Celebrating entrepreneurship with Chrome business apps

Posted by Bonny Lau, Product Manager, Chrome for Business and Education

Editor's note: As part of our series focused on celebrating National Small Business Week, we are featuring stories, tools and resources that can help small businesses grow and innovate.

American entrepreneurs have good reason to celebrate this week -- it’s National Small Business Week. Entrepreneurs all over the world, like you, have a knack for wearing many hats, being scrappy and spotting new opportunities. And the tools you use should be intuitive, scale quickly and easily, and offer ubiquitous accessibility.

Luckily, many business web apps today are perfect for small and growing businesses. Accounting apps are intuitive enough to be used by someone without a CPA. Managing customers comes with pricing that scales as your business grows. And your social media management and email campaign tools can work with each other via clever APIs. Best of all, you and your team can use these web apps anywhere, from any computer.

In honor of National Small Business Week, we’re featuring a curated list of some of our favorite business apps and extensions from the Chrome Web Store. The Gmail and Google Drive Chrome apps let you access your mail and documents even when you’re offline. And with Chrome extensions like HootSuite’s Hootlet and Zendesk Activity Stream, you can monitor your social media stream and your customer service issues at the same time, because -- well, that’s just what entrepreneurs do every day.

You need tools that work just as hard as you do. Thanks to the web, it’s easier than ever to discover the apps that fit your specific needs. If you’re on the lookout for new ways to simplify, manage, or grow your business, check out these business apps from the Chrome Web Store. And if your team isn’t on Chrome already, learn more about the security, speed and manageability of Chrome for Business.

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Retiring Chrome Frame

Posted by Robert Shield, Google Chrome Engineer

(Cross-posted on the Chromium Blog)

The main goal of the Chromium project has always been to help unlock the potential of the open web.  We work closely with the industry to standardize, implement and evangelize web technologies that help enable completely new types of experiences, and push the leading edge of the web platform forward.

But in 2009, many people were using browsers that lagged behind the leading edge. In order to reach the broadest base of users, developers often had to either build multiple versions of their applications or not use the new capabilities at all. We created Chrome Frame — a secure plug-in that brings a modern engine to old versions of Internet Explorer — to allow developers to bring better experiences to more users, even those who were unable to move to a more capable browser.

Today, most people are using modern browsers that support the majority of the latest web technologies. Better yet, the usage of legacy browsers is declining significantly and newer browsers stay up to date automatically, which means the leading edge has become mainstream.

Given these factors we’ve decided to retire Chrome Frame, and will cease support and updates for the product in January 2014. If you are a developer with an app that points users to Chrome Frame, please prompt visitors to upgrade to a modern browser. You can learn more about these changes in our FAQ.

If you’re an IT administrator you can give your employees the full capabilities of a modern browser today, even if you depend on older technology to run certain web apps. Check out Chrome for Business coupled with Legacy Browser Support, which allows employees to switch seamlessly between Chrome and another browser. Chrome is secure, stable and speedy, and runs on all major desktop and mobile OSs. IT admins can also configure 100+ policies to make Chrome fit their needs.

It’s unusual to build something and hope it eventually makes itself obsolete, but in this case we see the retirement of Chrome Frame as evidence of just how far the web has come.

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New SAP web apps are optimized for Chrome

Posted by Rajen Sheth, Director of Product Management, Chrome for Business and Education

Just as Google Docs has changed the way we create documents, other business web apps are also changing the way we work -- by offering access to tools, people, and data from anywhere, on any device. In fact, today’s information workers use an average of 9.6 web applications to do their jobs.

But business users are discerning about their apps. And enterprise solution providers like SAP are meeting users’ demand for intuitive design and cross-device accessibility by developing web apps on the latest HTML5 web technologies. At the Sapphire conference this week, SAP launched SAP Fiori: a new suite of productivity web apps built for the modern web.

SAP Fiori apps are optimized for Chrome. Now, the tens of millions of SAP customers who perform common tasks to manage customer relationships, human resources or finance, can get the best user experience with Chrome. Sam Yen, SAP’s global head of design and user experience, explains, “SAP Fiori can be used on mobile devices and desktops using browsers that support HTML5. As a secure and cross-platform modern browser that’s always up to date with the latest web technologies, Chrome allows SAP Fiori apps to shine on any device.”

The web has become a universal platform for powerful business applications, from enterprise solutions like SAP to a company’s internal apps. Chrome provides the security, speed and control that enable IT to deploy and manage these apps for employees. To learn more, visit Chrome for Business.

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New Chrome features bring the modern web to work

Posted by Cyrus Mistry, Senior Product Manager, Chrome for Business & Education

Just like in our personal lives, work increasingly means accessing useful information, staying connected with people, and using web apps -- all of which are powered by the browser. Today, we’re announcing two new Chrome for Business features that make it easier to use Chrome at work.

First, we’re launching Legacy Browser Support for companies that want to use Chrome but rely on custom web applications built for older browsers. When companies use browsers that are two or more versions old, employees and developers are unable to benefit from the incredible web innovations of the past four, or even ten years. Deploying a modern browser can help IT bolster security, reduce support costs, and improve browser speed and usability for employees.

With Legacy Browser Support, employees on Chrome are automatically switched to a legacy browser when they begin using an older app. IT managers simply define which sites should launch from Chrome into an alternate browser, and then set this Chrome policy for all employees. And while Chrome Frame helps developers build apps for older browsers, Legacy Browser Support lets IT admins of organizations embrace the modern web.

More than ever, employees are requesting to use their personal computers or devices for work. We’re also introducing cloud-based management of Chrome for Google Apps for Business and Education customers. Now, whether employees are working from the company’s desktop or their personal laptop, they will be able to access default applications, custom themes, or a curated app web store when they sign-in to Chrome with their work account. With cloud-based management, IT administrators can customize more than 100 Chrome policies and preferences for their employees from the Google Admin panel. Non-Google Apps customers who are interested can sign up here.

The web and browser have come a long way in the last 20 years. As Chrome continues to push the boundary of what’s possible on the modern web, these innovations should be available for everyone, everywhere -- especially at work. Learn more about Chrome for Business.

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The new Chromebook, for every student

Posted by Rajen Sheth, Group Product Manager, Chrome for Education & Business

Today on the Chrome blog we announced the new Samsung Chromebook for $249, an even more affordable way to bring the the web’s vast educational resources and apps to your students.

At only 2.5 pounds and 0.8 inches thick, the new Chromebook zips along, booting in under 10 seconds and playing high resolution video beautifully. It automatically receives the latest security updates from Google and doesn’t require any manual IT set-up, so additional devices won’t mean skyrocketing support costs. A recent IDC sponsored white paper showed that Chromebooks for Education require 69 percent less labor to install and 92 percent less labor to support, delivering big cost savings by reducing the need to hire additional IT staff.

Our goal is to make computers more accessible to everyone and we hope that the new Chromebook makes it even easier for you to bring the power of the web to your classroom.

Editors note: Join us for a Hangout On Air on Tuesday, October 23 at 11:00 am PDT/ 2:00 pm EDT/ 7:00 pm BST off of the Google in Education Google+ page. We’ll do a quick review of the details of the new device, compare it to other models, and take your live questions.

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Enhanced Chrome browser support for Google Apps customers

Posted by Fred Beckebanze, Manager, Google Apps Technical Solutions Engineers

Business is moving to the web. The web allows organizations of all sizes to get stuff done from anywhere, and work better together. The Chrome browser helps businesses get onto the web securely and quickly – and today, we’re adding phone and email support for Chrome for Google Apps customers.

Moving forward, Google Apps for Business, Education and Government customers may contact Google via phone or email to receive support on Chrome installation, functionality, security, browser policy settings and Google Apps interoperability for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.

With Chrome you can securely sync your bookmarks, apps, settings and open tabs across devices – useful for the 98% of us who move between screens throughout our day. Google Apps also work great with Chrome, as features like offline document editing, desktop notifications and homescreen apps are currently only available in Chrome.

If your organization uses a legacy app that isn’t compatible with Chrome, we suggest adopting a dual-browser strategy. The costs of using an old browser can range from reduced speed and feature gaps to exposure to critical security holes – far greater than the costs of supporting a second browser.

Editor’s note: For Apps organizations running Windows, download the Microsoft Installer version of Chrome and centrally configure and deploy it to your employees. For organizations that support multiple operating systems, users or IT can download the Chrome client directly.

Join us for a Google+ Hangout on Air on Wednesday, October 3 at 11am PDT (2pm EDT) to review new Chrome features and deployment practices for Google Apps customers. Go to the Google+ Your Business page at the start time and you’ll be tuned in.

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