profit much like a fast-paced technology startup. We need tools that help us work more collaboratively, even when a number of our team members are dispersed across the globe. We’ve even started an initiative to hire the best talent for the job, regardless of physical location. We wouldn’t be able to do this without powerful video conferencing technology and work tools that enable mobility. With Chromebox for Meetings and Google Apps, we can work better at achieving our mission while maintaining the transparency that’s at the core of our values.

Read More..