ChromeOS Unlocked: Streamlining Operations with Strategic Partnerships Manager Jimmy Riordan | Ep. 17

Max:00:00

‍What percentage of contact center seats are running Chrome OS?

‍Jimmy:00:03

All of them, if I had my druthers. Well, I mean, a pretty cool stat that I saw last year, the second half of the year, 30% of new Chrome OS customers were contact center use cases with a 150 new logos in q 2 of 2022. So customers are seeing it. And the cool thing is now that we have Chrome OS Flex and we're going into tough time with the economy right now, we have that opportunity of to dis displace the operating system and not the physical device.

Max:00:48

Alright, Jimmy. I'm actually jazzed to do this one, so let's start with some with the simple stuff. Who are you, and what do you do?

Jimmy:00:56

Sure. Yeah. I am a strategic partnerships manager at Google on the Chrome OS team. So focused really on, Chrome OS for the enterprise space for businesses. So not really focused on e d u.

Jimmy:01:07

I'm sure folks have heard of Chrome and Chromebooks in the e d u space before, but really focused in on the enterprise space, specifically the contact center vertical.

Max:01:17

And if you had to sum up Chrome OS in a sentence or 2 Sure. What would you tell people?

Jimmy:01:22

Yeah. So everybody's heard of Chromebooks and the Chrome browser. Right? Probably the most popular browser out there. And what Chrome OS is it's a cloud based operating system.

Jimmy:01:33

So we're competing with the Macs and the Windows of the world, and it's a mobile secure, very easy to use and easy to manage, operating system for the modern way businesses and employees work.

Max:01:46

I'm gonna try not to get too hypey here on this one because yeah. Okay. I'm just gonna just go for it. I love the idea and the concept behind Chrome OS. And I think what we should do and what I really wanna do is kinda dig into what Google is doing with Chrome OS, what the vision really is behind Chrome OS, how are enterprises using Chrome OS.

Max:02:04

And then we kinda wrap that all up, I think, put that into context against what they're doing today. Most enterprises today are dealing with Windows or Mac.

Jimmy:02:12

Yeah.

Max:02:12

And that's the world that they know. And so, you know, if we start talking about Chrome, I think the reaction becomes, okay, that's different. You know, what is this? Is you know, how does this how does this work? Yeah.

Jimmy:02:22

Why? Right? Yeah. That's a great question. So the common misconception right off the bat, I think, just to put it out there, is that Chromebooks are these kind of cheap devices that are for students, are for kids in elementary school, high school, college, just used for, you know, educational purposes.

Jimmy:02:40

And we're trying to get away from that common misconception by tapping into the enterprise space, the business space, to compete with Windows and Mac devices. And we're doing that in a very specific way. We're going after different verticals, different use cases. So health care is a big piece. These devices are highly secure.

Jimmy:02:57

So when it comes to HIPAA compliance and all the health care security that you need there in that space, Chrome device are a great fit. Kiosk and digital signage is another use case that we're tapping into and attacking that marketplace. And then contact center, which is my focus. We've been developing over the past 2 years this Chrome enterprise recommended program. And what that means is we're certifying, optimizing these different solutions, these different software applications for Chrome OS to run more efficiently on Chrome devices.

Jimmy:03:28

So you think about these different CCaaS and UCaaS providers, RingCentral, 8 by 8, Vonage, NICE, Talkdesk, UJET, Dialpad. I mean, there's, I think, 13 or 14 of them now that we've certified and our Chrome enterprise recommended. So we we wanted to test these devices out in that space, and we saw, with COVID, a great opportunity of these businesses going remote of these agents working remotely. They're no longer in an office where contact center supervisors can kinda look over their shoulder to see how they're doing. There's they're no longer in an office where they can walk down the hallway to IT support to help them fix their device.

Jimmy:04:02

They're no longer in an office behind an enterprise grade firewall to protect them from malware and things like that. So when these agents and these businesses' employees went remote, a lot of businesses started seeing Chrome as a cloud based operating system as a good fit because they're using all these cloud based tools today. Why not leverage a cloud based operating system? So that's why we built that Chrome enterprise recommended program. And now in partnership with all those CCaaS partners out there, we're really exploring and doing a great job at the contact center space for a number of different reasons.

Jimmy:04:33

I think the 3 key features when it comes to contact center and there's the health care and kiosk and digital signage. I'm not gonna tap into that because that's not my forte here. I come from the contact center space. Been selling it for years now from CCAS space. But for contact center agents, speed, security, and productivity.

Jimmy:04:50

So from a speed perspective, these devices boot up within 6 seconds. I've never used a Chrome device before in my life before coming here. I'm a little bit older, so I miss the craze of every student now having a Chromebook. In school, I actually had a physical book and notebook and stuff like that. But these devices, I mean, I just open it up, and I'm immediately off to work.

Jimmy:05:09

And from a contact center perspective, you're paying these agents an hourly wage, and you want them to get be as productive as possible. As soon as they open up the book and log in to their contact center app, they're working. They're productive. These devices also deploy 76% faster than a Windows or Mac device. So if I'm looking at it as a contact center executive or supervisor or admin, if I'm deploying a new contact center agent or I'm redeploying a new device to a new agent that came on board because, obviously, contact center, lots of churn in that space, I can get these devices faster to our agents.

Jimmy:05:42

They're logged in. They're ready to go.

Max:05:44

So device specs and resources become an issue in enterprises. Right? You know, like, 4 gig of RAM, 8 gig of RAM, 16 gig of RAM. How much RAM goes on a computer? What are we also doing with it?

Max:05:53

Are we installing software on the machine? I mean, most contact center, most CCaaS solutions are browser based WebRTC clients. I feel like the UCaaS, the Unified Communications, the PBX cloud PBX space is some of it's web based and some of it's agent based. So, I mean, so the CCaaS, I follow along with pretty easily in terms of just launching a browser and having a WebRTC client going via the OS. You know, these other ones you talk about in terms of, like, Dialpad and RingCentral and 8 by 8, etcetera, I mean, are they launching apps and building apps now that are Chrome targeted?

Max:06:27

I mean, is this an Android app running? I mean, what is actually being pushed to the device?

Jimmy:06:31

Yeah. So from a UCaaS perspective, that's a great question. So I'm used to using apps all day going from Windows and Mac, and now I'm on Chrome. So I'm using a lot of browser based tools. But there's also something called progressive web apps or PWAs that a lot of our partners have developed.

Jimmy:06:47

So Zoom has one for Zoom meetings, Zoom phone as well as Zoom chat. They're developing one for Zoom contact center, so it's you you can either do browser or the app as well. 8 by 8 has one for their xCast for their UCaaS application. RingCentral and Dialpad as well all have PWAs. A lot of the other ones are just browser based applications.

Jimmy:07:07

But when it comes to apps, you can have the Android apps on your computer. You can have what we call progressive web app or PWA on the computer as well, or you can leverage VDI, Citrix, VMware, Cameo. They're all Chrome Enterprise recommended VDI partners as well. So if you need to get those legacy Windows applications on your computer, on your device virtually, you can leverage a VDI solution as well. And then from a hardware, from, you know, the device perspective, we, Chrome OS, has partnered with all the top OEMs out there, so Dell, Lenovo, HP, Acer, and they have a wide variety of devices that can actually be specific for these use cases.

Jimmy:07:42

So there's devices that are specific for contact center. And Acer is great partner of mine for the past year. We've been doing a lot of these Google roadshows with them and some of our CCaaS partners and our headset partners. And Acer has a great range of devices from the Chromebooks, just the typical clamshell, as well as the spin which is you can flip it over and it's a a tablet as well as Chromeboxes which people just think of Chromebooks, but they forget that there's Chromeboxes as well which is a desktop replacement. It's about the size of like an iPad.

Jimmy:08:13

It takes up a small amount of desktop real estate. You can plug multiple monitors into it, a keyboard, mouse, all that kind of stuff.

Max:08:19

You know, thanks to Google Workspace, I feel like a lot of productivity apps have slowly moved towards the web. Right? So now we see Microsoft Office 365 has phenomenal web based applications. I mean, if you're an Excel junkie, you're an Excel junkie, but, you know, people are using Excel via the browser or Word versus the browser or Outlook versus the browser. And so if you're looking at and talking with, let's say, traditional Windows based enterprise that's running Windows desktops and Office 365, probably an e three license with Outlook and etcetera.

Max:08:48

One of the things we talk about a lot becomes help desk staffing. IT IT help desk to headcount, what those kind of ratios are, how much time they're spending per device, what their onboarding, offboarding looks like, their equipment life cycle. All of that becomes pretty big factors for an enterprise. I mean, these problems become exponential pretty quickly. You know?

Max:09:07

A 100 users, 500 users, a 1000 users, 2 1000 users, 5000 users. I mean, these become interesting questions. Right? Now for that environment and that enterprise where maybe they're running a Chrome browser or maybe they're running a Chromium based browser, Microsoft Edge or whatever, and they're looking at Windows on the desktop and maybe a little, like, unsure or reluctant will Chrome OS work for us in this world? Like, should we be looking at this?

Max:09:32

You know, what would you say to that? Like, how do you walk somebody through that transition?

Jimmy:09:37

It's always a strange outlook on the fact that, oh, hey, we're Windows. We're Office 365. We can't use Google products. I completely understand that that common misconception. But leveraging Google products across the board, but specifically Chrome OS, These devices are easier to manage, easier to deploy for these IT executives.

Jimmy:09:59

To give you an example, MercadoLibre again, this is a contact center use case, but MercadoLibre, a well known Latin American ecommerce.

Max:10:06

That is Amazon for LatAm, basically. Right?

Jimmy:10:08

Yes. Exactly. You know, ecommerce site for Latin America. They have contact center agents in there's 18 different countries, just spread out across 18 different countries, and they're having tons of issues with device management, fixing devices, deploying new devices. They had aging PCs that were deterring teams from being productive.

Jimmy:10:28

And what they did was they went with Chrome OS, and this is a pretty cool new feature that was launched this year. They went with Chrome OS, so but they had existing devices that were Windows based devices, PCs. And, you know, some of them were 5, 6 years old. Some of them were a couple years old. And it didn't make sense from an ROI perspective to just dump all those devices they just bought like a year or 2 ago and go all new Chrome devices, Chromebooks, Chromeboxes, whatever they wanted.

Jimmy:10:56

So what they did was kind of a mix and match of getting new Chrome devices for those older devices to replace those older devices for the contact center agents and frontline workers. But also, they deployed something called Chrome OS Flex, which is taking our operating system, our cloud based operating system, and putting it on legacy Windows and Mac devices, in this case, legacy PCs, Windows devices. And they were able to reduce operational support needs from one person for every a 150 people to one person for 300 workers. So if you think about the way the economy is going, people need to tighten their budgets, might affect IT staffing. They might not be able to hire new folks to support all of their different employees.

Jimmy:11:37

Leveraging the Google Admin console, it's very easy to use over 500 different configurable based policies for these devices. You can drop ship them from your reseller with 0 touch enrollment or ZTE. So it'll actually save time for IT and lower IT operational costs for companies that are traditionally Windows based shops. So a great use case there.

Max:12:01

So, I mean, Google admin, does the company then have to have a Google Workspace account in order to manage a Chrome OS fleet, and are users then dual enrolled in Google Workspace accounts plus an Office 365 account if they're I wanna say legacy Office 365, but it's a Microsoft migration kind of environment?

Jimmy:12:20

It's not only the device that they're gonna be getting. People think they can just go down to Best Buy and pick up a Chromebook and set that up for their enterprise. Not the case. You need something called Chrome enterprise upgrade licenses for all of these different devices. So there's 2 ways to get that.

Jimmy:12:33

There's one where it comes bundled in with the device. So it's called Chromebook or Chromebox Enterprise, where the device comes with the Google Chrome Enterprise upgrade license. And then that is just the management license for these devices. So you could get it bundled in. Let's say, if you just go with Chrome OS Flex, where you're just taking your legacy Windows devices and you just wanna reflash them with Chrome OS and have a better total cost of ownership because you're not buying new devices, you just need the enterprise upgrade license.

Jimmy:13:01

Or there's also a lot of situations where I just mentioned people just go down the block to Best Buy, get some Chromebooks, and plug them in. You can also just pair that Chromebook by itself with the enterprise upgrade license, and then that gives you access to all of the enterprise grade features and the management license.

Max:13:16

But, I mean, as a user at that point have to have a Google Workspace account when they log in to Chrome? Or

Jimmy:13:21

Yeah. They don't have to log in to Google Workspace or anything, and they just connect to their domain with the the device configured back to the Google admin console.

Max:13:30

So you can integrate with Azure Active Directory, and a user can log in with an Azure Active Directory credentials and fire up their workspace. Yep. Let me segue here because it all sounds too good to be true to its degree. Right? Like like, you do this is why I'm also I'm I get really excited.

Max:13:45

I'm like, Jack I mean, I'm gonna again, keep it together.

Jimmy:13:48

Keep it cool. Yeah.

Max:13:49

Keep it cool. Keep it cool. You know, it sounds too good to be true. Right? There's a lot of this that you when you look at this and you say, okay.

Max:13:55

I can repurpose an aging fleet with flex or I can go buy Chromebooks or Chromeboxes. Now the Chromebooks, I mean, pricing varies all over the place based on the actual equipment manufacturer and what the specs are. The Chromeboxes are a little more what's the word I'm looking for? They're inexpensive. I mean, these are not expensive devices.

Max:14:11

There's not a lot going on inside of them. Yeah. But whenever you hear something that's like, oh, it's so simple. You just go do this and push this button and click this box and, like, this happens. It's like, well, is it really that easy?

Max:14:22

Like, Jimmy, is it really this easy?

Jimmy:14:24

I think the biggest thing, it's not gonna be for the contact center agents or the employees. I don't think from a learning perspective or a ramp perspective, a lot of contact center and, again, I'm gonna focus on contact center because that's my area of expertise. But if you look at the workforce in the contact center space, these agents, these inbound contact center agents or outbound sales agents, SDRs, BDRs, typically, they're folks that just graduated from, let's say, high school or college. Guess what they've been using for the past decade. They've been using Google products in school.

Jimmy:14:56

They've been using Chrome devices. So to get them ramped up and get them up to speed, giving them a Chromebook will allow you to get them productive immediately versus training them on a Windows device, getting them ramped up on all these legacy Windows applications. I think the biggest thing is getting the IT folks and the operational folks comfortable with going with a cloud based operating system, I think you need to do a big evaluation across the board of all the software applications that you're using in your environment. If you're using anything that's really legacy Windows based that needs to be physically sitting on your device, you need to evaluate, you know, is it cost beneficial to go and leverage a VDI type of solution like a VMware or Citrix or Cameo to replace that? And then the other piece is, do you have the the IT support to train these folks on how to use Google Admin Console and and things like that?

Jimmy:15:50

Because I think once you get over that hump of deploying it, the benefits are huge. We did an IDC report the end of last year. I think the biggest benefit of these devices is the security. 0 ransomware attacks ever, Chrome devices, and the benefits there are just astronomical. I see a lot of your your LinkedIn posts all the time about security attacks and ransomware and malware and phishing and all that kind of stuff.

Jimmy:16:16

I think that you you sent one once where it was, like, you copied and pasted of, like, this is exactly what a phishing email looks like, but something like that. And it's funny because there's just so much security built into these devices natively. You don't need to pay for malware on these devices and all that stuff. So it go again, going back to cheaper devices and everything, but to to keep these devices secure.

Max:16:38

Fundamentally, it changes. Right? So you start talking about if you're on a Windows fleet, kinda use Windows Mac interchangeably. Right? We see a lot of both.

Max:16:44

Right?

Jimmy:16:45

Sure.

Max:16:46

So at scale, what are you deploying usually on your devices? You're deploying an MDM or a UEM. Right? You know, that terminology is getting a little merged and you're also deploying an EDR. Now in the case of Google Enterprise, I mean, the MDM or the UEM is included with Google.

Max:17:01

Yeah. I mean, your device management is maintained by Google via your admin console at this point. Right?

Jimmy:17:06

Exactly. Yeah. That's all included with the enterprise upgrade license. So your IT teams have access to all of that.

Max:17:13

And then I'm not aware of any EDR overlays on top of Chrome at this point.

Jimmy:17:17

What's EDR again? I was gonna Google it.

Max:17:19

Like, CrowdStrike, Sentinel 1, Carbon Black.

Jimmy:17:23

Yeah. It wouldn't be something that would be bundled in. I know that we do have some, like, security partners from a Chrome enterprise recommended program. I'm not sure if CrowdStrike's one of them, though. But that would be a separate thing that you would have to bundle in.

Jimmy:17:34

But from a security perspective, I think it's something that I didn't know coming on board and is really kind of unique is since this is a cloud based operating system, every device comes with 2 operating systems. There's the known safe version, and then there's the active OS. Known safe version sitting in the background. Active OS is what I'm logging into every day. I'm logging into Zoom.

Jimmy:17:56

I'm logging into Google Meet. I'm logging into my contact center solution. That's when I'm actively working in every day. The known safe version sitting in the background checking the active OS. So whenever I log in, the known safe version runs an automatic check on the active OS.

Jimmy:18:08

If they don't match up a 100%, if there's any tampering with the active OS, if it's corrupted at all, it's immediately destroyed by the known safe version, and then a new version's pulled down from the cloud to replace the active OS. So you're logging into a very highly secure it's called verified boot. You're booting into a very secure device every single time, and that also helps with updates as well. We talk about productivity. I've never had to update my device.

Jimmy:18:34

It's all happening on the known safe version in the background. So when I log out for the day, all the updates, security updates updates, all that in that's happening in the background is then pushed to the active OS. So when I log in the next day, all those updates are already done. I never have to click on that little stupid window in the bottom right hand corner of my computer and say, update your device, click on it, and then I'm down for half an hour for the day.

Max:18:57

I mean, obviously, Google uses some dog food here with Chrome OS. So there's a there's 1 or 2 users inside of Google at this point using Chromebooks and Chromeboxes probably somewhere in the world. Right?

Jimmy:19:07

Of course.

Max:19:08

Jimmy, you've been pushing hard on the UCaaS or the CCaaS specifically. Certified partnerships, deployment guides, recommended hardware, partnerships with headset manufacturers. Let me ask this question backwards. Right? So if an enterprise if a contact center is deployed on NICE or 8 by 8 or Talkdesk or go through this list.

Max:19:27

Right? I mean, there's plenty more there. There's uJET. I mean, you we could probably rattle off contact center names until we're blue in the face. Why wouldn't they use a Chromebox?

Max:19:35

Like, what's holding this back from every contact center seat on the planet just being ripped out and replaced with whether it was a Chrome OS Flex install or, you know, new hardware coming in?

Jimmy:19:48

Yeah. I think it's the common misconception from IT that, hey. No. We're a Windows shop. That's what I'm familiar with.

Jimmy:19:56

And that's kind of been common misconceptions across the board when getting into IT and and talk to them about anything that's new and different is, like, that's another thing that I have to learn, another thing that I need to support. Also, the common misconceptions, oh, I'm using Office 365 and all these Microsoft tools. It won't work on Chrome devices. And then we send them test devices. I mean, as part of our sales process, we have a test drive program where we send each customer a couple devices and say, hey, test out all of your applications on this.

Jimmy:20:26

So I mean, I think going to Windows devices I mean, at the end of the day, there's really only 3 options for you. Right? There's Windows, Mac, there's Chrome OS.

Max:20:36

Oh, you wanna throw a shade on Linux? Come on.

Jimmy:20:37

I try not to, but, you know, I I apologize. But, I mean

Max:20:41

I don't know. Sir, in all fairness, I don't know any Linux based contact centers. So Well,

Jimmy:20:45

if I come across 1, I'll let you know. But, yeah, the I I I mean, the big one's Windows. You know, Mac's there as well, but I mean, 2 years ago during the pandemic, we overtook Mac as the number 2 operating system in the world, number 2 to Windows. And I mean, Windows is beating us by a mile in the enterprise and business space. But I think that's just the common misconception is these devices are cheap devices made for kids, made for students.

Jimmy:21:09

There's no integration with my legacy Windows applications or Office 365 tools. And then the big blocker is IT learning a new operating system, learning a new way of managing these devices. The good news is it's super easy. I actually did one of these on Riverside a couple weeks ago. I did one of these videos interviews and with a partner that their whole shop is Chrome OS.

Jimmy:21:31

And he said he went into this IT guy and said, hey, my screen kinda blurred out. He said, just go down the block, get a new device. You already have the license. Just move that license to that device, and you log in, and he was off to the races. And that's all he had to do.

Max:21:45

So the upgrade license, I mean, is this annual fee, I mean, ballpark price for me and a licensing structure.

Jimmy:21:51

Yeah. So we have the annual license. That's stand alone license. So if you're gonna go with Chrome OS Flex or if you have devices already that needed to pair a Chrome OS license with, that annual license is $50 a year for the enterprise upgrade license. And then if you get the bundled in device, the Chromebook Enterprise or Chromebox Enterprise that comes with the license and the device, it's a perpetual license, and it's built into that upfront cost of buying the device.

Jimmy:22:16

So perpetual license, I believe, lasts you 5 years.

Max:22:19

I mean, that's a long lifespan for a device.

Jimmy:22:21

Yeah. And you're not paying the Windows licensing costs. You can also drop a lot of your malware licensing costs as well. So these devices from a total cost of ownership perspective, to go back to that IDC report, they're doing 39100 net savings per device over 3 years.

Max:22:38

I mean, what was that? $50 a year is a 4 and a quarter a month. I mean, your average licensing for an MDM is probably 6 to $8 right now per month, and an EDR is probably in, like, the 9 to $10 per month range. I mean, eliminating those 2 pieces of software pays for itself pretty quickly.

Jimmy:22:58

Oh, absolutely. And, you know, again, these devices there's a whole range of devices out there. You could go the a really high end device, but we have something called a way finding guide that helps you pick out the device specifically for your needs when it comes to RAM and all that kind of stuff as well as features and functionality and the contact center use case or frontline worker, executive, all that kind of stuff. And then you could pick your specific OEM from Dell, Lenovo, Acer, whatever you want.

Max:23:25

So, average contact center agents, dual screen, USB headset plugged in. Right? WebRTC based contact center application. Another browser open to a CRM instance and probably knowledge base or whatever the internal tools are. I mean, what kind of box are we talking about in order to drive that?

Jimmy:23:43

Right at the end of the last year, I worked with a a partner, and and we sold it was a small contact center, about 30 seats. They're leveraging 59. They're moving to to UJET. But they went with the what was it? The Acer CXI 4.

Jimmy:23:57

It was a 138 gigabits. It was a CB device, a Chromebox Enterprise. So it's bundled in with the license, and then they also combined the Acer keypad, Acer mouse as well, and the devices I forget how what the cost was. It was about 30 devices, and they had I think they had dual screens, keyboard, mouse. I forget what headsets they were using at the time.

Jimmy:24:18

I think they're gonna keep the existing headsets that they have. But they're also going back to the hardware piece that you're talking about, like, everything kinda coming together. We also have what we call works with Chromebook, which is all the different peripherals that are certified and optimized for Chrome OS. And I'm using actually a contact center specific device from Jabber right now, the engage 50. It's a wired headset which I'm not used to using, so I usually use it on the road.

Jimmy:24:39

But we're doing some construction in the back of the house, and my dog barks every time somebody walks by the front door. Yep. So I was in an airport the other day. I had my Chromebook. I had my Jabra headset on.

Jimmy:24:50

And you're in an airport. You have people screaming in the background trying to get their flight. I have my kids screaming with me because I was with my kids and my family. I have the announcements, boarding announcements, all that in the background. And I'm doing a presentation.

Jimmy:25:01

I was off camera, but I was doing a presentation for about half an hour, and nobody heard anything other than my voice. And that's, again, huge for the contact center space because if you have to constantly reiterate what you're saying, if your voice drops out, you have talk again. It's just a bad experience for the customer. It's a bad experience for the agent. So having it all kind of come together from software to hardware just makes it a better experience for everybody across the board.

Max:25:25

So the other alternative and, I mean, I started in the tech industry. I'll just use tech and Internet kind of interchangeably. Let's see. I must have been, like, 12. Right?

Max:25:32

Because I'm not that old, and, a s four hundreds are still around. I mean, they're still around today. But, I mean, a s four hundreds they were doing network 3 migrations, AS 400, and then, of course, Windows NT 4 dot o was like all the rage right around that age. But so, like, terminal services was not a new concept at that point. I mean, if you came from an AS 400 or if you're on an AS 400 now, you use a Chroma session, you use terminal services.

Max:25:56

So Microsoft is reinventing terminal services again with Azure and Azure Virtual Desktop. Right? So there's, like, cloud based operating system. But and there's some things that are really nice about it, of course. You're talking about centralized instance, you know, on a platform you can control.

Max:26:12

It doesn't go down to employee desktops. If you got a BPO or if you got remote users all over the place, it's not resin on their devices. But then, of course, you flip that and you parallel that with Chrome OS and this is just kind of where you started. You started with you have the ability to have documents cached locally, but the device is designed in almost as, like, kinda like pseudo hybrid cloud environment from the get go. And at $4 a month to license this device versus what an AVD license or, you know, a VMware or Citrix environment costs.

Max:26:46

I mean, it's this is night and day difference for people.

Jimmy:26:49

Yeah. And people always think also it's about getting people ramped up. And we talked about the contact center agents that are just graduating from high school, college, or whatever and and entering the workforce. But, you know, I've been using Windows forever, then I went to Mac, and I was like, oh, I will never go back to a Windows device. I was at Vonage before coming to Google, and they tried to get me to go to Windows device back to a Windows device from Mac.

Jimmy:27:11

I said, no, it's not happening. Then I obviously came here, joined the Chrome OS team. I have to use a Chrome device. I can't be going to meetings and flipping open a MacBook. I have to be eating our own dog food as you mentioned earlier.

Jimmy:27:23

And I tell you, I mean, the experience is no different. I have my applications on my desk. At my desktop, I open I can open my PDF. I've always used Google Workspace. I've never used Office 365.

Jimmy:27:35

I've always used G Suite. Now, Google Workspace, that was no difference for me. But I could still access all those tools that I would before and all my documents. And then it's like these applications and these documents are sitting on my computer. They're just all out the cloud.

Jimmy:27:48

They're just not physically on this device. And it's just so much faster of an end of an instance. And like you mentioned before, we're typically, for the most part, working out of a browser, and we're mostly working out of the Chrome browser. So it's just very easy to use and get up to speed fast. I, like, I came on board, and there is no training for me on how to use a Chromebook.

Jimmy:28:10

It was go set up this channel program and go to market strategy. Nobody's gonna help you figure out how to use a Chromebook. But by the end of the 1st week, it was like I've been using a Chromebook for years.

Max:28:21

Yeah. Applications always drive these things, and the browser probably drives the majority of applications at this point. So one of the complaints that I hear a lot and this starts, of course, from Windows Update service. Right? I mean, if anybody running Windows has had that experience where they're in the middle of doing something and all of a sudden update gets pushed, Their computer's like, oh, gotta reboot.

Max:28:38

And we've seen similar things in Chrome updates. Enterprises where all of a sudden a Chrome update gets pushed out. Or what was a hairy one that we saw? I think it was actually with 59 where Chrome update was pushed out and broke functionality within 59, which was, of course, really painful if you were a 59 and Chrome user. So when you go into Chrome OS and you start talking about an enterprise subscription license with Chrome OS, is the enterprise in control of of software updates of, like, release cycle and channels?

Max:29:06

You know, you're part of a program here for certified with contact centers. Is there a testing release cycle where people have opportunity to say, hey. Look. This still works with 59 or NICE or UJET or fill in the blank. Right?

Max:29:18

And then it says, okay, push us out to our corporate fleet. I mean, how does that get managed?

Jimmy:29:23

On our end, there's a lot of testing and when I before the rollouts happen. But there are features and settings inside the browser, inside the Google admin console that allows you to have automatic updates being pushed, or you can also turn that off and then have to manually push it to them. So there's different ways around that. I remember hearing about that 59, quote, unquote, fiasco, but there there are settings inside the Google Admin console allow IT folks to stagger those types of updates being pushed out that might potentially break something that they're using. That's an unfortunate update that happened.

Jimmy:29:58

I never knew why that happened. I just heard kinda through the grapevine that it did happen. But from an updates and feature perspective, just to go back to the contact center space, we're also developing really cool additional add on features for the contact center. Not just, hey, it works better on these devices. There's more secure.

Jimmy:30:19

It's more productive, but actually adding features to Chrome OS specific for the contact center. So there'll be some releases this year that I'm really excited about that you you'll see being pushed out.

Max:30:32

You're gonna just drop that, but then you're not gonna give me any contacts or tell me anything. Right?

Jimmy:30:35

I well, if you and your listeners are interested no. I mean, I I would say the Chrome OS Flex, we launched that already. The next thing that is already kind of out there is called Chrome OS Desk Connector, and what that does is basically declutters the window for the contact center agent. So there's this this fantasy of one application, everything living in that application, kinda one window where you have your Salesforce integrated, you have your contact center agent, you have your knowledge based articles, all that kind of stuff in the window. The reality is you have a ton of different apps open.

Jimmy:31:10

You have a ton of different windows open. So what the desk connector is going to do is it's really going to declutter the space. So it automatically what it does is it automatically creates a new desk for each customer interaction every single time, and it launches all of the apps or web applications that you need every single time. So and you can preset this in the Google Admin console. So if if I'm a RingCentral customer, I need my RingCentral contact center solution.

Jimmy:31:37

I need my Salesforce application, and I need, you know, these 2 other applications every time. It launches that. I do the interaction. And then at the end of every interaction, I just hit close desk, and it brings me back to my starting, quote unquote, desk. So it just makes it easier for the agents to be more productive and instead of, like, having to manually close out all of these different windows and applications every single time.

Max:31:59

Or you end up like me with 57,000 tabs open that then you have to

Jimmy:32:03

That's what I look like right now. I need the desk connector on my Chromebook because yeah. You you wouldn't want me to share my screen. My wife sometimes walks in and looks over my shoulder, and she's in her Mac world. She's a TV and film editor and producer, so she works primarily on Mac devices.

Jimmy:32:18

And she sees my Chromebook and the all the tabs I have open, and it makes her sick.

Max:32:23

I had a macOS crash the other day. So computer reboots. I mean, it happens to me. It feels like once every, like, 8 or 9 months. I have no idea why.

Max:32:30

And I'm a Chrome desktop you know, browser user. And so Chrome relaunches, and it's like, you know, it was a blank slate. And I think I posted something about it. It was like, oh, you could just click the icon of just, like, reopen all the closed tabs from your previous history. And I was like, no.

Max:32:44

This is just a sign. It's just a sign. It's time to start fresh. It's a clean slate. All my tabs are closed.

Max:32:50

I I

Jimmy:32:51

Like, it's starting all over again.

Max:32:53

That's kinda like the norm of life at this point.

Jimmy:32:55

Oh, yeah. That happens I mean, when we do those updates, when I boot in the next day and the all the updates were done, there's that little the little tab at the bottom that says, do you wanna relaunch all of the applications you had? And I'm, like, yeah. Like, we'll relaunch them. And then all my tabs open.

Jimmy:33:09

All of the applications I was using were open, and I'm working immediately.

Max:33:14

It seems crazy, I think, for a lot of people, like headsets. Right? What's a common problem with headsets people have? Like, oh, they buy Bluetooth enabled headsets and try to use Bluetooth enabled headsets with a with a laptop, and then they have horrible audio performance out of that headset with that laptop. And if you take the same headset and plug in the dongle from the manufacturer into a USB port and then pair it with that dongle via DECT, it works just great.

Max:33:36

So part of what you're doing here is actually creating a certified list of saying, you know, we know these hardware manufacturers work for Chromeboxes and the Chromebooks, and we know these manufacturers work, and these are the certified devices that work in the headset world. And if you buy one of these boxes and one of these headsets, it's gonna work fine, and we know everything's great, and you're gonna get supported for it. And, I mean, that's wonderful. Right? It's gotta take a lot of guesswork out for people just saying, you know, why isn't my headset working, and what do we do about it?

Jimmy:34:04

Yeah. I mean, I sold I was at Vonage. I was selling CCaaS for a while, and you work 6 months, 8 months, a year to land an account. And then it comes to the deployment time, And you just see all these issues with the devices that they're using, whether it's the Windows device or they're using Internet Explorer or they're using Safari, and that's not working with the WebRTC client. Or they're using I've seen it before where they're using Apple AirPods with a Windows device, and they're complaining about call quality issues.

Jimmy:34:33

And it kinda all goes back to people just wanna talk about software and to date myself a little bit. I know you did a little bit earlier on it yourself, but I used to sell I got in this industry when it was called hosted PBX. So I never sold any on prem Avaya, Cisco PBXs. I've all I started selling hosted or cloud based PBX, but it was called hosted PBX back in the day. And all it was was you're buying an IP phone that sits on your desk, and the phone system is out in the cloud in a data center somewhere.

Jimmy:35:03

That's all the features. This was before UCaaS. This was before chat and meetings and text was all kind of integrated together, and that device needed to be optimized for the service provider you were working with. There was HD voice, wideband audio audio codecs. The touch buttons and everything had to be integrated back to that hosted PBX software in the cloud.

Jimmy:35:25

So having that device optimized for the communications provider you're using was paramount. Because if it wasn't, then the buttons were all over the place. Sometimes the device would reboot and lose all the different buttons, and you needed to go reprogram everything again. You would have jitter and latency and packet loss, all that kind of stuff if it wasn't optimized or certified for that service provider. So we're just taking that concept that's been around for 15 years and doing it with these devices.

Jimmy:35:53

So you're getting the Chromebook, Chromebox that's optimized. You're getting the Jabra or Poly headset. This Jabra headset, like I said, again, it's all day comfort on my head. There's customizable statuses with this little corded button that you have. They can sit on your desk to answer, to hang up.

Jimmy:36:09

You have call analytics as well and noise cancelling, all that kind of built into these devices. Having that all wrapped together and working together is huge. And to that end, another feature that we mentioned earlier, we got the desk connector coming up. But then another feature is something called insights is contact center insights. And what that's going to be is tying everything together from an analytics perspective.

Jimmy:36:31

So analytics on your Talkdesk CCaaS solution, analytics on how the Chrome OS device is working, how you the headset's performance is working, how your Internet's working, and have all of that reporting and analytics inside the Google Admin console. So now IT operations and contact center can really pinpoint together what the issue is and how to resolve it.

Max:36:52

Oh, that's really cool. Yeah. That's phenomenal. You've been with Google for a couple years and been very successful with partnerships and integrations and certifications now with CCaaS platforms and hardware manufacturers and everything along with us, you know, which is phenomenal. Congratulations.

Jimmy:37:08

Thank you.

Max:37:08

What would you say has been your biggest surprise so far doing this and pushing this product out into the world?

Jimmy:37:15

Just the misconceptions, man. It's just immediate well, first of all, whenever I go to these conventions, you have Google on your chest or Google on your booth. They immediately walk up to you and talk to you about YouTube or talk to you about, hey, my Gmail is not working. I've had multiple people tell me that they're locked out of their Gmail. How to get and I just I don't have an answer for it.

Jimmy:37:35

I think the I do a lot of partnerships and dealing with the partners that are selling these c cast and u cast solutions, and they're really focused in on the software. They only really care about that c cast solution software. They think that's the end all be all. That's what customers care about, these CX tools, AI, and the end to end CCaaS solution, which, by the way, Google launched last year their own CCaaS solution as well on the cloud team. I'm on the Chrome OS team.

Jimmy:37:59

So I but I'm I've been partnering with them and talking to them about bringing the cloud contact center solution and Chrome OS together, kinda packaged together for customers and for partners to sell. But that common misconception of I don't wanna talk about the hardware. It's the last thing on my mind. And I was the same way when I sold it. I would just say, it'll work on whatever you wanna deploy it on.

Jimmy:38:17

You wanna deploy it on a Windows device that's 10 years old, it's fine. It's a browser based Vonage CCaaS solution. It'll work fine. But there's a lot of issues that pop up. And I think if you're selling these CCaaS tools, these UCaaS tools, you want it to deploy as seamlessly as possible to keep your customer happy, but also to get it deployed if you're looking for any type of consulting fees or anything like that.

Jimmy:38:39

You can sell it all day long, but you're not gonna get paid anything until it's actually installed and implemented and working, and you have a customer to get those consulting fees and things like that. So to focus in on the hardware, I think people are starting to get that this awareness. And I go back to that analogy of hosted PBX. Like, hey. If you've been doing this for a while, you have sold hardware in the communication space.

Jimmy:39:00

Now why don't you take a look at the desktop? And you don't need to sell it yourself. You can go to our Chrome OS sales team, and they can help you guide your customer through the sales process. You can go to one of our resellers, like CDW, SHI Insight. They can help you as well.

Jimmy:39:14

And I think that's the common misconception is people just wanna talk about software. That's all customers care about, but they want an overall solution, a full contact center solution, end to end, and that includes the hardware.

Max:39:26

So prediction, the next, let's say, call I'll give you a long one. We'll give you 3 years. So 3 years from now, what percentage of contact center seats are running Chrome OS?

Jimmy:39:35

All of them, if I have my druthers. Well, I mean, a pretty cool stat that I saw last year, the second half of the year, 30% of new Chrome OS customers were contact center use cases with a 150 new logos in q 2 of 2022. So customers are seeing it. And the cool thing is now that we have Chrome OS Flex and we're going into tough time with the economy right now, we have that opportunity of to dis displace the operating system and not the physical device. If I'm thinking 30% of new Chrome OS customers are contact center use cases in the second half of last year, I would hope that you said 3 years from now?

Jimmy:40:16

I would say 30% of contact center agents are Chrome OS users.

Max:40:20

Okay. Well, we'll check it in 3 years. We talk about Flex a little bit, but we didn't really get into details. I mean, this is a download that you go to Google's website. You download something, and then what do you I mean, how do you turn it on?

Max:40:31

How do you test it? How do you deploy this? Like, walk me through it.

Jimmy:40:34

So the deployment is super easy. So you need to have the management license of it. So you need to have the Chrome enterprise upgrade license. So you go to a reseller or distributor and get that from them. And then from a deployment perspective, it's all cloud based.

Jimmy:40:48

So from a mass deployment, there's WDS for large deployments. You can go to the support page for Chrome OS Flex, and you can create your own USB for it. And then you plug the USB, and then it downloads Chrome OS from the USB onto the device. And it takes about, I think, half an hour. I've done it for a bunch of customers that we are doing, like, test drive accounts for.

Jimmy:41:11

We sent them the 2, 3 Chrome devices, Chromebook, Chromebox, and then we also had them install Chrome OS Flex from the cloud.

Max:41:18

So the managed desktops sound phenomenal. But until that's available, on today's world, can you force applications on launch? So, hey. I know when this logs in, I want to go ahead and launch my contact center instance or fire up Okta. Is that all available to you right now through the admin management?

Jimmy:41:36

Yeah. 100%. So you can have that forced to deploy. You can also have certain things blocked from them to download from the Google Play Store. So you can actually curate Google Play to allow them to see just what you want to see for them to be able to download.

Jimmy:41:53

So they can't go in and download Spotify if you don't want them to. They you just remove that from the access from that from the store. So they can't even download. Or you can just lock it completely and make it very secure and allow them to, you know, download anything, which I I don't know if you wanna go that route from a employee happiness perspective. But, yeah, you can have that for us to play.

Jimmy:42:12

But Desk Connector is already, in a trusted tester. So we have customers using it right now. I'm working with a customer to get it set up with NICE right now as well. And, yeah, it's a really cool tool. And then I think the other thing that I wanted to mention is you mentioned what number in 3 years from now of contact center agents are gonna be Chrome OS agents.

Jimmy:42:32

Well, a big piece of getting there to that 30% or 50% or whatever is working with these Chrome enterprise recommended c gas partners, Vonage, RingCentral, 8 by 8. And one of the initiatives I'm working on with them this year, I can't say who yet or who's doing this, but is getting them to bundle in Chrome devices with their contact center seats.

Max:42:52

Smart.

Jimmy:42:52

So if you go to those UCaaS sellers, those RingCentral Vontages, you'll get the UCaaS license, and then you could add on a a rental of a Poly or Yealink IP phone with it and kinda bundle that together. Well, now we're gonna do that same concept, but with the contact center agent license and a Chromebook or Chromebox device all rented on a monthly recurring basis.

Max:43:13

Very smart. Make it easy for people on the default, and good things happen. Right?

Jimmy:43:17

Yeah. And I mean, just by mentioning, by offering that with your solution, that'll get the customer thinking, oh, wait. Maybe I should be looking at that. I that wasn't even a thought in my head, but, yeah, of course. Let me take a look at it.

Max:43:30

Awesome. Yeah. It's not, would you like fries with that? It's, do you want fries or onion rings?

Jimmy:43:34

Yeah. Chromebook or Chromebox?

Max:43:37

Chromebook or Chromebox. I go back to this, and the reason why I'm excited about it and try not to, like, dominate this conversation too much is if you've transitioned from managing desktops. Right? And so Mac, when it started coming into the enterprise, was a big deal, and a lot of stats came out with this because of just life cycle of the devices increases. So how long when a device enters your fleet, does it stay in your fleet?

Max:44:01

How long is that device what's that device life cycle actually look like? And the second one is really big is what your IT load is. What is your head count? So when I started, average head count for an enterprise, it was 65 employees to 1 IT person. So we were a 65 to 1 ratio.

Max:44:16

And today, a 150 to 1 is pretty normal. And you start looking at what is required in order to maintain that many employees versus IT. I mean, that's a lot of load in your IT. And you have to be efficient and you have to be smart about how you support that. And then looking at ratios that increase 200 to 1, 250 to 1, 300 to 1, this is not a one to 1 relationship anymore between I've got a laptop, and I need to call my help desk and find a cubicle and go get something fixed or pushed.

Max:44:42

You have to adapt pretty quickly in order to support that and scale. I've always been a huge fan of VDI. After you see terminal services deployed and VDI deployed in any way, it's hard to go back once you've seen, like, this other way. And it's funny because it started out that way. It started out with a thin client.

Max:44:58

You know, there was a server and a thin client, and then we went to personal devices, and then it kinda came back to it. And so I've always been very enamored with these sorts of things. We just look at it from security and posture and management, maintainability and support ratios and all these sorts of things. And, of course, moving your budget away from a multi $1,000 device endpoint to a an expensive disposable endpoint makes a big difference. And, I mean, I have clients right now that are hiring staff in Latin America and forget sourcing the equipment.

Max:45:26

You know, you ship something to some of these countries, we're rolling the dice and you might be in, in customs hold for 3 weeks.

Jimmy:45:33

Oh, yeah.

Max:45:34

We've hired somebody, we're paying them and the box is in customs. What do we do? And that becomes kind of real world. And after using Chrome OS and really using I don't wanna say playing with, but actually after really using Chrome OS, you know, you really see, like, this kinda next version coming out of what this really looks like for people.

Jimmy:45:51

Yeah. I mean, to that end, that IT piece, again, giving them back time in their day to really focus in on priority projects instead of deploying devices. This should be easy. This should be just set it and forget it type of stuff by now. I mean, it's 2023.

Jimmy:46:06

And with this IDC report that came out last year, these devices deploy 63% faster in this report. So that's shaving off more than 45 minutes per device deployed, and they require 36% fewer staff resources. So, again, going to kinda what you're talking about, tightening budgets, the economy, reallocating IT to different types of projects, You can do that by selecting the right operating system and types of devices for your business.

Max:46:34

Alright. Jimmy, final words. I'll give it to you. And what do we close with?

Jimmy:46:37

Let's say speed, security, and productivity, and you don't need to be a Google Workspace customer to be a Chrome OS customer. You can use Office 365, everybody. It's okay. Relax.

Max:46:48

So it's cheaper, it's faster, it's more secure, it's easier to deploy, it requires less people to manage, and you can still use Office 365, and you're certified with all the major contact center platforms and headset manufacturers.

Jimmy:47:02

And UCaaS as well.

Max:47:03

And UCaaS. Again, it's too good to be true, but it is true. Right?

Jimmy:47:07

Love it. That's why I came here.

Max:47:09

Jimmy, awesome. Thank you very much. It's always good to see you.

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