We launched the Chrome Insider blog in 2019 to share tips and best practices with IT admins so they could better deploy, manage, and secure Chrome browser. Since then, the series has covered everything from supporting legacy browsers to protecting enterprise credentials to simplifying deployments. To make it even easier to find and browse the series, we’ve pulled together all the posts to date here so you can read them all in one place or bookmark them for later.

Managing Chrome tips and tricks

• Understanding Policy Precedence for Chrome browser
• Protecting enterprise credentials with Password Alert
• Managing Chrome browser in a controlled environment
• Simplifying Chrome deployments on macOS
• Configuring Chrome browser in your VDI environment
• Know your options for Modern Enterprise Browser Management
• Managing policies and extensions across operating systems in Chrome Browser

Improving extension management and reporting 

• Improving Chrome browser extension management through permissions
• Publishing custom extensions for the enterprise
• Enhanced extension reporting with Chrome Browser’s Takeout API

Ensuring your organization is secure 

• Managing BeyondCorp Enterprise’s threat and data protection capabilities in Chrome
• A primer on enterprise private browsing modes

Increasing your organization’s productivity

• Ready, set, Chrome—Improvements and polices to make Chrome more performant
• Troubleshooting with Chrome Browser
• Preparing your enterprise for Flash deprecation
• Apps from the past? Fear not with legacy browser support in Chrome Enterprise

Although the series is 16 posts strong, there are plenty more Chrome Insider posts to come. You can read these posts and more on our Chrome Enterprise channel.

Over the last two years, we’ve seen a significant uptick in the number of people using messaging to connect with businesses. Whether it was checking hours of operation, verifying what was in stock, or scheduling a pick-up, the pandemic caused a significant shift in consumer behavior.

• 45% of users are spending more time on messaging services because of the pandemic 
• 85% of consumers would like to message brands directly

With the rise in demand for messaging, consumers expect communication with businesses to be  speedy, simple, and convenient. For businesses, keeping up with customer inquiries can be a labor-intensive process, and offering 24/7 support outside of store hours can be costly.  

To help businesses seamlessly deliver helpful, timely, and engaging conversations with customers when and where they need help, we introduced AI-powered Business Messages.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=fcgP3RHjBLY%3Fenablejsapi%3D1%26

What is AI-powered Business Messages?

With AI-powered Business Messages, you can connect with your customers in their moment of need, in the places they’re looking for answers—such as Google Search, Google Maps, or any brand-owned channel. For instance, check out how Walmart customers in the US are able to receive real-time information on product availability, straight from a search results page.

People turn to Google when they are searching for answers to their questions, looking to buy something, or trying to accomplish a particular task with one of our many tools. In fact, 68% of all online experiences begin with a search engine.

At Google, we know how important it is for interactions with a brand to be personalized, helpful, and simple. With AI-powered Business Messages, customers are able to chat with virtual agents that understand, interact, and respond in natural ways.

We are also combining smart automation with the ability for customers to chat with live agents when it’s really needed. This approach saves your customers precious time, while also saving you money. And with Business Messages automatically handling many customer inquiries in the background, businesses have the option to distribute their human customer service agents to address other needs. 

Getting started with conversational AI is easy with Bot-in-a-Box

We know it can be difficult to get started with AI. That’s why we are utilizing existing Google AI tools like Dialogflow—part of Google Cloud Contact Center AI—to create the capability within Google’s Business Messages called Bot-in-a-Box, which makes getting started with Conversational AI easy. Bot-in-a-Box allows for fast and effective adoption of automation for businesses of all sizes. 

Enabling Business Messages with Bot-in-a-Box can be as simple as leveraging an existing customer FAQ document you already have, whether it’s from a web page or an internal document. And since the conversational AI is powered by Business Messages and Dialogflow working together, your chat bot is able to understand and respond to customer questions automatically without the need to write code. 

Bot-in-a-Box also supports other critical journeys like “Custom Intents.” That means that your bot is able to understand the different ways customers express a similar question and respond accurately by using machine learning capabilities.

Finding success 

In April 2021, Wake County courthouses in North Carolina partnered with Tango Technology to implement Business Messages when it became apparent that being able to provide the public and attorneys with around-the-clock access to information would significantly reduce the pressure on courthouse staff. Using Bot-in-a-Box, Tango Technology was able to customize a solution for Wake County Courthouse, Justice Center, and Clerk of Superior Court in just four days.

“With the combination of Google’s Business Messages, GCP, and Dialogflow, we were able to spin up an AI-driven bot for the courts in days. And the technology stack allows us to continually improve by adding functionality in an agile process.”— Mike Lotz, Co-Founder, Tango Technology

With Business Messages, North Carolina courthouses saw a 37% decrease in the call volume handled by courthouse staff.  With 398,298 fewer phone calls during the first year of operation, the AI-based messages helped Wake County Courthouse work more efficiently and productively.

We’ve seen many brands benefiting from AI-powered Business Messages. For instance, Levi’s saw a 30% increase in off-hours shoppers and surpassed 85% customer satisfaction scores after implementing Business Messages. They also drove 30x more store-related questions than Levi’s website chat. 

Bring Google’s conversational AI to your storefront with Business Messages

Google’s Business Messages makes it easier for businesses of all sizes to engage their existing or potential customers in a virtual conversation, when and where they need it. 

To learn more, watch our Cloud Next session here or visit us at g.co/businessmessages. We have specialized services to help you get started  and can share the wisdom of our channel partners and dedicated experts who specialize in unleashing the potential of conversational AI.

With growing demand for Google Cloud, customers are increasingly expecting more reliable advisory and implementation skills from Google Cloud Systems Integrator (SI) Partners. Our model for professional services remains differentiated, with a heavy co-dependence on our SI Partner ecosystem to drive success for our customers. Therefore, enabling and nurturing strong delivery capabilities in our Partners is a responsibility we take seriously. The Google Cloud Global Services Delivery and Global Partner Ecosystem & Channels team jointly made significant investments earlier this year to underscore our commitment in this area. That’s why we’ve created the expanded Partner Delivery Excellence portfolio, a rich set of resources to help Google Cloud Partners deliver high-quality Google Cloud projects. Whether you’re a Partner just getting started with Google Cloud or have prior experience, we have the resources you need to succeed and we’ll meet you where you are in this journey.

Here are some of the key offerings in the Partner Delivery Excellence portfolio:

Stage: Building delivery skills | Pre-engagement

• Delivery Readiness Index (DRI): a framework that enables SI Partners to receive customized, individual level delivery enablement recommendations based on each consultant’s delivery readiness, assessed across training, certifications, delivery skills validation and prior delivery experience. 
• Delivery Navigator (coming soon): A delivery management platform consisting of delivery methods, work management tools, and dashboards that enables Google PSO and Partners to drive a high-quality, globally consistent project experience. You’ll hear more about this in an upcoming blog post.

Stage: Develop delivery expertise | Preparing for a delivery project

• Delivery Runbooks: Workload-level detailed delivery guides which include reference architectures, detailed migration steps, validation guidelines, common troubleshooting tips and more.
• Delivery Bootcamps: In-person or hybrid mode multi-day sessions conducted by experienced Google Cloud Consultants and customizable to the specifics of a Google Cloud project for a customer.
• Use case learning: Self-paced learning in the form of bite-sized lectures to build foundational delivery skills at the workload level, with quiz based assessment to validate knowledge gained.
• Delivery labs: Hands-on labs, hosted on our Qwiklabs platform, that complement use-case learning to build and test core delivery skills through a series of practical delivery scenario challenges.

Stage: Leverage Google delivery SMEs | During active project delivery

• Onboarding accelerator: Enables Partners with advisory services to onboard customers on Google Cloud foundations and migrate the first workload quickly and efficiently, by imparting knowledge and best practices from the Technical Onboarding Center. Supported workloads span Infrastructure & Application modernization, Analytics & AI and Databases.
• Delivery Helpdesk: In-the-moment implementation support for Partners during a live Google Cloud project through a standard case management process. Google Global Services Delivery teams well versed in the technology area will advise and help Partners resolve the issue at hand.
• Delivery Assurance Services: Project-level safeguarding services that are delivered in the context of an active Partner-led customer project. 

Stage: Leverage Google delivery expertise independent of projects | Build, scale and optimize Google Cloud practices

• Tooling advisory: Assessment of Partner tools with detailed recommendations to enhance tools architecture for better scale, security, ease of use and, where applicable, pointers to Google Cloud open-source tools and best practices.
• Resident Experts: We are selectively introducing this offering of specialists from Google Cloud Consulting teams embedded with Partners for a fixed period of time and with defined scope and deliverables. Partners can leverage these experts to build core delivery capabilities in new areas like generative AI,  sharpen existing Google Cloud capabilities in adjacent solution areas like Data & Analytics or have access to expertise to define a comprehensive automation strategy for Google Cloud migration practices.

We are confident that the Partner Delivery Excellence portfolio brings forth much of what’s needed for our Partners to not only deliver high-quality services but also profitably grow their Google Cloud services business quickly and efficiently.

To learn more about the portfolio or to share your feedback or suggestions, please contact your Google Cloud Partner representative. 

If you are attending Partner Summit during Google NEXT in August, we look forward to seeing you in the breakout series where we have a dedicated session on this topic.

Thank you for reading. And thank you for your partnership!

Prior to joining Google Cloud, I spent 20 years in the public sector serving in various security roles, most recently as the head of the cybersecurity division at the newly established Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). I was responsible for delivering services and capabilities to about 100 civilian agencies, as well as our critical infrastructure for state and local partners across the country.

Throughout my time serving in the U.S. government, I spent a great deal of energy working to keep bad actors out of our systems. What I eventually realized was that we were at a disadvantage. We didn’t just have legacy systems to deal with; we also had a legacy mindset. Our policies and capabilities were overly reliant on a perimeter-based approach to defense and introduced layers of friction with tools like VPNs, which inhibited productivity and increased frustration.

I spent the last few years of my time in the government doing my best to modernize this approach to security and supporting the many people who shared this vision. While most of them are still there, doing excellent work, repeated cybersecurity breaches of U.S. government systems have interrupted vital work and cost taxpayers billions of dollars. The SolarWinds breach in 2020, for example, may have cost governments and businesses more than $100 billion and the loss of vital national security information. Yet many government agencies continue to rely on the same legacy productivity software.

Today, a new survey conducted by Public Opinion Strategies and commissioned by Google Cloud shows that many government workers echo these concerns. The survey—which polled 2,600 working Americans, includes 600 workers from the D.C. metro area and 338 workers employed by federal, state, or local governments across the country—found that the majority of government employees surveyed reported being “very” concerned about cyberattacks striking their employers in the coming years. And nearly one-third of surveyed government employees in the D.C. metro area say they have experienced a disruption at work because of a cyberattack.

Results from the survey also showed a lack of satisfaction with legacy software, with more than 50% of government workers nationally responding that there are other products and services that could help them do their jobs better.

These new findings not only speak to the challenges our government employees face, but also outline an opportunity for improved innovation and security that can help government employees better achieve their missions.

Concerns about cybersecurity

The majority of respondents said they believed it was likely that the federal government would be the victim of a cyberattack in the next few years. This percentage was even higher in the D.C. metro area and among government employees, with 40% of government workers living in metro D.C. saying it was “very likely.”

Respondents in all groups—national, D.C. metro, and government employees—were more likely to be concerned about cyberattacks as the perceived threat moved closer to home. For example, 80% of those surveyed said that recent attacks have them concerned about their personal data and privacy, and that of their family members. And for those in the D.C. area or in government jobs, the numbers were consistently higher than the national average.

One likely reason for such broad concern about cyberattacks is that many respondents reported experiencing a cyberattack at work. And while more than one-in-ten workers nationally have experienced disruptions from a cyberattack, the number increased to nearly one-in-three for D.C.-based government employees—nearly three times higher than the national average.

The problem with IT ‘monoculture’

According to survey respondents, 84% of D.C. metro government employees primarily use Microsoft products at work, including Word, Outlook, Teams, and OneDrive. This is confirmed by another recent study by Omdia that found 85% of government employees use Microsoft productivity software, far and away the largest IT productivity vendor by market share.

This reliance on a single software suite might suggest that these products are safe and secure, but the Public Opinion Strategies survey found that more than half of all respondents said that the government’s reliance on these Microsoft products actually made the federal government more vulnerable to hacking or cyberattacks.

Given these vulnerabilities, why does government IT continue to rely on the same set of productivity tools in the workplace? The reason, according to survey respondents, has more to do with inertia than innovation. When asked why their employers used Microsoft services, around half said that the reason their employer continues to choose legacy, incumbent vendors was more about not wanting to change than wanting the most effective tool for the job.

Choice and shadow IT

Coupled with these concerns about vulnerabilities comes a noted sentiment among those surveyed that their current IT solutions are not best for their needs. About half of those surveyed who primarily use Microsoft at work said that they would prefer to have a choice to use products and services from other companies. And among those who use Microsoft at work, 43% believe there are other products and services that would allow them to do their job better.

This may be leading workers to adopt “shadow IT,” or using products and services that are not officially approved or endorsed by their IT departments. In fact, the Public Opinion Strategies survey found that 35% of D.C. metro government workers have used shadow IT to get their jobs done. And among workers aged 20 to 34, that number jumps to 41%.

Rethinking IT purchasing priorities

With so many survey respondents reporting that they are dissatisfied with their legacy IT solutions, it may be time for the government to rethink its approach to procurement. In a separate research survey from Omdia in December 2021, 250 people responsible for technology purchasing decisions in the U.S. federal, state, and local governments said that government technology and procurement practices often are more about making things easier for IT vs. choosing what employees feel would be the best solution. In fact, only 27% of officials surveyed in that research cited “user demand” as a factor affecting their purchasing decisions.

As governments work to meet the demands and preferences of their constituents—and their employees—it’s clear that there’s an overreliance on legacy solutions, despite a track record of cybersecurity vulnerabilities and poor user perception.

At Google Cloud, we believe it’s time for more diversity and choice in the tools available for our civil servants across the nation—70% of whom use Gmail outside of work, according to our survey. Government workers have the right to benefit from the same flexible, secure-by-design tools at the office that they use in their personal lives. You can learn more about Google Workspace for Government here.