Just three short years ago, ChromeOS Flex burst onto the scene with a simple, yet powerful promise: revitalize your old hardware with a modern, secure, and sustainable OS. Fast forward to today, and that promise has blossomed, supporting 600+ certified devices and powering millions of users worldwide. Talk about a glow-up!
Strawberry Hotels: A tale of ransomware & rapid recovery
Remember Strawberry Hotels (formerly Nordic Choice Hotels)? In 2022, they faced every admin's nightmare: a crippling ransomware attack that took down 90% of their 5,000 computers. But thanks to their foresight in piloting ChromeOS Flex, they pulled off an astonishing feat.
Within 48 frantic hours, employees across 200 hotels, armed with just a USB stick and a one-page guide, converted 2,000 machines to ChromeOS Flex. They were back online by Monday, saving an estimated six weeks of downtime and preventing a single hotel from closing! It's a true testament to ChromeOS Flex's resilience, sustainability, and impressive cost savings (we're talking $6.7 million and serious CO2 reductions!).
And let's be honest, we bet the Strawberry Hotels team, after hand-delivering all those USBs, is probably looking at our latest news with a knowing smile and a slight wince, thinking: "Oh, if only the remote deployment feature was around back then!"
Game changer alert: Remote deployment has landed!
Well, Strawberry Hotels' hypothetical wish has come true! The biggest leap forward since Flex's inception is here: ChromeOS Flex remote deployment. No more sneaker-netting USB drives across continents!
This new feature allows most managed Windows devices to automatically convert to ChromeOS Flex from anywhere. Just craft your package, deploy it with your existing Windows management tool, and watch as devices seamlessly convert, join Wi-Fi, and enroll in your Google Admin console. It's secure, stable, and designed to make large-scale migrations a breeze. Plus, with new support for Android network security and VPN apps from the likes of Cisco and Zscaler, ChromeOS Flex is more enterprise-ready than ever.
From saving a hotel chain from a digital disaster to now enabling effortless global deployment, ChromeOS Flex has truly come full circle. The future of giving old hardware new life just got a whole lot easier!
For all the details, check out the full story:
