Tag Archives: Chrome enterprise

Extending enterprise zero trust models to the web

For over a decade, Chrome has been committed to advancing security on the web, and we’re proud of the end-user and customer safety improvements we’ve delivered over the years. We take our responsibility seriously, and we continue to work on ways to better protect billions of users around the world, whether it’s driving the industry towards HTTPS, introducing and then advancing the concept of a browser sandbox, improving phishing and malware detection via Safe Browsing improvements or working alongside Google’s Project Zero team to build innovative exploit mitigations.

To continue our work of making a safer web for everyone, we’ve partnered with Google’s Cloud Security team to expand what enterprises should expect from Chrome and web security. Today the Cloud Security team is announcing BeyondCorp Enterprise, our new zero trust product offering, built around the principle of zero trust: that access must be secured, authorized and granted based on knowledge of identities and devices, and with no assumed trust in the network. With Chrome, BeyondCorp Enterprise is able to deliver customers a zero trust solution that protects data, better safeguards users against threats in real time and provides critical device information to inform access decisions, all without the need for added agents or extra software. These benefits are built right into Chrome, where users are already spending much of their workday accessing the apps and resources they need to be productive, and IT teams can easily manage these controls right through our Chrome Browser Cloud Management offering.

By extending zero trust principles to Chrome, we’re introducing the following advanced security capabilities that will help keep users and their company data safer than ever before:

Enhanced malware and phishing prevention: BeyondCorp Enterprise allows for real-time URL checks and deep scanning of files for malware.

Notification that reads "sample.zip is dangerous, so Chrome has blocked it."

Sensitive data protection across the web:IT teams can enforce a company’s customized rules for what types of data can be uploaded, downloaded or copied and pasted across sites.

Notification that reads "This file has sensitive or dangerous content. Remove this content and try again.

Visibility and insights: Organizations can get more insights into potential risks or suspicious activity through cloud-based reporting, including tracking of malicious downloads on corporate devices or employees entering passwords on known phishing sites.

Three bar charts labeled "Chrome high risk users," "Chrome high risk domains," and "Chrome data protection summary."

Including Chrome in your zero trust strategy is critical not only because your employees spend much of the working day in the browser, but also because Chrome is in a unique position to identify and prevent threats across multiple web-based apps. Enhanced capabilities surrounding data protection and loss prevention protects organizations from both external threats and internal leak risks, many of which may be unintentional. We’ve built these capabilities into Chrome in a way that gives IT and security teams flexibility around how to configure policies and set restrictions, while also giving administrators more visibility into potentially harmful or suspicious activities. Naturally, these threat and data protections are also extended to Chrome OS devices, which offer additional proactive and built-in security protections.

As with many of the major security advances Chrome has introduced in the past, we know it takes time to adopt new approaches. We’re here to help with a solution that is both simple and more secure for IT teams and their users. As you look at 2021 and where your security plans will take you, check out BeyondCorp Enterprise.

Chrome will host a webinar on Thursday, January 28, highlighting some of our recent enterprise enhancements, and offering a preview of what’s to come in 2021. We’ll also talk more about the Chrome-specific capabilities of BeyondCorp Enterprise. We hope you can join us!

Source: Google Chrome

6 Chromebook keyboard shortcuts that save time

Chrome Browser keyboard shortcuts (which also work on Chromebook) can be major timesavers. Keyboard shortcuts, also called “hot keys,” help you speed up a wide variety of tasks, including taking a screenshot, locking your screen, and even (fittingly) viewing all keyboard shortcuts—just click Ctrl + Alt + /.

These six Chromebook keyboard shortcuts are among the most popular shortcuts that can help you do more in less time. While these tips are especially helpful for those of you who use Chromebooks at work, you might find they help you get things done faster, regardless of whether you're at work or home.

1. Dock browser windows.
Digging into projects often requires opening more than one browser window—also called a “browser instance”—at a time. This can be an effective way to organize work. You can open one browser instance for dashboards, one for apps, another for Gmail, a third for Google Docs you’re working on, and, perhaps, one for music.

If you find yourself going back and forth between two browser instances, it’s a good idea to “dock” your screens, or anchor them in place on your screen so they don’t move around. This way, you can access two screens side-by-side. Hit Alt + ] to dock one browser instance to the left and Alt + [ to dock the other browser instance to the right.

2. Switch between browser instances or browser tabs.
Docking browser instances is one way to work more efficiently when you’re juggling projects. Another strategy is to quickly switch between what you have open. Within each browser instance, it’s not uncommon to have multiple tabs open on your screen. People do this often when they’re searching the web or working in different apps, like Gmail or Drive. You can use keyboard shortcuts to switch between browser instances and between tabs.

Click Alt + tab to switch between the two most recent browser instances. Continue to hold Alt after pressing tab and you’ll get a tiled view of all of your open browser instances. Click Ctrl + tab (no point and click necessary) to navigate between browser tabs.

3. Recover closed tabs.
If you accidentally close Chrome, there’s no need to worry. Simply hit Ctrl + Shift + T and your most recently closed tab (or browser instance) comes right back. If you closed more than one, just hit that combination of keys again, and Chrome will keep restoring.

4. Use Caps Lock.
One of the first things you might notice when you switch to Chrome OS is that there’s no Caps Lock key. But let’s face it, sometimes you need to shout your enthusiasm (COOKIES IN THE BREAKROOM!). In such instances, Caps Lock is just a keyboard shortcut away.

Editing Microsoft Office files on a Chromebook is the cat’s meow. Follow the instructions below.

Use Alt + search to activate and deactivate Caps Lock. The search key typically features a magnifying glass and is located on the far left side of your keyboard where Caps Lock is on other laptops. On some Chromebooks, you want to press Alt + Assistant , which is the key that resembles bubbles and is located between the Ctrl and Alt keys on the bottom left side of the keyboard. A notification will pop up and let you know when you’ve activated Caps Lock and again when you deactivate it.

If you use Caps Lock frequently, you can also enable the search key to be a permanent Caps Lock button in Settings. Here’s how:

Click the time in the bottom right corner of your screen. It will pull up different tools for you to use.
Click the gear/settings icon in the top right.
Scroll to Device and click Keyboard.
Use the drop-down menu to the right of Search to select Caps Lock.

5. Switch between work and personal accounts.

Setting up a personal account on your Chromebook to coincide with your work account makes it easy to switch between personal and work email on one device. This post explains how to set up a personal account on a Chromebook. Once you’ve set that up, use Alt + Ctrl + > or Alt + Ctrl + < to quickly switch between accounts.

6. Launch applications located on Chrome OS’s “shelf,” or taskbar.

At the bottom of the screen of your Chromebook, you’ll see a row of icons representing applications. We call this bottom part of the screen the “app shelf.” Keyboard shortcuts let you launch a specific application on the app shelf. Alt + 1 will launch the first app from the left on your shelf, Alt + 2 will open the second app from the left on your shelf, and so on.

For more help on how to work efficiently on Chromebooks, check out our posts on how to set up a new Chromebook, 6 common questions for former Mac users who are new to Chromebook, how to use a Chromebook if you’ve switched from a PC, and (for IT admins) 5 Google IT tips for driving and sustaining Chromebook adoption. Whether you’re new to Chromebooks or have used them for a while, these tips can help you—and your company—complete your work faster.

Source: Google Chrome

6 Chromebook keyboard shortcuts that save time

1. Dock browser windows.

Digging into projects often requires opening more than one browser window—also called a “browser instance”—at a time. This can be an effective way to organize work. You can open one browser instance for dashboards, one for apps, another for Gmail, a third for Google Docs you’re working on, and, perhaps, one for music.

2. Switch between browser instances or browser tabs.

Docking browser instances is one way to work more efficiently when you’re juggling projects. Another strategy is to quickly switch between what you have open. Within each browser instance, it’s not uncommon to have multiple tabs open on your screen. People do this often when they’re searching the web or working in different apps, like Gmail or Drive. You can use keyboard shortcuts to switch between browser instances and between tabs.

3. Recover closed tabs.

If you accidentally close Chrome, there’s no need to worry. Simply hit Ctrl + Shift + T and your most recently closed tab (or browser instance) comes right back. If you closed more than one, just hit that combination of keys again, and Chrome will keep restoring.

4. Use Caps Lock.

One of the first things you might notice when you switch to Chrome OS is that there’s no Caps Lock key. But let’s face it, sometimes you need to shout your enthusiasm (COOKIES IN THE BREAKROOM!). In such instances, Caps Lock is just a keyboard shortcut away.

If you use Caps Lock frequently, you can also enable the search key to be a permanent Caps Lock button in Settings. Here’s how:

Click the time in the bottom right corner of your screen. It will pull up different tools for you to use.
Click the gear/settings icon in the top right.
Scroll to Device and click Keyboard.
Use the drop-down menu to the right of Search to select Caps Lock.

5. Switch between work and personal accounts.

6. Launch applications located on Chrome OS’s “shelf,” or taskbar.

At the bottom of the screen of your Chromebook, you’ll see a row of icons representing applications. We call this bottom part of the screen the “app shelf.” Keyboard shortcuts let you launch a specific application on the app shelf. Alt + 1 will launch the first app from the left on your shelf, Alt + 2 will open the second app from the left on your shelf, and so on.

Source: Google Chrome

From the kitchen to the factory: Three surprising places you’ll find Chrome Enterprise

We talk a lot about how cloud-native devices like Chromebooks—which automatically update and store your work in the cloud—can help you stay productive at work. What you might not know is that businesses are using these devices in unexpected ways to keep their organizations on track, whether it’s cooking your favorite dish, making the factory floor more efficient, or bringing devices to ambulances for on-the-go emergency care. Here are three surprising examples of enterprises using Chromebooks and Chrome Enterprise to help employees be better trained, better informed, and better connected.

Panda Restaurant Group: cooking your favorite dishes perfectly, every time
When Panda Express customers order their favorite meals—such as the Original Orange Chicken, Broccoli Beef, and KungPao Chicken Breast—they expect the dish they know and love to be the same each time. That’s why in almost 400 locations, Panda Restaurant Group associates train employees on these recipes with the help of Chromebooks. “Chromebooks make it easier for new associates to complete e-modules and onboarding,” says Clark Yang, a training leader at a Panda Express in Los Angeles.

Royal Technologies: bringing the factory floor to the cloud, some assembly required
To give manufacturing managers on the factory floor an easier way to check parts quality, manufacturing company Royal Technologies placed Acer Chromebase CA24I devices on shop floors. As parts come off the assembly line, managers compare them to images on the Chromebase screen, then pack the parts for shipping. They can even generate quality-check reports by filling out a Google Form on the Chromebase and sharing results with customers via Google Sheets. “We’re not only keeping parts quality high,” says French Williams, IT Manager at Royal Technologies, “we’re also communicating more closely with our customers.”

Middlesex Hospital: equipping paramedics with tools to help patients, fast
When you’re treating a person who needs critical care, time is precious. Middlesex Hospital paramedics understand this intimately—they receive more than 10,000 emergency calls each year. The hospital uses Chromebooks to respond to these calls quickly, so that treatment can start within seconds after arriving on the scene. “Even though they’re built to withstand rough handling, they don’t weigh down our emergency packs,” says Jim Santacroce, Manager of Emergency Medical Services at Middlesex Hospital, of their Chromebooks. “Their battery life keeps pace with our long shifts. It takes no time at all to learn how to use Chrome OS on Chromebooks—and when you open them, they boot up almost immediately. We don’t need to watch the minutes tick away while we wait to open a patient record—especially in the high-pressure emergency environment.”

Whether responding to a 911 call or tracking patient care, healthcare providers at Middlesex Hospital rely on the flexibility and security of Chrome Enterprise to put the focus back on patients.

These are just a few examples of how businesses from different industries are using Chrome Enterprise to increase productivity, inspire collaboration, and better serve their customers. To find more stories like these, visit Chrome Enterprise on the Google Cloud blog.

Source: The Official Google Blog

From the kitchen to the factory: Three surprising places you’ll find Chrome Enterprise

Source: The Official Google Blog

New year, faster you: 5 Chromebook tips that can make any work day better

As 2019 gets into full swing, many of us are looking for ways to be more efficient at work. If you use a Chromebook as part of your job, you’re in luck. We’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how to make things faster, easier, and more organized for cloud workers, and they’re all built into Chrome devices. Here are five tips to help you make the most of working on your Chromebook in the new year.

1. Master keyboard shortcuts

Keyboard shortcuts are a great way to work efficiently, but they’re only convenient if you can remember them all. Don’t waste time searching for each command individually, or writing them down on that no longer sticky, sticky-note tacked to your desk. Instead, press “Ctrl + Alt + ?” to pull up a visual map of Chrome OS hotkeys and functions

2. Attach files to Calendar invites

With G Suite, you can attach meeting docs, spreadsheets, presentations and other resources, directly to Google Calendar invites and events, for more organized and efficient meetings with colleagues.

In Calendar, create or open an event
In the “Add description” section, click the attach file paperclip symbol
Select a file to attach and click “save”

3. Manage applications and tabs

It can be challenging clicking back and forth between multiple tabs and windows. Here’s how you can take a glance at open windows, hop between tabs, and work quickly across them all.

See all open windows: Swipe up or down with three fingers. If you have Australian scrolling turned on, swipe up. If you have traditional scrolling turned on, swipe down.
Move between pages: To go back to the page you were previously on, swipe left with two fingers. To go forward to a page you were on, swipe right with two fingers.
Switch between tabs: If you have multiple browser tabs open, you can swipe left and right with three fingers to switch between tabs.
Open link in new tab: Point to the link, then tap or click the touchpad with three fingers.
Close a tab: Point to the tab, then tap or click the touchpad with three fingers.

4. Turn on CAPS lock

On a Chromebook, you can toggle the CAPS lock feature on and off by “tapping alt + (search key)”. The search key is located on the left side of the keyboard, above shift. Turning caps lock on allows you to type those emphasized doc headers without having to hit and hold shift with each keystroke. It may seem like a small timesaver, but every second counts.

5. Work offline

No Wi-Fi, no problem. Remain productive offline by using G Suite or working in the Android version of your required application, which you can download from Google Play on your Chromebook.

To get started, make sure offline sync is enabled in Google Drive:

While you still have a Wi-Fi connection, visit drive.google.com
Click settings in the top right
Check the box next to "Sync Google Docs, Sheets, Slides & Drawings files to this computer so that you can edit offline." You’re all set.

Anything you edit offline will update automatically once you’re back online.

Want to learn more? Check out additional Chromebook tips, and find out how Chromebooks can benefit businesses of all sizes.

Source: The Official Google Blog

Four things you might have missed from Chrome Enterprise in 2018

It’s been a busy year for Chrome Enterprise—we welcomed new hardware for enterprises, helped boost workplace productivity, and celebrated ten years of Chrome. Here’s a look at four updates you might have missed from Chrome Enterprise in 2018.

1. We helped businesses prepare for the era of cloud workers

The availability of cloud-based apps and technology has fundamentally changed the way we work, and as a result, many businesses are rethinking the devices and tools they provide their workforce. This year we commissioned a study with Forrester that takes a closer look at the new era of cloud workers. We hosted a half-day virtual event, Cloud Worker Live, to share insights and practical advice, and we’ve made all the sessions available to watch online.

And we also want to help businesses identify the cloud workers in their organization to better support them with the right cloud-based tools. A new Forrester report we commissioned provides key recommendations for workforce segmentation, and we offered some insights on how we do it ourselves here at Google.

2. We launched our Grab and Go program to help businesses stay productive

When an employee’s device isn’t working, it can have more consequences than you think—from the hours employees devote to troubleshooting devices instead of completing projects, to the time IT teams spend on repair and replacement. To address this problem for both workers and businesses, we introduced our Grab and Go program to enterprises in July. Since then, we’ve expanded the program with new partners, and Waymo shared with us how Grab and Go has helped them support their shift workers and dispatchers. You can learn more about Grab and Go on our website.

3. We helped help admins stay up-to-date with Chrome releases

If looking after Chrome browser and devices is part of your job, you probably know that Chrome releases a full OS update about every 6 weeks. Our new Admin Insider series gives you a quick snapshot of the most important changes so you can take action. And if you need even more info, you can now sign up to receive new release details as they become available.

4. We heard from customers all over the world

This year we took a closer look at more than a dozen enterprises that have adopted Chrome Enterprise in every corner of the world. For example, in India and Africa, Dr. Agarwal’s Eye Hospital is making clinical care easier for doctors and their patients by deploying more than a thousand Chrome devices across its 70 facilities. In France, Veolia, a global water, waste, and energy management company, is rolling out Chrome devices to all of its nearly 170,000 employees to increase productivity and collaboration across its offices on 5 different continents. And in Australia, Service NSW is providing better government services through Chrome-powered kiosks.

There’s a lot more to come in 2019. In the meantime, you can learn more about Chrome Enterprise on our website.

Source: The Official Google Blog

What a week! 105 announcements from Google Cloud Next ’18

Google Cloud Next ‘18 was incredible! From fantastickeynotes and fireside chats to GO-JEK CTO Ajey Gore appearing on-stage on a scooter to listening to Target CIO Mike McNamara we had an inspiring, educational and entertaining week at our flagship conference. We were joined by over 23,000 leaders, developers and partners from our Google Cloud community, listened to more than 290 customer speakers share their stories of business transformation in the cloud and took part in hundreds of breakout sessions. The theme of the conference was Made Here Together, and we’re so grateful to everyone who attended and contributed to help build the cloud for everyone.

But the week of Next wouldn’t be complete without a comprehensive list of what happened. So without further ado, here are 105 product and solution launches, customer stories and announcements from Next ‘18.

Customers

1. eBay—The world’s largest global marketplace is leveraging Google Cloud in many different ways, including experimenting with conversational commerce with Google Assistant, building ML models with Cloud TPUs for image classification, and applying AI to help buyers quickly find what they’re looking for.

2. GO-JEK—This ride-hailing and logistics startup in Jakarta uses Google Cloud to support its hundreds of thousands of concurrent transactions, Maps for predicting traffic and BigQuery to get data insights.

3. Lahey Health—Lahey’s journey to the cloud included migrating from four legacy email systems to G Suite in 91 days.

4. LATAM Airlines—South America’s largest airline uses G Suite to connect teams, and GCP for data analytics and creating 3D digital elevation models.

5. LG CNS—LG is looking to Google Cloud AI, Cloud IoT Edge and Edge TPU to build its Intelligent Vision inspection tool for better quality and efficiency in some of its factories.

6. HSBC—One of the world’s leading banking institutions shares how they’re using data analytics on Google Cloud to extract meaningful insights from its 100PB of data and billions of transactions.

7. The New York Times—The newest way the New York Times is using Google Cloud is to scan, encode, and preserve its entire historical photo archive and evolve the way the newsroom tells stories by putting new tools for visual storytelling in the hands of journalists.

8. Nielsen—To support its nearly 45,000 employees in 100 countries with real-time collaboration and cost-effective video conferencing, Nielsen turned to G Suite.

9. Ocado—This online-only supermarket uses Google Cloud’s AI capabilities to power its machine learning model for responding to customer requests and detecting fraud much faster.

10. PayPal—PayPal discusses the hows and whys of their journey to the public cloud.

11. Scotiabank—This Canadian banking institution shares its views on modernizing and using the cloud to solve inherent problems inside an organization.

12. Sky—The UK media company uses Google Cloud to identify and disconnect pirate streaming sites during live sporting events.

13. Target—Moving to Google Cloud has helped Target address challenges like scaling up for Cyber Monday without disruptions, and building new, cutting-edge experiences for their guests.

14. 20th Century Fox—The renowned movie studio shares how it’s using BigQuery ML to understand audience preferences.

15. Twitter—Twitter moved large-scale Hadoop clusters to GCP for ad hoc analysis and cold storage, with a total of about 300 PB of data migrated.

16. Veolia—This environmental solution provider moved its 250 systems to G Suite for their anytime, anywhere, any-device cloud project.

17. Weight Watchers—How Weight Watchers evolved its business, including creating mobile app and an online community to support its customers’ lifestyles.

Partners

18. 2017 Partner Awards—Congratulations to the winners! These awards recognize partners who dedicated themselves to creating industry-leading solutions and strong customer experiences with Google Cloud.

19. SAP and Deloitte collaboration—Customers can run SAP apps on GCP with Deloitte’s comprehensive tools.

20. Updates to our Cisco partnership—Includes integrations between our new Call Center AI solution and Cisco Customer Journey solutions, integrations with Webex and G Suite, and a new developer challenge for hybrid solutions.

21. Digital Asset and BlockApps—These launch partners are helping users try Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) frameworks on GCP, with open-source integrations coming later this year.

22. Intel and Appsbroker—We’ve created a cloud center of excellence to make high-performance cloud migration a lot easier.

23. NetApp—New capabilities help customers access shared file systems that apps need to move to cloud, plus Cloud Volumes are now available to more GCP customers.

24. VMware vRealize Orchestrator—A new plug-in makes it easy to use GCP alongside on-prem VMware deployments for efficient resource provisioning.

25. New partner specializations—We’ve recently welcomed 19 partners in five new specialization areas (bringing the total areas to nine) so customers can get even more industry-specific help moving to cloud.

26. SaaS-specific initiative—A new set of programs to help our partners bring SaaS applications to their customers.

27. Accenture Google Cloud Business Group, or AGBG—This newly formed group brings together experts who’ll work with enterprise clients to build tailored cloud solutions.

28. Partnership with NIH—We’re joining with the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to make more research datasets available, integrate researcher authentication and authorization mechanisms with Google Cloud credentials, and support industry standards for data access, discovery, and cloud computation.

29. Partnership with Iron Mountain—This new partnership helps enterprises extract hard-to-find information from inside their stored documents.

Chrome, Devices and Mobility

30. Cloud-based browser management—From a single view, admins can manage Chrome Browser running on Windows, Mac, Chrome OS and Linux.

31. Password Alert Policy—Admins can set rules to prevent corporate password use on sites outside of the company’s control.

32. Managed Google Play (out of beta)—Admins can curate applications by user groups as well as customize a broad range of policies and functions like application blacklisting and remote uninstall.

Google Cloud Platform | AI and machine learning

33. Cloud AutoML Vision, AutoML Natural Language, and AutoML Translation (all three in beta)—Powerful ML models that can be extended to suit specific needs, without requiring any specialized knowledge in machine learning or coding.

34. Cloud Vision API (GA)—Cloud Vision API now recognizes handwriting, supports additional file types (PDF and TIFF), and can identify where an object is located within an image.

35. Cloud Text-to-Speech (beta)—Improvements to Cloud Text-to-Speech offer multilingual access to voices generated by DeepMind WaveNet technology and the ability to optimize for the type of speaker you plan to use.

36. Cloud Speech-to-Text—Updates to this API help you identify what language is being spoken, plus provide word-level confidence scores and multi-channel (multi-participant) recognition.

37. Training and online prediction through scikit-learn and XGBoost in Cloud ML Engine (GA) —While Cloud ML Engine has long supported TensorFlow, we’re releasing XGBoost and scikit-learn as alternative libraries for training and classification.

38. Kubeflow v0.2—Building on the previous version, Kubeflow v0.2 makes it easier for you to use machine learning software stacks on Kubernetes. Kubeflow v0.2 has an improved user interface and several enhancements to monitoring and reporting.

39. Cloud TPU v3 (alpha)—Announced at this year’s I/O, our third-generation TPUs are now available for Google Cloud customers to accelerate training and inference workloads.

40. Cloud TPU Pod (alpha)—Second-generation Cloud TPUs are now available to customers in scalable clusters. Support for Cloud TPUs in Kubernetes Engine is also available in beta.

41. Phone Gateway in Dialogflow Enterprise Edition (beta)—Now you can assign a working phone number to a virtual agent—all without infrastructure. Speech recognition, speech synthesis, natural language understanding and orchestration are all managed for you.

42. Knowledge Connectors in Dialogflow Enterprise Edition (beta)—These connectors understand unstructured documents like FAQs or knowledge base articles and complement your pre-built intents with automated responses sourced from internal document collections.

43. Automatic Spelling Correction in Dialogflow Enterprise Edition (beta)—Natural language understanding can sometimes be challenged by spelling and grammar errors in a text-based conversation. Dialogflow can now automatically correct spelling mistakes using technology similar to what’s used in Google Search and other products.

44. Sentiment Analysis in Dialogflow Enterprise Edition (beta)—Relies on the Cloud Natural Language API to optionally inspect a request and score a user's attitude as positive, negative or neutral.

45. Text-to-Speech in Dialogflow Enterprise Edition (beta)—We’re adding native audio response to Dialogflow to complement existing Speech-to-Text capability.

46. Contact Center AI (alpha)—A new solution which includes new Dialogflow features alongside other tools to perform analytics and assist live agents.

47. Agent Assist in Contact Center AI (alpha)—Supports a live agent during a conversation and provides the agent with relevant information, like suggested articles, in real-time.

48. Conversational Topic Modeler in Contact Center AI (alpha)—Uses Google AI to analyze historical audio and chat logs to uncover insights about topics and trends in customer interactions.

Google Cloud Platform | Infrastructure services

49. Managed Istio (alpha)—A fully-managed service on GCP for Istio, an open-source project that creates a service mesh to manage and control microservices.

50. Istio 1.0—Speaking of open-source Istio, the project is imminently moving up to version 1.0.

51. Apigee API Management for Istio (GA)—Soon you can use your existing Apigee Edge API management platform to wrangle microservices running on the Istio service mesh.

52. Stackdriver Service Monitoring (early access)—A new view for our Stackdriver monitoring suite that shows operators how their end users are experiencing their systems. This way, they can manage against SRE-inspired SLOs.

53. GKE On-Prem with multi-cluster management (coming soon to alpha)—A Google-configured version of Kubernetes that includes multi-cluster management and can be deployed on-premise or in other clouds, laying the foundation for true hybrid computing.

54. GKE Policy Management (coming soon to alpha)—Lets you take control of your Kubernetes environment by applying centralized policies across all enrolled clusters.

55. Resource-based pricing for Compute Engine (rolling out this fall)—A new way we’re calculating sustained use discounts on Compute Engine machines, aggregating all your vCPUs and memory resources to maximize your savings.

Google Cloud Platform | Application development

56. GKE serverless add-on (coming soon to alpha)—Runs serverless workloads that scale up and down automatically, or respond to events, on top of Kubernetes Engine.

57. Knative—The same technologies included in the GKE serverless add-on are now available in this open-source project.

58. Cloud Build (GA)—Our fully managed continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) platform lets you build container and non-container artifacts and integrates with a wide variety of tools from across the developer ecosystem.

59. GitHub partnership—GitHub is a popular source code repository, and now you can use it with Cloud Build.

60. New App Engine runtimes—We’re adding support for the popular Python 3.7 and PHP 7.2 runtimes to App Engine standard environment.

61. Cloud Functions (GA)—Our event-driven serverless compute service is now generally available, and includes support for additional languages, plus performance, networking and security features.

62. Serverless containers on Cloud Functions (early preview)—Packages a function within a container, to better support custom runtimes, binaries and frameworks.

Google Cloud Platform | Data analytics

63. BigQuery ML (beta)—A new capability that allows data analysts and data scientists to easily build machine learning models directly from BigQuery with simple SQL commands, making machine learning more accessible to all.

64. BigQuery Clustering (beta)—Creates clustered tables in BigQuery as an added layer of data optimization to accelerate query performance.

65. BigQuery GIS (public alpha)—New functions and data types in BigQuery that follow the SQL/MM Spatial standard. Handy for PostGIS users and anyone already doing geospatial analysis in SQL.

66. Sheets Data Connector for BigQuery (beta)—A new way to directly access and refresh data in BigQuery from Google Sheets.

67. Data Studio Explorer (beta)—Deeper integration between BigQuery and Google Data Studio to help users visualize query results quickly.

68. Cloud Composer (GA)—Based on the open source Apache Airflow project, Cloud Composer distributes workloads across multiple clouds.

69. Customer Managed Encryption Keys for Dataproc—Customer-managed encryption keys that let customers create, use and revoke key encryption for BigQuery, Compute Engine and Cloud Storage. Generally available for BigQuery; beta for Compute Engine and Cloud Storage.

70. Streaming analytics updates, including Python Streaming and Dataflow Streaming Engine (both in beta)—Provides streaming customers more responsive autoscaling on fewer resources, by separating compute and state storage.

71. Dataproc Autoscaling and Dataproc Custom Packages (alpha)—Gives users Hadoop and Spark clusters that scale automatically based on the resource requirements of submitted jobs, delivering a serverless experience.

Google Cloud Platform | Databases

72. Oracle workloads on GCP—We’re partnering with managed service providers (MSPs) so you can run Oracle workloads on GCP using dedicated hardware.

73. Compute Engine VMs powered by Intel Optane DC Persistent Memory—Lets you run SAP HANA workloads for more capacity at lower cost.

74. Cloud Firestore (beta)—Helps you store, sync and query data for cloud-native apps. Support for Datastore Mode is also coming soon.

75. Updates to Cloud Bigtable—Regional replication across zones and Key Visualizer, in beta, to help debug performance issues.

76. Updates to Cloud Spanner—Lets users import and export data using Cloud Dataflow. A preview of Cloud Spanner’s data manipulation language (DML) is now available.

77. Resource-based pricing model for Compute Engine—A new billing model gives customers more savings and a simpler bill.

Google Cloud Platform | IoT

78. Edge TPU (early access)—Google’s purpose-built ASIC chip that’s designed to run TensorFlow Lite ML so you can accelerate ML training in the cloud and utilize fast ML inference at the edge.

79. Cloud IoT Edge (alpha)—Extends data processing and machine learning capabilities to gateways, cameras and end devices, helping make IoT devices and deployments smart, secure and reliable.

Google Cloud Platform | Security

80. Context-aware access—Capabilities to help organizations define and enforce granular access to GCP APIs, resources, G Suite, and third-party SaaS apps based on a user’s identity, location and the context of their request.

81. Titan Security Key—A FIDO security key that includes firmware developed by Google to verify its integrity.

82. Shielded VMs (beta)—A new way to leverage advanced platform security capabilities to help ensure your VMs haven’t been tampered with or compromised.

83. Binary Authorization (alpha)—Lets you enforce signature validation when deploying container images.

84. Container Registry Vulnerability Scanning (alpha)—Automatically performs vulnerability scanning for Ubuntu, Debian and Alpine images to help ensure they are safe to deploy and don’t contain vulnerable packages.

85. Geo-based access control in Cloud Armor (beta)—Lets you control access to your services based on the geographic location of the client trying to connect to your application.

86. Cloud HSM (alpha)—A fully managed cloud-hosted hardware security module (HSM) service that allows you to host encryption keys and perform cryptographic operations in FIPS 140-2 Level 3 certified HSMs.

87. Access Transparency (coming soon to GA)—Provides an audit trail of actions taken by Google Support and Engineering in the rare instances that they interact with your data and system configurations on Google Cloud.

G Suite | Enterprise collaboration and productivity

88. New investigation tool in the Security Center (Early Adopter Program)—A new tool in the security center for G Suite that helps admins identify which users are potentially infected, see if anything’s been shared externally and remove access to Drive files or delete malicious emails.

89. Data Regions for G Suite (available now for G Suite Business and Enterprise customers)—Lets you choose where to store primary data for select G Suite apps—globally, distributed, U.S. or Europe.

90. Smart Reply in Hangouts Chat—Coming soon to G Suite, Smart Reply uses artificial intelligence to recognize which emails need responses and proposes reply options.

91. Smart Compose in Gmail—Coming soon to G Suite, Smart Compose intelligently autocompletes emails for you by filling in greetings, common phrases and more.

92. Grammar Suggestions in Google Docs (Early Adopter Program)—Uses a unique machine translation-based approach to recognize grammatical errors (simple and complex) and suggest corrections.

93. Voice Commands for Hangouts Meet hardware (coming to select Hangouts Meet hardware customers later this year)—Brings some of the same magic of the Google Assistant to the conference room so that teams can connect to video meetings quickly.

94. The new Gmail (GA)—Features like redesigned security warnings, snooze and offline access are now generally available to G Suite users.

95. New functionality in Cloud Search—Helps organizations intelligently and securely index third-party data beyond G Suite (whether the data is stored in the cloud or on-prem).

96. Google Voice to G Suite (Early Adopter Program)—An enterprise version of Google Voice that lets admins manage users, provision and port phone numbers, access detailed reports and more.

97. Standalone offering of Drive Enterprise (GA)—New offering with usage-based pricing to help companies easily transition data from legacy enterprise content management (ECM) systems.

98. G Suite Enterprise for Education—Expanding to 16 new countries.

99. Jamboard Mobile App—Added features for Jamboard mobile devices, including new drawing tools and a new way to claim jams using near-field communication (NFC).

100. Salesforce Add-on in Google Sheets—A new add-on that lets you import data and reports from Salesforce into Sheets and then push updates made in Sheets back to Salesforce.

Social Impact

101. Data Solutions for Change—A program that empowers nonprofits with advanced data analytics to drive social and environmental impact. Benefits include role-based support and Qwiklabs.

102. Visualize 2030—In collaboration with the World Bank, the United Nations Foundation, and the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data, we’re hosting a data storytelling contest for college or graduate students.

103. Harambee Youth Employment Accelerator—We’re helping Harambee connect more unemployed youth with entry-level positions in Johannesburg by analyzing large datasets with BigQuery and machine learning on Cloud Dataflow.

104. Foundation for Precision Medicine—We’re aiding the Foundation for Precision Medicine to find a cure for Alzheimer’s disease by scaling their patient database to millions of anonymized electronic medical record (EMR) data points, creating custom modeling, and helping them visualize data.

Whew! That was 104. Thanks to all our customers, partners, and Googlers for making this our best week of the year.

But wait, there’s more! Here’s the 105th announcement: Next 2019 will be April 9-11 at the newly renovated Moscone in San Francisco. Please save the date!

Source: The Official Google Blog

Delivering better government services at lower costs with Chrome

Editor’s note: Today’s post comes from Vijay Badal, Director of Application Services of DOTComm. Founded in 2003, DOTComm provides centralized IT support and consulting for 70 government agencies in the city of Omaha and Douglas County, NE. DOTComm uses Chrome browser and G Suite to improve employee productivity and mobility and cut IT costs.

At DOTComm, our employees provide technical support for more than 5,000 government workers throughout Omaha and Douglas County. Because these workers are spread across 120 different locations, our employees need access to the tools they need to do their jobs whether they’re in the office or on site with our customers. Several years ago, we realized the legacy systems we were using were getting in the way.

When employees had to travel to provide technical support for the government agencies we serve, they didn’t have mobile access to important documents, or the ability to share and send files back to the office, such as videos that outlined technical issues. In addition, hardware and licensing were costly, and inflexible productivity applications were making it difficult for employees to collaborate or work from the road. Plus, we needed half a dozen employees just to maintain our infrastructure!

To solve these challenges, we turned to Chrome and G Suite. Chrome is fast, secure and gives our staff access to thousands of useful extensions. It’s also allowed us to standardize across our desktop and mobile devices. G Suite has helped us cut hardware costs and improve collaboration and mobility. With Chrome and G Suite, we no longer pay thousands of dollars in annual licensing fees, and we’ve reduced the number of people managing infrastructure from six to one, freeing up the other five people to work on different tasks.

Chrome’s extensions have been big productivity boosters. One extension syncs the staffs’ Google calendars with their Salesforce calendars. Previously, employees had to check two separate apps and cross-reference two separate calendars. Now they only need to check one. Another extension gives staff mobile access to Google Docs and Google Sheets. This means they can work nearly anywhere. When they’re out of the office, or in the field, they can create and share files on any device they need.

As an IT department, we’re particularly pleased with the security and other IT benefits we get with Google. Chrome has built-in malware and phishing protection, and we use the G Suite admin console to ensure all user downloads are stored on the same network drive so they can be checked for malware. The G Suite admin console lets us control Chrome settings for employees, including adding extensions on whitelists so employees can use them, pushing recommended extensions to users, and rolling out Chrome updates on a scheduled timeframe. That’s made our IT administrators’ lives much easier and has been a huge timesaver. And because we centrally manage the rollout of extensions for new employees, individual city and departments no longer need to have a dedicated IT person working on new hire application orientation. So we save time and money with each new hire.

Meanwhile, the number of help tickets for IT support has plummeted, from 30 a day to one or two. For example, we no longer have to deal with local archive files, which means our staff spends less time troubleshooting and the government employees we serve don’t waste time wrestling with unfamiliar technology. Productivity has increased as well. For example, City Police, City Fire, and County Health departments all use shared Google Sheets within their individual precincts for shift change management. This allows them to roll over shift changes swiftly and efficiently, without missing any critical ongoing task assignments.

Chrome browser and G Suite have allowed us to offer more secure and productive IT services to all City of Omaha and Douglas County employees, who are then able to better serve citizens. DOTComm and the City of Omaha were recently honored as one of "Top 10 Cities" by the Center for Digital Government in its Digital Cities Survey 2016, which recognizes cities that use technology to improve citizen services, enhance transparency and encourage citizen engagement. This marked the first time the City of Omaha made the list—but I predict it won’t be the last now that we’re using Chrome browser and G Suite.

Source: Google Cloud

Delivering better government services at lower costs with Chrome