eBooks/eGuides

Chromebooks for the Enterprise? Chromebooks are gaining a foothold in the enterprise for a variety of reasons. They are inexpensive, there are a lot of choices available, and Google has a management console that lets your IT team manage the devices. Chromebooks have surpassed thin clients in unit sales volume and can often serve the same purpose. Because they support the mobility needs of many workers, they are an increasingly good fit for use in conjunction with digital workspaces. If you're shifting to digital workspaces, you should definitely evaluate Chromebooks for your needs. However, keep in mind that a Chromebook may not take the place of a laptop for employees that travel frequently and need to work on flights or in locations without a network connection. They also may not be well-suited for those using graphics applications remotely. "Gone are the days of workers tethered to their desks: now workers can—and must—collaborate anytime, anywhere, and on any device to keep up with business demands. Yet, a minority of employees (43%) feel satisfied with the tools their organization provides them with to do their jobs and only a third are happy with the number and quality of apps their organization provides." -Forrester Research | 6 How Digital Workspaces Benefit Users To keep up with growing business demands, employees need greater flexibility regarding where and how they work and which devices they use. A user may want to work on a project in her office in the morning, collaborate with a team in a separate building in the afternoon, pick up where she left off at home that evening, and work with a team in another country the following day. The benefits can be even more pronounced in situations where users must collaborate on large digital files. For example, a global architecture firm may have teams around the world designing a new building. Each team can use digital workspaces to get to and collaborate on evolving the common architectural model without having to copy large data files from one physical device to another. Today, job responsibilities change quickly, and the needs of users engaged in project-based work may shift. A computer that's adequate to meet a user's needs now may be inadequate in six months—or six days. A user may need advanced graphics or more compute power than a particular device provides. Intelligent digital workspaces address the challenges that modern workers face. A worker can access their applications and data from any device and any location, without being limited by the performance of the device. Users can shift from desktop to laptop to tablet to phone—and find everything right where they left it. And, with digital workspaces, a device failure, loss, or theft is much less of a disaster. Applications run on reliable virtual hardware in the datacenter or the cloud, so there's no loss of work or exposure of data. "

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