Posted by Amit Singh, President, Google for Work
What’s in a name? Last September, when we changed our name from Google Enterprise to Google for Work, it wasn’t just about what we call ourselves – it was about what we stand for. We want to build great products that help you with every aspect of your life
– including work (where many waking hours are spent).
Enterprise is old business. We believe in a new way of working with collaboration at the core. A world where we work how we choose. Where getting stuff done in the office doesn’t feel like traveling back in time. Where our work tools are just as good or even better than the ones we have in our personal lives.
We bring the best of Google to work. The same cloud computing infrastructure that we use to run our search engine; powerful apps and services to help you get work done
– fast; simple, secure platforms to access everything, wherever you are.
While we have much more in store, it’s been a busy year and we’ve hit some great milestones over the last twelve months:
- More than one million paying organizations are actively using Google Drive, including companies like The New York Times, Uber, Fossil, Wedding Wire and BBVA.
- Google Apps for Work is proving to be the next generation tool of choice: according to a Better Cloud study, Millennials (aged 18-34) are 55% more likely to use Google Apps than alternatives. It’s cost effective, too: Forrester Research’s Total Economic Impact calculator shows that companies using Google Apps see a 304 percent return on investment.
- We’ve introduced groundbreaking new services with Google Cloud Platform, such as Nearline and Cloud Bigtable for storage and Kubernetes, an open-source container orchestration system. In total, we’ve added over 30 products to our stack, and our online community has nearly doubled.
- Chromebooks are now the best-selling device in the US for K-12 education, according to a report from IDC.
- More than 10,000 companies are testing, trialling and using Android for Work following its launch in February. In July, we added carriers such as AT&T and Verizon to our partner program and introduced a new class of devices for regulated industries, like the Blackphone by Silent Circle and Samsung's KNOX devices.
And the best is yet to come. Cloud computing will continue to get more powerful, and we’re only at the beginning of what machine learning can do to help businesses and people contextualize data.
Imagine an even smarter digital assistant that can surface the information you need at just the right time and help you manage your schedule for stress-free productivity. Virtual reality products, such as
Expeditions, are going to help us learn and work in exciting new ways. And finally, more and more of the objects around us will connect to the internet, enabling more efficient information transfer and actionable data for businesses than ever. These advances will affect all aspects of our lives, including work, and the possibilities are great. We’ll keep our focus forward, so that wherever we’re going, we’re always embarking on what’s next.
