It seems that 2014 might be the year that ChromeOS really takes off in Australian enterprise. We’ve just recently seen news that Woolworths has made a major investment in moving a lot of its desktop IT needs across to the Chrome platform, and now a NSW Government organisation has also taken the plunge.
Fire and Rescue NSW caused a bit of a fuss in November 2012 when it began a rollout of Chrome across its organisation, particularly for use in fire stations (of which there are many) and where there is presumably a need to minimise the need for administration and maintenance. Chromeboxes are ideal for this, as they’re inherently very secure, automatically update their software when required, and installing new apps is a piece of cake.
Fire and Rescue NSW’s group IT Director, Richard Host, was referred to in this piece from Computerworld:
So happy with the Chromeboxes is the public safety agency that its IT director is now considering buying more to replace existing Windows infrastructure … Host estimated that the agency immediately saved 50 per cent by choosing Chromeboxes over a Windows-based alternative.
We can’t wait to see that kind of forward thinking in other large-scale rollouts. Is your organisation going Chrome? Are you an IT director thinking of doing the same thing in your business? Let us know.
Brilliant!