Posted by Henrik Poulsen, Deputy CIO, Arbejdernes Landsbank

Editor's note: Today’s post comes from Henrik Poulsen at Arbejdernes Landsbank, a full service retail bank in Denmark. Arbejdernes Landsbank recently introduced Chromebooks to help customers become more digitally savvy.

Many people open their mailboxes to find dozens of envelopes from financial institutions with information they can easily find online. As a retail bank, most of our customers are used to receiving bank statements and loan documents via snail mail, but that’s about to change. At the end of 2014, the Danish Government mandated that all citizens receive mail from the public sector online. At Arbejdernes Landsbank, we’re helping our customers adapt to a new era of digital banking in 2015.

Before we started prioritizing this digital service, customers struggled to access their online information when they visited a branch location. They had to bring their own devices since using the bank’s devices could expose customer data to security issues. Customers brought different devices with varying network settings, so often our employees spent time dealing with technical computer issues, rather than helping the customer. This was not just time-consuming, but resulted in poor customer service and security issues. Keeping data secure in the financial industry isn’t an option; it’s a requirement.

We introduced Chromebooks in January 2015 because they’re secure and easy to use. In each of our 70 branches, we have a Chromebook set up as a kiosk for customers to log onto our website and access income and loan documents, digitally sign customer agreements and refer to electronic statements. We can create a setting so the data one customer accesses is completely wiped before the next customer uses the device. Customers feel comfortable disclosing sensitive information using the Chromebooks because they know their information is safe. Setup for each device requires about two minutes of our IT team’s time, and the device can be managed remotely.

Chromebooks help our customers become more digitally savvy while streamlining time-intensive processes, like completing and mailing in paperwork. When a customer needs to access their income information for a loan, they can pull it up online while at the branch, rather than going home and mailing it. Instead of waiting for the next teller, customers help themselves using the Chromebook. Employees spend their time helping customers who need immediate attention, which allows us to deliver higher quality service.

Introducing Chromebooks has helped us keep sensitive information secure while providing peace of mind for our customers and familiarizing them with digital banking — all without placing a burden on our IT resources. As we pioneer new digital technologies, we look forward to serving as an educational resource for our customers and making it easier for them to manage their finances anytime and anywhere.

Posted by Eran Feigenbaum, Director of Security, Google Apps for Work

Many organizations are in the dark about the security of their data, especially with the rise of shadow IT and numerous recent breaches. It’s no wonder IT execs are concerned about how their data is protected and who has access to their confidential information.

Every day I meet CIOs who ask me how Google’s cloud can offer the level of security they need, and many IT execs likely have the same nagging worries. To ease those worries — and since today is Safer Internet Day — I’d like to highlight five ways in which Google’s cloud keeps your information safe:

1. Secure physical infrastructure
There are many layers of security baked into our data center security measures and infrastructure. A very small percentage of Googlers are allowed in our data centers, and even fewer are allowed on the floor where the servers are located. And as they near the core of the data center, they encounter more sophisticated security measures, like biometric scanners and under floor laser beams.

2. Control over the entire technology stack
From the servers and routers we build ourselves, to the submarine fiber that connects our data centers, to the mobile management of our software interface, our team has control and visibility over the entire chain of technologies. This enables us to detect weaknesses faster and respond to threats that may emerge swiftly.

3. Investment in active security research beyond Google
More than 500 security engineers work to protect our systems, while dedicated teams look for malware and vulnerabilities beyond our own infrastructure, in other operating systems and all over the web. For this, we know there is power in numbers, which is why we engage the broader security research community with our Vulnerability Reward Program. In the last year, we paid 1.5 million dollars to security researchers and hackers from every corner of the world to attack our systems and share the vulnerabilities they identified.

4. Locations chosen for speed and reliability
When picking the location of our data centers, we have many priorities that keep speed and reliability top of mind. Among these factors, the location must:

1. Be distributed geographically for better user experience and greater resiliency
2. Have reliable, fast Internet connectivity and stable energy sources
3. Be in politically stable areas with legal systems that maintain laws protecting cloud users from liability for content in the systems
4. Abide by rule-of-law that protects our right and the rights of users as it relates to human rights and challenging third-party requests

With all of our data centers adhering to these location priorities, we can surpass the capabilities of on-premise data centers by creating an infrastructure built for speed, reliability, and protection of users’ data

5. There's no downtime
Information is distributed across our servers and data centers worldwide, so if a single server or even an entire data center fails, your information will still be accessible. Our team is committed to reliability, and the way we built our data model for applications and networks allows us to “replace the engines as the plane is flying,” so we can complete our maintenance while providing an uptime guarantee with no scheduled downtime.

Our team has gone to great lengths to build one of the most secure cloud infrastructures in the world. While Safer Internet Day may only happen once a year, we take the trust and security of our customers information very seriously year-round (which we like to share in writing, too). Whether it’s creating easy-to-use tools to help organizations manage their information or keeping customer information safe from prying eyes, we’re constantly investing to ensure that Google earns and keeps your trust.

Posted by Goldy Arora, Director of Google for Work Solutions, MediaAgility

Editor's note: Editor's note: Today’s guest blogger is Goldy Arora, Director of Google for Work solutions at MediaAgility, a technology consulting company building industry specific solutions. See how MediaAgility and other developers are using the Google Maps APIs to bring maps and location content to their users. 

I love using elegant code to come up with cool applications, but I also know that being a great developer means thinking both like a business person and an engineer. When we create map-based applications at MediaAgility, we think about not just what we are building and how it will look and operate, but why we are building it. How, in other words, do the maps we make meet both our business objectives and make a positive impact on people’s lives?

We use the tools in the Google Maps API to develop solutions in a way that helps businesses make sense of data. Right now, we’re working on an application called Insurance Insights, which will help sales teams at Insurance companies create campaigns and base decisions on geographic data related to crime, income and natural disasters.

When working with maps, we aim to understand the business objectives of the end customer and how it will impact lives. In the case of Insurance Insights, we are taking several steps in the development process that we think will result in a valuable and user-friendly product, including:

• Publishing data from multiple sources. We’re adding back-end systems and databases so we can add useful information to Google Maps. For example, we’ve integrated income data for residents, locations of recent natural disasters and sales databases. For this product, we built a script to obtain Salesforce data using their API. Then we employed the Google Maps API to publish the Salesforce data to our maps.

• Creating multiple viewing options. Our map overlays allow users to choose how they want to view the information. An agent may want to market insurance for valuables in high-income neighborhoods, or perhaps offer flood insurance to people in flood-prone areas. They’ll benefit from the insights provided by the various overlays for different marketing campaigns.
• Erring on the side of more data. We upload as much data as we can. We then call the data with the Maps API whenever we want to test a new feature on the map. Since we are data-ready, we create prototypes within an hour instead of taking days – and build rich, insightful features in less time to market.
• Experimenting and improving. We iterate frequently to make the best possible product. In the case of Insurance Insights, we created a basic application using Google Maps so we could show it to potential customers. As we work with real market feedback, we add more features. This iterative approach is much smarter than spending six months on an application before finding out if customers like it – we’d rather go to market every six weeks so we know which direction to pursue.

Maps are an important part of people’s daily lives, and we're eager to engineer more applications built around new ideas. For example, visual forecasting and pipeline metrics are some of the key features in our next release of Insurance Insights.

In many cases, maps are an intuitive and highly visual way to understand a business — much richer and simpler than spreadsheets or presentations. Even if the information is complex, the user experience need not be, all thanks to the Google Maps APIs.

Posted by Murali Sitaram, Managing Director, Global Partner Strategy & Alliances, Google for Work

(Cross-posted on the Google Cloud Platform Blog)

Many businesses around the world rely on VMware datacenter virtualization solutions to virtualize their infrastructure and optimize the agility and efficiency of their data centers. Today we’re excited to announce that we are teaming up with VMware to make select Google Cloud Platform services available to VMware customers via vCloud Air, VMware’s hybrid cloud platform. We know how valuable flexibility is to a business when determining its total infrastructure solution, and with today’s announcement, enterprise businesses leveraging VMware’s datacenter virtualization solutions gain the flexibility to easily integrate Google Cloud Platform.

Businesses can now use Google Cloud Platform tools and services – including Google BigQuery and Google Cloud Storage – to increase scale, productivity, and functionality. VMware customers will benefit from the security, scalability, and price performance of Google’s public cloud, built on the same infrastructure that allows Google to return billions of search results in milliseconds, serve 6 billion hours of YouTube video per month and provide storage for 425 million Gmail users.

With Google BigQuery, Google Cloud Datastore, Google Cloud Storage, and Google Cloud DNS directly available via VMware vCloud Air, VMware customers will benefit from a single point of purchase and support for both vCloud Air and Google Cloud Platform:

• vCloud Air customers will have access to Google Cloud Platform under their existing service contract and existing network interconnect with vCloud Air, and will simply pay for the Google Cloud Platform services they consume.
• Google Cloud Platform services will be available under the VMware vCloud Air terms of service, and will be fully supported by VMware’s Global Support and Services (GSS) team.
• Certain Google Cloud Platform services are also fully covered by VMware’s Business Associate Agreement (BAA) for US customers who require HIPAA-compliant cloud service.

Google Cloud Platform services will be available to VMware customers beginning later this year, so we’ll have more information very soon. In the near future, VMware is also exploring extended support for Google Cloud Platform as part of its vRealize Cloud Management Suite, a management tool for hybrid clouds.

Today’s announcement bolsters our joint value proposition to customers and builds on our strong, existing relationship around Chromebooks and VMware View and also around the recently announced Kubernetes open-source project. We look forward to welcoming VMware customers to Google Cloud Platform.

Posted by Matt Laroche, Android Engineering Lead, Strava

Editor's note: Today’s guest blogger is Matt Laroche, Android Engineering Lead at Strava, a social network and community for athletes. See how Strava and other developers are using the Google Maps API to bring maps and location content to their users.

In distance training, runners and cyclists always want to know how far they’ve gone and track where they’ve been. At Strava, we provide them with this information and a lot more: we measure, map and analyze the runs and rides of millions of athletes around the world so they can get the most out of their workouts.

To do this, we use Google Maps to show them exactly where they’ve run or cycled. We can even help them plan future routes.

Mapping is a big part of what our members do with Strava. Maps help them relive past workouts, visually share their run or ride with friends, and engage in friendly competition. We started using Google Maps API when we launched five years ago. We tested other mapping providers, but found that Google Maps was the best API for mobile — it’s the easiest to use to create new maps, especially when using polylines to draw routes and mark items on a map. It’s a straightforward, developer-friendly API.

Because maps are key to the Strava experience, we pay close attention to the tools we use and how our members will benefit. Here are three areas we focus on when developing our maps using the Google Maps API:

Performance

We compile a huge amount of location data — including 400 billion GPS data points of the activities our members share from around the world. GPS data can tell us where our members are going in real-time. With the Google Maps API, interaction and display or map tile latency is minimal and rendering was faster than other services we tried, despite the large amounts of data in use. To make the app work even faster, we trimmed down the data points that are delivered back to the user’s device.

Control

Our members spend a lot of time looking at maps on the Strava app and have different needs, although all of them want detailed information. They also want the power to play with different views. With Google Maps, they have a lot of options. They can switch between different map tiles, including normal, satellite and terrain. Terrain view is key for showing them if a particular route will send them uphill, and if so, what elevation changes they can expect. The maps also have an intricate level of detail, such as bike lanes and paths, which gives users vital information for planning their workouts. The interaction is smooth too — zooming, rotation, and map tilting work in a way our members expect.

Creativity

With Google Maps API, we have a lot of room for creativity and experimentation. For example, we created a Heat Map that visualizes the most popular trails and roads based on 160 million rides and runs. Our Activity Playback project lets users watch their rides and runs and see where they might have passed friends who were on the same path at that time.

Google Maps lets us plot new ways athletes can visualize their data. We’re testing Google My Maps, a feature in Google Maps on Android that offers a simple, fast version for users on the go. We can launch new web ideas on Strava Labs, which doesn’t require us to do full support or commit to integration in the long run. This gives us flexibility to try new things and see what resonates with our users.

We’re able to focus on the user experience — particularly performance, control and creativity — because Google Maps is developer-friendly. It minimizes grunt work, like re-writing thousands of lines of boilerplate code. The API natively handles features we’d otherwise have to build — like identifying which map marker is nearest to a user when she searches for a location. Because of this simplicity, we can focus on making the app more useful and intuitive.

Posted by Eric Singleton, CIO, and Alan Mariotti, VP of Technology and Security, Chico's

Editor's note: Today’s post comes from Eric Singleton, CIO, and Alan Mariotti, Vice President of Technology and Security, of Chico’s, a specialty retailer of branded clothing and accessories through its brands: Chico's, White House | Black Market, Soma Intimates, and Boston Proper. Chico’s has 1,500 stores as well as catalogues and e-commerce websites for each of its brands.

Imagine running into your favorite clothing store in Chicago during a snowstorm and seeing a colorful digital display of cozy sweaters. Or you’re shopping in San Francisco for an outfit for a company party and the store’s display screens show cocktail dresses on sale. At Chico’s FAS stores, we will be using Chromeboxes to personalize the shopping experience by tailoring our digital signage to the city, the store, and even the specific department.

We’ve had our Chico’s Digital Retail Theater strategy in the works for some time, with plans to bring personalized content up to 5,000 screens at about 1,500 stores. I wanted to control displays down to each individual screen and swap new content as needed, without burdening our IT department or maintaining complex hardware at each store. After reviewing and sketching out a range of approaches for solving this challenging problem, we settled on Chromebox. Alan Mariotti, our VP of Technology and Security, praised the technology for its simplicity, low cost, and scalable performance. The easier a digital signage system is to install and use, the faster we can push out unique and relevant content to screens – an imperative in retail, where merchandise and promotions always change.

Chromeboxes as a signage solution met all of our tests for affordability and ease of management. Since they’re cost-effective, we can afford to outfit more of our stores with more displays. Since they’re small, they don’t take up valuable space in stores and they are unobtrusive. With more screens, we have more places where we can tailor content that resonates with each store’s customers.

We launched our first 10 Chrome-powered screens at our redesigned White House | Black Market store in Santa Monica, California, with content management software from Rise Vision deployed by Uniguest, both of whom are Google partners. We’re testing the sales impact of changing merchandise content on the fly, compared to traditional retail channels like catalogues and print advertising. We’ll also see if shoppers respond to and interact with catalogue content that appears on store screens.

We’re also looking to Chrome to bring promotions to customers in minutes — a huge leap ahead from the printing process. The lead time for printed posters can be as long as 10 days due to the lengthy cycle of designing, printing, and delivering to stores. Not only is physical printing at this pace incredibly expensive, but we can’t react as quickly with print as we can with instant digital if new products and sales hit the stores on short notice. Chromebox for signage will eventually almost eliminate these printing and distribution costs, while shortening the time needed to bring relevant shopping news to our customers.

The impact of our Digital Retail Theater strategy with Chrome goes far beyond screens with pretty pictures. When customers come to one of our stores, we want to immerse customers in the Chico’s FAS shopping experience – sharing with them the perfect jacket for her first day at a new job, the winter coat that transforms her look, or the dream dress that makes her evening magical.

Posted by Demitris Memos, Managing Director of MarineTraffic

Editor's note: Today’s guest blogger is Demitris Memos, Managing Director of MarineTraffic, whose website and app are widely used for tracking ship movements worldwide. See how MarineTraffic and other developers are using the Google Maps API to bring maps and location content to their users.

Ships play a major role in global commerce, but locating them is not as straightforward as it might seem, even for their owners. That’s a problem if, for example, you’re trying to track your cargo, which is on a containership crossing the Atlantic. It’s even worse if you’re a tanker spilling oil offshore and the nearest coast guard ship can’t be found. At MarineTraffic we aim to solve that problem. What began as an experiment in 2007 has become the most popular vessel tracking service in the world. We’ve seen our website traffic double in the past two years to a peak of 6.2 million monthly active users lately.

A key component to maritime data is geography. You would think that mapping ships as they traverse the world’s waterways and oceans would be a no-brainer, but until the introduction of AIS (Automatic Identification System) in shipping and the launch of MarineTraffic, such a capability was not available for the masses. Today, using the Google Maps API we are able to overlay data we get from ships around the globe onto an easy-to-use map with the help of Google’s intuitive mapping platform.

We worked with Google Maps partner Ancoris to set up the mapping service. Our maps use the Google Maps API to plot shipping movement around the world. The data is acquired by our proprietary, global AIS receivers network. This way, we collect radio frequency signals from transponders aboard vessels and display them on the MarineTraffic website and our mobile apps. We offer Density Maps on top of the API to show, for example, which routes tankers are taking versus cruise ships.

Geofencing is used to keep track of distances between vessels and record arrivals and departures at ports. A variety of other types of information are available on top of our maps in layers, such as wind speed, temperatures, photos and more besides.

The good thing about Google is that it makes it easy for developers to port data in through their API and, above all, the high availability of the service, which is always there, no matter how big the spike in traffic is.

Google Maps has proven to be very reliable, thoroughly supporting MarineTraffic as an essential tool for maritime professionals and marine enthusiasts. Using Google Maps, we are able to provide a valuable service to the general public and commercial organisations, filling a need that is highlighted by the rapid growth of our business. Google Maps is helping to put ships on the map!