Looking back on 2020, it’s clear that the ways we work have rapidly transformed—from the rise of remote work and increasingly digitized processes, to balancing time across work and personal responsibilities. But one thing hasn’t changed—businesses still rely on a staggering number of applications to get work done. Working from home and the associated pressures on productivity have only emphasized the need for fewer tools that do more, are easy to use from anywhere, and seamlessly integrate with other software.

Google Workspace helps you get more done—with communication and collaboration tools known and loved by billions of users, thoughtfully connected together. And while billions of users choose our apps, we recognize that they also need to effectively collaborate with partners, customers, and even teammates that might use other tools. In particular, we know that many people work with a mix of Google Workspace and Microsoft applications—for example, while migrating to Google Workspace or collaborating with external vendors or clients. That’s why we make it easy for you to use Google Workspace with Microsoft Office and Office 365, helping you collaborate productively from any device with anyone, regardless of what tools you use.

Save time with helpful intelligence and faster workflows in Google Workspace

Creating and collaborating on content is at the heart of getting work done. When working with content received from customers, partners, or teammates, employees shouldn’t lose time converting files or working in unfamiliar tools. 

With Google Drive, you can store and share over 100 different file types and formats, including Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files, as well as PDFs, images, and videos. And by using intelligent features like Priority and Quick Access in Drive, you can find files nearly 50% faster. 

With Office editing, users can also easily edit Microsoft Office files in Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides without converting them, with the added benefit of layering on Google Workspace’s enhanced collaborative and assistive features. From assigning action items via comment, to writing faster with Smart Compose, to accelerating data entry with Sheets Smart Fill, Office editing brings Google Workspace functionality to your Office files. And we recently extended Office editing to the Docs, Sheets, and Slides mobile apps as well, so you can easily work on Office files on the go. 

Starting today, you can also open Office files for editing directly from a Gmail attachment, further simplifying your workflows. For example, when you receive a Word document as an email attachment, you can open it and start editing in Docs with a single click while still preserving the Word file format. Then you can respond to the original email thread and include the updated file, right from Docs—saving you time by eliminating steps like downloading the file to edit, or searching for the relevant email to reattach it to.

We also know it’s important that your Office files look consistent when opened in Docs, Sheets, and Slides, so we continue to support additional formatting options used in Office files. Today, we’re announcing mixed page orientation support in Docs, so you can create Docs or edit Word files with mixed landscape and portrait pages. And next year, we’ll add support for inserting images behind text and watermarks, to give you further flexibility.

Finally, when it comes to spreadsheets, we know that many organizations maintain both Excel and Sheets, especially when relying heavily on macros that have been built over time to automate processes. In Sheets, it’s easy for anyone to record macros, without having to write any code. And to make it easier for teams to transition from Excel to Sheets or support co-existence of these tools, we have also launched a new Macro Conversion add-on that helps users migrate macros from Excel to Sheets. This way, teams can save time through automation, without having to start from scratch.https://www.youtube.com/embed/CUKAUFoa86M

Stay connected with others, wherever you are

Business growth is fueled by people connecting and generating ideas together, whether they are working from the same office or dispersed around the globe. Google Workspace makes it easy to schedule time and meet with others, helping you maintain a connection with your collaborators and accomplish more together, from any device, anywhere.  

To make and maintain these connections, people need an easy way to schedule time with others, regardless of which calendaring system they are using. Some organizations run mixed calendaring environments, for example, during a migration to Google Workspace or merger, where one company is not on Google Workspace. To help in such scenarios, the Google Calendar Interop tool makes it easy for people to schedule and book resources regardless of which system they’re on. With Calendar Interop, teams across systems can see each other’s free/busy status, event details, and book shared resources, so that they don’t need an endless exchange of chats or emails to land on a time that works for both parties. 

Google Meet is another powerful tool for keeping employees connected, wherever they are. With Meet, it’s easy for teams to connect via secure, enterprise-grade video conferencing from any device—laptop, mobile, or even dial-in via phone. Google Workspace customers can invite anyone to join a Meet call, including people using Outlook who don’t have a Google Account. Or if using Outlook to schedule events, users can easily add Meet video conferencing details using the Google Meet add-in for Microsoft Outlook. With a simple tap of the meeting link in your email or calendar, you can easily connect face-to-face with your collaborators, helping maintain that human connection that drives work forward.

Be productive from anywhere with custom solutions 

Often, certain tasks and processes require employees to develop custom applications to manage them. Understanding how to code can be a huge barrier for employees faced with this challenge, but Google Cloud’s AppSheet enables anyone to build applications without having to write code. AppSheet is available to all Google Workspace users and has a number of tight integrations that make it easy to build custom apps on top of Google Workspace apps, like Google Sheets.

AppSheet is designed to work on any device and can connect to your data and spreadsheets, wherever they live. While AppSheet and Google Workspace are tightly integrated, AppSheet also easily connects to O365 data sources such as Excel spreadsheets stored in OneDrive or SharePoint. AppSheet creates a bridge between environments—custom apps and automations can connect to Google Workspace and Microsoft Office apps simultaneously, so that teams and processes split between environments can be managed more seamlessly. Plus, with AppSheet, even Microsoft users can easily incorporate Google’s leading AI and machine learning capabilities, like optical character recognition and sentiment analysis, into their apps.

Flexibility is important when it comes to effective collaboration, and we’ll continue to invest in the many ways Google Workspace can work seamlessly with the rest of the tools you use—helping you accomplish more, faster. Visit our learning center for more info on topics like working with Office files in our apps, or check out these helpful switching guides if your organization is currently transitioning from Microsoft Office to Google Workspace.

AirAsia’s vision is simple: allow everyone to fly. Founded in 2001, the airline and sister company AirAsia X have grown to service 150+ destinations in 25 markets, using 274 aircraft to operate 11,000+ weekly flights from 23 hubs across the region. While the airline is known as a provider of low-cost airfares to locations across Asia, this is only one part of its value proposition. AirAsia also aims to deliver innovative, personalized products and services that meet the needs of each of its passengers.

Technology is key to AirAsia’s success and, with strong support from Group Chief Executive Officer Tony Fernandes, in 2016 the airline began a five-year program to become a data-first business and a digital airline.

“We wanted to better ensure we were using data correctly to become more agile, efficient, and customer oriented,” says Lye Kong Wei, Chief of Data Science, Group Head at AirAsia.

AirAsia needed technologies and services that could capture, process, analyze, and report on data, while delivering value for money and meeting its speed and availability requirements. The airline also wanted to minimize infrastructure management and system administration demands on its technology team.

“We knew data was a big part of making decisions in the future. So we needed a platform that could scale to meet our growing appetite for it. Google Cloud—in particular BigQuery—was ideal for this task.”

—Lye Kong Wei, Chief of Data Science, Group Head, AirAsia

Google Cloud the best fit

AirAsia realized only a cloud service could meet its needs and began evaluating the market. The airline then conducted a proof of concept and found Google Cloud was the best fit for its business. It was already familiar with Google Cloud, having deployed G Suite collaboration and productivity applications to its workforce in all countries except China. According to Kong Wei, products such as Forms, Docs, Sheets, and Gmail delivered a considerable improvement in collaboration between various departments, as well as streamlining and automating a range of processes.

The business was particularly excited by the potential of the BigQuery analytics data warehouse to power its digital transformation. “We knew data was a big part of making decisions in the future,” says Kong Wei. “So we needed a platform that could scale to meet our growing appetite for it. Google Cloud—in particular BigQuery—was ideal for this task.”

“With BigQuery, we could process queries and requests much faster than previously and tackle more complex problems.”

—Lye Kong Wei, Chief of Data Science, Group Head, AirAsia

The AirAsia technology team was impressed by the ease and flexibility with which it could extract, transform, and load customer data from its systems, websites, and mobile applications into BigQuery for analysis. Data, reports, and dashboards were delivered and visualized through Google Data Studio.

BigQuery also scaled seamlessly to support data growth and, as a managed service, required minimal administration from the airline’s technology team. “In addition, with BigQuery, we could process queries and requests much faster than previously and tackle more complex problems,” says Kong Wei. “As a result, we could be more innovative about realizing opportunities,” he adds, citing the benefits of being able to view and understand historical measures of booking curves—a measure of how long it took customers to book before a flight. This improves the airline’s ability to manage revenues.

A broad ecosystem

BigQuery and Data Studio are just two components of a broad ecosystem—powered largely by Google Cloud services—deployed by AirAsia. Pub/Sub provides a scalable message queue that enables AirAsia developers to integrate systems hosted on Google Cloud or externally. Apache Airflow enables the business to create, schedule, and monitor workflows, while Cloud Composer manages the dependencies of PHP and related libraries. App Engine allows AirAsia personnel to develop and host web applications. “Thanks to App Engine, we’ve easily been able to create new applications, services, and APIs powered by the data we have been collecting,” says Kong Wei.

AirAsia is also running the middleware for its APIs in a managed Google Kubernetes Engine environment for increased scalability, resource optimization, and reliability, while Cloud Storage provides storage for data from a range of systems and sources. Dataflow enables the business to transform and process data in stream and batch modes from its website search page as customers look for flights.

“With a minimal number of people involved, we can very quickly transform an idea or thought process into a deliverable. Prior to Google Cloud, bringing those ideas to fruition would have been impossible.”

—Lye Kong Wei, Chief of Data Science, Group Head, AirAsia

Faster deployment and testing

The stability of Google Cloud service means AirAsia has a reliable base from which to launch new products and features. “If we have consistent reliability from our core systems—and Google Cloud incorporates monitoring tools such Cloud Monitoring that enable us to identify issues quickly—developers and product engineers can focus on turning ideas into reality,” says Kong Wei. “With a minimal number of people involved, we can very quickly transform an idea or thought process into a deliverable. Prior to Google Cloud, bringing those ideas to fruition would have been impossible.”

Robust security

AirAsia is also relying on Security Health Analytics, a product that integrates with Security Command Center, to identify misconfigurations and compliance violations in its Google Cloud resources and take action. Security Health Analytics ensures the airline’s budgets go to keeping customers’ travel costs low rather than recovering from security breaches.

The product enables AirAsia to check that resources are configured properly and are compliant with CIS benchmarks as its critical workloads run in Google Kubernetes Engine and App Engine.

“Being able to go to the new Security Health Analytics dashboard eliminates the guesswork of what we have running and if it is secure,” says Muhammad Faeez Bin Azmi, Information Security and Automation Solution Architect. “Now anyone on our team, even non-security professionals, can go to this dashboard and see a list of the misconfigured assets and compliance violations across all of our Google Cloud resources. We can also see the severity of misconfigurations, which helps us prioritize our response.”

“Security Health Analytics has really helped us reduce the amount of time we spend trying to figure out what’s wrong with our resources. It’s allowed us to use our time more effectively to identify and resolve more security issues than we could before.”

A new identity solution

AirAsia had also used a legacy on-premises directory for many years. However, as the company grew and expanded to new markets and regions, it had to manage multiple servers across a number of on-premises data centers and the public cloud, which proved costly and time-consuming.

Its Allstars—the airline’s name for its employees—needed to easily access a number of legacy on-premises apps in addition to a growing number of SaaS apps. As a business, it also needed a more seamless integration between its HR system of record and its identity solution for user provisioning and life cycle management. Solving these challenges with its existing on-premises directory was simply not feasible.

AirAsia brought up its identity concerns with the Google Cloud team, and after a number of conversations, decided to deploy Cloud Identity, Google’s cloud-based Identity and Access Management solution, to help address the identity challenges it was facing.

The airline chose Cloud Identity for a number of reasons—first, it was eager to move to the cloud as quickly as possible. Moving identity management to the cloud was a key enabler of this and the airline’s broader digital transformation. Managing identities from the cloud also enabled the airline to have a single identity and set of credentials for each employee, which they could use to access all the applications they need to be productive, both in the cloud and on-premises.

In addition, deploying Cloud Identity was a key step towards enabling the zero trust security model, which the airline felt was the best approach to strengthen its security posture and fight modern threats. Cloud Identity also integrated seamlessly with its existing technologies, which include not only Google Cloud products like G Suite and Chrome OS but also third-party tools like Citrix, Papercut, and others.

And finally, Cloud Identity offered significant cost and resource savings. With Cloud Identity in place, AirAsia’s IT department could spend less time worrying about managing multiple on-premises directory servers and and could instead focus on delivering value to Allstar employees.

Machine learning employed to increase ancillary revenue

In March 2018, AirAsia established the groundwork to use machine learning to optimize pricing for a range of services and began by using AI Platform to sort and predict demand for ancillary services such as baggage, seats, and meals. “By using AI Platform, we can sort based on data about history to predict the future,” says Kong Wei.

Dialogflow in wide use

With Google Cloud well established within the business, AirAsia is using Dialogflow, a voice and conversational interface development suite (and one of the core components of Contact Center AI) that enables businesses to create engaging AI powered voice- and text-based interfaces such as chatbots and voice apps—to streamline operations and reduce costs

“Tony Fernandes, our Group Chief Executive Officer, motivated us to create a range of metrics that would enable us to respond more quickly and efficiently to customers,” says Yuashini Vellasamy, Product Manager at AirAsia.

This resulted in the initial deployment of Dialogflow in AirAsia’s operational areas, from crew scheduling to internal business tasks.

With Dialogflow, AirAsia is able to provide pilots, crew, catering, and other teams with flight times, capacity and any other relevant information about their assignments. Another bot accepts medical certificates and updates from pilots and crew members unable to make rostered assignments and switches those assignments to other pilots and crews. “This improves our on-time performance and operational efficiency, as we are able to optimize the creation of crew schedules,” says Vellasamy.

AirAsia also uses Dialogflow to power a “safety bot” for airport ground staff. “We tried a lot of tools to encourage staff to advise us when they saw a safety issue—but employee usage was low,” says Vellasamy. “However, when we set up the safety bot, which asks users just four questions about an issue they have observed, we saw an increase in employee interaction, which helps ensure proper safety measures.

Beyond crew optimization and overall safety, AirAsia’s HR department in Asia uses a Dialogflow-powered bot to run a post-orientation engagement program for new employees. The bot follows up with employees about issues from parking to AirAsia’s onboarding buddy program, saving HR employees time from scheduling one-on-one meetings. Dialogflow also powered an employee satisfaction survey of 3,000 team members, resulting in a 30% increase in response rate compared to the previous year.

One of Dialogflow’s benefits is its language coverage, which the airline’s marketing team uses to target customers and prospects across a region with diverse languages and cultures. “For weekly campaigns and promotions, our sales and marketing teams simply update the campaign materials and the changes are reflected automatically in Dialogflow and consequently to users,” says Vellasamy. “This enables us to quickly scale and reach our customers globally.”

An upward trajectory

AirAsia is poised to reap further benefits from Google Cloud as its deployment matures. “On the data side, we’re more advanced, while on the application and programming side we have a long way to go,” says Kong Wei. “We’re on a trajectory upwards—we’re looking at a lot of new ideas and how to embrace and deploy them so we can further our data-first and digital airline agendas.”

“Nude” comes in all shapes, sizes and colors. But for Ade Hassan, finding undergarments to match her skin tone took more effort than necessary. Born in the U.K. to Nigerian parents, Hassan searched unsuccessfully for underwear and swimwear that matched her skin—a problem that continued to frustrate her through college and into her professional life. 

“My nude isn’t the nude I see in shops,” Hassan says. 

Like many other black entrepreneurs, she created her own solution. Hassan founded Nubian Skin, a company that sells lingerie, hosiery, and swimwear for women of color.

With shades like “cafe au lait” and “berry,” Nubian Skin products reflect diverse skin tones and are sold in shops located in the U.K., Nigeria and the U.S., as well as online. Beyoncé and her dancers even asked Nubian Skin to outfit them for their  2017 “Formation” tour. 

Since nearly the beginning, Hassan has used G Suite to keep her business humming.

From managing meetings with retailers and manufacturers, to coordinating publicity efforts with fashion press, to keeping track of retail invoices, G Suite has helped Hassan scale her business as quickly as people have demanded her products.

“There are so many pitfalls and so many things that are hard about business,” Hassan says. “It’s really amazing to have something like G Suite that is easy and intuitive.”

Nubian Skin’s fashion fame arrived seemingly overnight. When Hassan posted the company’s first campaign images, its Instagram followers jumped from 50 people to more than 20,000 in just a few weeks.

“People called asking, ‘Can we have the contact for the press department?,” says Hassan. “But at the time, it was just me.” To easily handle media requests, she set up a press@nubianskin.com email address through the G Suite Admin console. And because she had used Gmail for several months before launching the company, using the business version of Gmail came naturally.

“Having that nubianskin.com address gave the business an air of professionalism, which we wouldn’t have had otherwise,” Hassan says. “Usually you need a whole IT department to set up new emails and passwords, but the Admin console removes the hassle of that process.”

Because Nubian Skin employees aren’t always in the showroom together, they need to be able to access business documents—like model photos and customer invoices—from anywhere.

To help, Hassan securely stores business documents in Google Drive (which can be accessed on mobile, too) and works collaboratively with her finance team to process orders using Google Sheets.

“Everyone has access to the spreadsheet so we can fill in what we need at any given point,” says Hassan. “This way, nothing slips through the cracks.”

And when she needs to connect with colleagues quickly or face-to-face, she uses Hangouts Chat or Hangouts Meet. Chat makes it so employees are only a message away, and Meet helps her connect with people as if they’re in person at the office.

Five years after launching Nubian Skin, Hassan is a recognized entrepreneur who’s influenced other retailers to create more inclusive designs.

“Even if you’re small, you want people to see you as a professional business,” Hassan says. “If you’re still growing, you need the building blocks to get you where you want to be. I can’t imagine working without G Suite.”

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!

When Wyoming became the first state to transition all its employees to Google Workspace ten years ago, everyone expected a million dollars in cost savings. What started as a move to save money and ease communication has turned into much more. While the cost savings continues to be significant, state efficiency skyrocketed, allowing employees to spend more time working directly with the community.

This year, we’re celebrating 10 of the most important lessons learned over ten years in our Wyoming-Google partnership.

1. Collaborative tools breed a collaborative culture. Wyoming was prepared when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, forcing our workers to transition to at-home environments. Employees across the state were already using Google Workspace collaboration and productivity tools, which made the switch easy. We also had already set a precedent by hosting a key budget meeting over Google Meet from outside the country. Using Google Meet in such a high visibility meeting showed state employees that every level of government could benefit from digital collaboration. This culture was made possible by Google Workspace tools.

2. Digital tools can connect the community with essential services. That same collaborative spirit helped our government employees better connect with our community throughout the pandemic, delivering key information for food assistance, as an example. One in five children in Wyoming suffer from food insecurity. Google Workspace allows programs like the Wyoming Hunger Initiative to run smoothly, as everything from scheduling and planning events, to tracking and research, is handled with Google Workspace. The data gathered and stored in Google Cloud is protected and helps to bring meals to the kids who need them most.

3. Easy-to-use apps make transitions simpler. Google Workspace apps have been a breeze to learn from day one. They are designed to be intuitive and state employees are able to get the hang of the software simply by trying it themselves. We also developed a training series for new users to further ease the transition. Training is offered every six weeks so users can take the training when they are onboarded or at any time they need a refresher.As I started my career with the State of Wyoming, Wyoming began its journey as the first state to go Google – forever changing how and where we work. This was especially evident as we worked through our emergency telework at the height of the pandemic. Whether meeting with stakeholders around the capitol complex, across the state or teleworking from home, Google ensures our teams are always connected and collaborating.-Tim Sheehan
Interim CIO & Information Services Administrator, Dept. of Enterprise Technology Services

4. Invest in students, invest in the future. How do you enable students to retain access to their work and emails as they transition from elementary to middle and high school? Wyoming developed “Wyo for Life ,” which established a state email domain across all our school districts. Students get an email address with unlimited data that they can keep forever. This makes the transition for students seamless, and their digital portfolio is theirs for life.

5. Switching to Google Cloud saved millions on technology costs. The cost savings from moving to Google have taken many forms over the years. Google Cloud’s migration tools made it easy to move various systems to a single centralized platform, consolidating IT resources—and saving money—across the state. In the past 10 years, the cost of Google Workspace within the Department of Transportation has increased by only 7%, a third of the inflation rate over the same period. Our state also switched from a $1.5 million legacy video conferencing system to Google Chromeboxes in 2015—at a fraction of the cost. When combined with the savings over each year, the switch has saved taxpayers a compelling amount of money. This allows our state to keep innovating and adapting without putting pressure on taxpayers.

6. Security is both simpler and stronger. In the last decade, Wyoming has become the state with one of the best security records in the country. We have consistently ranked in the top five most secure states, year after year, with the help of Google Cloud. Other states have found it difficult to keep constituent data secure, and major breaches have left communities across the country floundering. By partnering with Google, we have ensured constituent data is constantly secure.

7. Flexibility is crucial for governments that want to grow. Focusing on flexibility, the State of Wyoming has been able to look at the needs of our employees and community and change the way we apply technology to our constituent services with Google Workspace. As those needs have changed, we have been able to shift our focus and better serve constituents without having to spend time rebuilding internal systems.

8. Working together has led to stronger, more cost-effective solutions over time. Our state has access to Google Cloud experts, and that relationship has allowed real flexibility. For example, Google Meet and its predecessor Google Hangouts, weren’t available at the beginning of our partnership. When it became clear that those tools could serve the Department of Corrections, we worked with Google Cloud to ensure the tool was added to our Google Workspace portfolio.

9. Workspace apps are always improving. Google Cloud is constantly evolving, upgrading, and improving their products to serve their users better. The hundreds of product updates they’ve put out over the years have benefited us as a long-term customer, and Google Workspace for Government ensures the complex problem of running an efficient public office has real solutions.

10. Community is key, even outside of Wyoming. The State of Wyoming is part of a larger community of public sector workers using Google called Public Sector Connect. All public sector employees can connect with others, join discussions, and get inspired by how Google tools are changing government and education. All community members hold positions in government or education, and new ideas are being shared every day. This community is at the forefront of public sector innovation. We meet with Google engineers and suggest solutions, feature set requests, and learn from others about problem-solving, innovation and implementation. This is the space that has been lacking in the public sector for years and if you are in the public sector, please join!

Using Google has allowed the State of Wyoming government to focus on our future roadmap. Over the last 10 years, instead of retrofitting our ideas into legacy technology or developing applications as we go, Google Workspace and Google Cloud contained all of the tools to achieve our milestones seamlessly. Google Workspace contains all of the applications our end users need for working remotely, in-person, or hybrid. The harmony between Google Workspace and Google Cloud opens new opportunities for our government, to include data analytics, big queries, and the use of artificial intelligence. Our enterprise processes have modernized thanks to the innovative solutions and support by Google. 

Now 10 years later, we are proud of the partnership we have built with Google Cloud and are looking forward to the next 10 years using Google to support our community.