The short answer is no - You are free to use Chromebooks without living in the G Suite environment, but why would you?

Packed with enterprise-level apps that enable productivity rather than hinder it, employees that have already migrated to the secure, cloud-native platform enjoy a collaborative space unbound by location where they can create, think, and reason together to achieve shared goals without technology getting in the way.

FAQt: Employees that take advantage of collaboration tools like G Suite save on average between 1-2 hours of work a week. Healthcare company CMMS found their executives were able to gain a full work day of productivity a week by switching to G Suite.

Fans of Microsoft's family of business apps have been able to run Office 365 on their Chromebooks since 2017, which is available to download through the Google Play store.

Administrators are able to force install, update, and pin the apps to the taskbar for their users all from the Admin console without worrying about issues like version control.

You'll still need to pay Microsoft's subscription fee for Office 365, which costs upwards of £7.90 per month for each business user compared to £31 per year (£2.58 per month) for a Chrome Enterprise annual license, or £93 for a perpetual license covering the life of the device.

FAQt: Studies have shown that on average, 80% of Office users are using so little of it that they wouldn't miss anything if they switched to G Suite.

As of 2019, 93% of households and businesses in the UK have access to the internet, but there are still occasions when users might need to work offline. Chrome is a cloud-based environment, but there's no need to drop tools when your connection drops.

If there are times you want to keep working on your Docs, Sheets and Slides without an internet connection, you can make them available offline using Google Drive. You'll be able to continue working on your files wherever you are, and once you reconnect to the web the updates you made will be automatically synced so everyone has the right information.

You can see how to make your files available offline, here: https://support.google.com/chromebook/answer/2809731

FAQt: In 2016, 75% of UK businesses were affected by unplanned outages costing them £7 billion in lost revenue, with companies suffering an average of 3 days downtime each across the year.

With Chrome devices available in several forms to fit the needs of any business, companies adopting the cloud-based operating system enjoy on average a $482 lower total cost of ownership over their Windows and iOS alternatives.

Budgets can be stretched further thanks to the reduced hardware costs on Chromebooks, but when you also factor in lowered IT overheads thanks to a streamlined Admin console leading to less employee downtime, and eliminating subscription fees for antivirus software to keep your corporate information safe, the savings start stacking up.

In addition to the savings made on security, the Chrome Enterprise Upgrade gives your users access to a full suite of productivity apps used by millions of workers every day at a lower cost than Office 365 whilst benefiting from the tools they need to truly be productive in the cloud.

FAQt: A study by Forrester concluded that companies switching to Chrome achieve 61% lower IT costs over a three-year period, making it the most cost-effective enterprise solution on the market.

In addition to the range of quality Chromebooks available from major manufacturers including Acer, HP, Lenovo and ASUS, businesses looking for cloud-ready devices in other form factors have various options.

Chromeboxes are great desktop replacements, which require separate peripherals and are built for shared environments at set workstations currently using VDI solutions such as in call centres.

Chromebases are robust, all-in-one units which are ideal for enterprise customers wanting fast and secure hardware for kiosks, meeting rooms and videoconferencing.

FAQt: Whichever form factor you choose, Chrome OS enables your users to be up and running in under 10 seconds.

One of the biggest selling points for Chromebooks is their inherent security. There are several ways Google has made Chrome devices impervious to viruses from the browser all the way down to the hardware, including:

Sandboxing: Every tab or standalone app you open runs in a virtual sandbox, which means everything is kept separate from everything else. If the system identifies an infection in any tab, there is no way for the virus to affect any other part of the system and is simply deleted when you close the tab or app.

Verified boot: Every time Chrome OS starts up, the current boot is checked against the last known 'safe' boot, which it automatically reverts to or downloads from the cloud if there is anything wrong with your current version.

Read-only OS: Unlike Windows, Chrome OS is read-only so there is no way to maliciously edit or manipulate the operating system.

Titan chip: Several Chromebooks come packed with a Titan-C security chip, which is a built-in TPM (Trusted Platform Module) using Google's purpose-built micro-controller and network controller. This acts as an internal form of 2-Factor Authentication and effectively eliminates losses from phishing attacks on Chrome.

You can add an extra factor of security on your Chrome devices with ease directly from your Google account, which allows you to set up phone prompts, text messages, calls, backups and recovery.

For an even more robust level of protection, you can also set up a security key via a dongle such as a Google Titan key or built into most smartphones.

Full instructions of how to do this can be found here: https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/185839

FAQt: By 2019, data breaches had cost businesses $2.1 trillion globally. Of which, 90% were caused by employee negligence, extortion and external threats.

Single sign-on (SSO) lets users sign in to all their enterprise cloud applications using their managed Google account credentials. Google offers pre-integrated SSO with over 200 popular cloud applications, which you can find here: https://support.google.com/a/topic/7417510

Systems administrators also have the opportunity to set up SSO for their managed devices using third-party Identity providers (IdP's) such as Azure Active Directory from the Admin console. This feature is available with the Enterprise and Education editions of Chrome.

More information about configuring SSO via third-party apps can be found here: https://support.google.com/a/answer/60224

FAQt: Employees on average waste 12 minutes a week resetting their passwords, costing businesses over £300 per employee each year in lost productivity.

To say your information is safer on the Google Cloud Platform than your own servers may be an understatement.

Google's end-to-end security model has been built with over 20 years of experience in protecting customer's information on their own applications including Gmail and Search. Serving your business' apps and data on the cloud takes advantage of the same infrastructure.

Backed by an Information Security Team consisting of top experts in the industry, robust physical data centre protocols, and security baked into the core design at a hardware level are just some of the benefits that keeps your data on GCP as secure as Google's own corporate data.

Google has shared a comprehensive overview of their security features here: https://cloud.google.com/security/overview

FAQt: Google patches security bugs nearly 25% quicker than Microsoft, taking an average of 60 days compared to 78 days for Windows.

The Chrome Enterprise Upgrade builds on the speed, simplicity, security and shareability of Chrome OS, and unlocks the built-in business capabilities needed to supercharge your workforce on the cloud.

It provides advanced security controls that streamlines the ability to secure and customise your fleet of devices across multiple organisational units, control access to sensitive information even in the event of loss or theft, and manage over 200 policies so you can tailor your technology to the needs of your business.

Importantly, Chrome Enterprise empowers your staff to work remotely when necessary by providing flexible and secure access to the apps, extensions, and corporate data they need whilst maintaining system integrity and version fidelity, enabling colleagues to work together seamlessly in any scenario.

FAQt: Chrome Enterprise adoption grew by 33% in 2017-18, making it the fasted growing corporate solution on the market.

You can integrate your Chrome devices with the Chrome Enterprise Upgrade licence with a Microsoft^® Active Directory^® server, enabling you to push user and device policies and manage them via Windows Group Policy instead of the Google Admin console.

Users would then sign in to devices with their Active Directory credentials without the need to synchronise usernames to Google servers, but you will be able to continue using the Admin console to configure and manage devices and policies that aren't integrated with Active Directory, such as kiosk mode and managed guest sessions.

More information about integrating Chrome with AD here: https://support.google.com/chrome/a/answer/7497916

FAQt: Chrome can also be integrated with other leading UEM providers, including VMware Airwatch, Citrix XenMobile, Cisco Meraki, Cameyo, IBM MaaS360 and Manage Engine.

IT admins have the capacity with Chrome Enterprise to block, whitelist, and pre-install apps and from the Google Play Store and extensions from the Chrome Web Store, ensuring users have access to the tools they need to work effectively without added distractions such as social media or YouTube.

Other policies can also be set to specify how devices connect to the internet, such as through a proxy for tracking and filtering user activity, to automatically provision workspaces on startup, and enable or disable access to hardware including webcams, external hard-drives and printers.

It is also possible to configure permissions for specific times of the day, for example, should you wish to allow your employees to use their Chrome devices freely without restrictions outside of office hours.

FAQt: On average, employees use 22 cloud-based apps across 3 devices - IT administrators can manage them all from one location with Chrome Enterprise.

Chrome Enterprise is built to scale, so whether you are deploying 10 or 10,000 Chrome devices to your end users, case studies have shown it takes only 10% of the time to complete a roll-out compared to any other platform.

Once you have registered for an account and verified your domain with Google in the same way you would set up Google Analytics for your website, Chrome Enterprise requires a phased deployment to capture and resolve any issues before pushing it out business-wide.

A complete guide can be found here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1iu6I0MhyrvyS5h5re5ai8RSVO2sYx2gWI4Zk4Tp6fgc

FAQt: Case studies have shown that setup time can be reduced from 1 hour per user to just 5 minutes with Chrome.

It is vital for any business to maintain access to their important files and information to ensure they can continue working consistently during any digital transformation endeavour, so Google offers various solutions for making your migration to the cloud as seamless as possible no matter where your data is based or how much data you have to transfer.

Drag-and-drop, command line tools and programmatic JSON-backed interfaces for self-service online transfer of smaller migrations, through to managed transfers for large-scale migration of online and on-premises sources featuring incremental backups are available through Google's Data Transfer Services.

During migration, you will still be able to access your files, emails and other data as you do presently. Once your data transfer is complete, your users will be able to log in and continue working without noticing any downtime.

More information can be found here: https://cloud.google.com/products/data-transfer

Initially, all your users and devices will be placed into a single top-level organisational unit, with any changes by the administrator being applied to everyone on that domain. However, there are options for segmenting your users and devices into different units within Chrome Enterprise based on their role-oriented or organisation-oriented needs.

IT managers can implement hierarchies into their organisational units with the Chrome Enterprise Upgrade to enable policies to be tailored to the requirements of different departments within the business, and even down to an individual user. Each child organisational unit inherits settings from its parent, which you can then customise further.

Access groups can also be set up to allow specific users to access a service which is otherwise restricted for the organisational unit they are in. With access groups, you can turn on services for users without changing your organisational structure.

There are several different ways to virtualise your legacy applications on a Chromebook, either by accessing them through a virtual Windows desktop using leading solutions including Citrix, VMware and Cameyo, or streaming apps within your Chrome browser.

Apps and pages are sandboxed and kept separate from everything else, reducing compatibility issues whilst maintaining a seamless experience with minimal difference to your users.

Your Google account can also be utilised to implement single-sign on, further removing the hurdles that impact productivity and giving time back to your IT administrators.

FAQt: Feedback from large corporations including investment banks and healthcare organisations has been that Citrix Workspace running on a Chromebook delivers the most secure and controlled user experience available.

Yes, G Suite has no problem with opening your old Word, Excel and Powerpoint files saved onto Google Drive and enabling you to edit them in Docs, Sheets and Slides.

Office Editing allows you to continue working on your Microsoft Office files while retaining the format you want, yet still take advantage of G Suite's collaboration features.

This means you can stop renewing your monthly and annual subscriptions for Office 365, as there's now no reason to maintain both environments.

If you're looking to retain your existing desktops and laptops but want to unlock the power of cloud-based collaboration for your workforce, Neverware's CloudReady does just the job.

Companies, non-profits, schools and government agencies around the world have levied CloudReady to flexibly deploy and scale Chrome OS on almost any hardware to enable remote working without investing in new Chrome devices.

IT admins are able to implement the Chrome Enterprise Upgrade to enrol the devices into their existing Admin console so they can control user and device policies, and manage their fleet of converted computers in exactly the same way as a Chromebook.

Getech is one of the largest suppliers of Chrome devices, management licenses and Chrome associated services in the UK.

Our solutions support organisations in adopting and implementing Chrome technologies where the demand for secure and cost-effective cloud connected devices has become increasingly important for satisfying areas of compliance, cost and collaboration in a flexible workforce.

Whether its product, deployment services or support services or a combination of all three, the Google team at Getech can provide you with all you need, from proof of concept all the way through to signed-off deployment.

Getech is a Google Premier Partner for both Enterprise and Education, offering a full spectrum of value-added services and expertise for our customers, including:

- Sourcing Chromebooks, licenses and other hardware at competitive rates
- White-glove Chrome configuration services streamlining enrolment and deployment to your workforce
- Data migration with CloudMigrator, helping to move archived mailboxes, emails, contacts and calendars to the cloud with
zero downtime
- Soft-touch auditing of your current infrastructure to highlight usage, waste and other opportunities for improvement.
- Training and support towards G Suite accreditation
- Training days, support pack and kick-off events
- Proof of Concept kits
- Grab & Go solutions

Getech has partnered with Google to offer customers interested in Chrome an exclusive Proof of Concept kit, allowing your business to trial up to 5 different Chromebooks in your workplace for two weeks, complete with Chrome Enterprise features, technical consulting and our white-glove services to ensure a smooth experience.

We'll discuss what success looks like to you, what you want to achieve, use cases and performance requirements. We'll also you by providing support with integration into your existing environments be that VDI setup with Citrix, VMWare, Office 365, Azure, AWS or Google.

Getech can also enable you to put Chrome to the test with our pilot scheme, training your technical resources to use the Google Admin console for managing and configuring device and user policies. We will help you identify a test group within your workforce as part of an initial phased roll-out and lead you through a successful move to Chrome Enterprise.

More information about Getech and the services we provide our customers as a Google Premier Partner can be found on our website, www.getech.co.uk/enterprise or in our brochure, available to view here.