Naveen Viswanatha, Google

The 16:9 PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY SCREENFEED – DIGITAL SIGNAGE CONTENT The prevailing impression of Google and digital signage is that the tech giant came briefly into the sector a few years ago, made some noise, and then quietly left. But the reality is that the tech giant has continued to be active in digital signage, and there are numerous screen  networks out there running on Chrome OS devices through different CMS software vendors. Then there's Android, the Google-developed operating system used on a pile of smart displays and separate play-out boxes. But now Google is again getting visibly active in the digital signage and related kiosk ecosystem, extending an existing program called Chrome Enterprise Recommended to software vendors who use Chrome OS. It's also introduced a Chrome OS device management license,  for narrow-purpose uses like screens and kiosks, that works out to just a touch more than a couple of bucks a month. And there's Flex, an application that can extend the life of a Windows box by running Chrome, and enable screen networks using a blend of playback hardware. I think a lot of the early interest in Google, back in 2015, was with the relatively low prices of the software and hardware. These days, it likely has more to do with scale, manageability and security. I spoke with Naveen Viswanatha, Google's product lead on Chrome OS. Subscribe to this podcast: iTunes * Google Play * RSS TRANSCRIPT Naveen, thank you for joining me. What's your role at Google?  Naveen Viswanatha: Hey, thanks for having me. I am the Chrome OS Product Lead for our solution areas and our solution areas include virtualization, contact center, and very recently we've beefed up our kiosk and digital signage solution area.  Are you at the main campus out in Silicon Valley?  Naveen Viswanatha: I am, indeed. Yeah, right here in the heart of the main campus in Mountain View. How long have you been with Google? Naveen Viswanatha: I have been with Google for 16 years but I haven't been spending the whole time in Chrome OS. I've been using Chrome OS for about 7 years, I believe. So you're almost a lifer in Google terms?  Naveen Viswanatha: I guess so, it seems like that.  I'm gonna talk about Chrome OS. Can you give me a sense of the installed base globally for Chrome OS? I don't need like today's number, but just like … it's many millions, right?  Naveen Viswanatha: Yeah. We don't break out specific details, but yeah it's in the millions and that kind of spans, I would say across three broad areas. Education is one area. So students and student Chromebooks and boxes. Consumer, and then Enterprise and, within Enterprise, that's where my focus is in the solution space. So yeah, that's how we look at the overall market, but yeah it's seen a tremendous amount of growth, especially in the last several years. Yeah, the pandemic really put a push on Chrome for Education, right?  Naveen Viswanatha: It did. I would actually say that it increased an already healthy appetite for Chrome devices within the education space. I actually used to be part of the education team, and we went from devices that were primarily purchased by schools and districts to devices that were now starting to see adoption in the home and that was the kind of recent trend that we saw over the course of the pandemic is really devices being used in the home, remote for delivery of curriculum.  Would that be driven in part by just the simple fact that the kids are learning at home now, and the parents are seeing the Chromebooks and thinking, okay these are perfectly workable laptops? Naveen Viswanatha: That's entirely right, and in addition to that, some of the unique capabilities allow students to use their education profiles. So the same profile that they use on their Chromebooks at school, they can log into a personal Chromebook at home and all of their data, all of their bookmarks, their applications, everything is synced to them pretty uniquely. And so, that abil