{"id":5474,"date":"2017-03-24T16:52:13","date_gmt":"2017-03-24T16:52:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thinkerventures.com\/?p=5474"},"modified":"2017-03-24T16:52:13","modified_gmt":"2017-03-24T16:52:13","slug":"techtrends-chromebook","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thinkerventures.com\/techtrends-chromebook\/","title":{"rendered":"Is a Chromebook coming to a business near you?"},"content":{"rendered":"

N\"\"<\/a>early six out of every 10 new computers bought for use in K-12 schools in the United States in 2016 were Google Chromebooks, according to Futuresource Consulting<\/a>, up a remarkable eight percentage points (58 percent to 50 percent) from 2015 alone.<\/p>\n

The lightweight, internet-focused operating systems are increasingly becoming the devices of choice for kindergarten-through-12th grade school districts because they are inexpensive, have superior virus protection systems, are easily managed and updates take less than 10 seconds.<\/p>\n

Those advantages may begin making it the choice in the cost-conscious business world as well.<\/p>\n

Louisville, Ky.-based BF Companies<\/a> has 269 restaurants spread out among eight different franchises in 18 states. Several years ago, the franchiser Wendy\u2019s International<\/a> launched an online training platform. Wendy\u2019s International gave BF Companies the specifications and tasked them with making sure its employees had access to the program.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe used a stripped-down version of windows, put a kiosk mode on it and programmed it exactly for what Wendy\u2019s International\u2019s training system did and pushed a bunch of computers out to the stores,\u201d said Dan Henderson, who was tasked with designing the solutions for BF Companies\u2019 IT department. \u201cIt worked really well for a while, but when Wendy\u2019s changed its platform, the functionality with the laptops we had in place was broken.\u201d<\/p>\n

Henderson said that caused the company to look for a different solution. BF Companies\u2019 IT department is a small team of 17 people supporting more than 25,000 employees.<\/p>\n

The solution they came up was to use Google Chromebooks at each of its locations for on-site training and for guiding new employees through the human resources onboarding process. The Chromebooks are set up to only visit the sites allowed by BF Companies and Henderson\u2019s group can disable them remotely if any are lost or stolen.<\/p>\n

Henderson ticked off several other advantages to using the Chromebooks:<\/p>\n