Google Pitches ChromeOS Flex As Hedge Against Windows 11 PC Refresh, New Device Costs

“Now the sales reps at these resellers are able to not only tell them, ‘OK, this is what the path is if you want to move from Windows 10 to 11.’ But if that’s not what you’re interested in, we do have an alternative solution that you can use to extend the life of your device,” Chitra Subramaniam, global director ChromeOS commercial and education channels at Google, tells CRN.

Google’s ChromeOS Flex is taking dead aim at this year’s Windows-driven PC refresh and the geopolitical uncertainties around tariffs with a cloud-based operating system that can change any existing Mac or PC into a Chrome device, extending its work life.

“Our resellers are now positioning what we call ChromeOS Flex, which takes a customer’s existing PC and converts it to a ChromeOS device,” Chitra Subramaniam, global director of ChromeOS commercial and education channels at Google, told CRN. “Then they just buy the management licenses. So if they don’t want to spend money on a whole new device, and they want to experience ChromeOS, they’re able to do that with ChromeOS Flex.”

Analysts have predicted that major vendors such as Dell Technologies, HP and Lenovo will see a PC refresh hit this year due to a massive and aging installed base of devices running into a hard deadline: Windows 10 end of life set for October. ChromeOS Flex is for those channel partners who want to give their customers a way out of either scenario, Subramaniam said.

She said Google’s ChromeOS has expanded beyond the education vertical and now forms the backbone of massive environments such as Domino’s Pizza – which deployed 50,000 Chromebooks in 10,000 locations, as well as in large retailers like Costco, and in health care.

“We’re taking the best of what we’ve learned in education around simplicity, accessibility, flexibility, and then realized that a lot of frontline workers and remote workers benefit from all of these exact same capabilities,” she told CRN.

Subramaniam said to drive the value of its systems to the end user, the company has incentivized its channel with MDF funds to accelerate adoption of Chrome throughout business markets, as well as some vendor-specific incentives around deal registration.

“What we do offer is what we call Jump Start programs to help customers accelerate deals or deal acceleration funds,” she told CRN. “These are investments that we can offer to our partners to help accelerate a deal forward, whether it’s a (proof of concept) or a pilot.”

She said Google has also seen success with its enablement program “Call Blitzes” where channel partners receive a 30-minute in-person training then call or email live prospects to test out what they learned.

“So we train them, and then they right away go apply that actually calling or writing emails to these customers and try to secure the meetings,” she said. “And we’ve seen that really successful. We launched that last year, and it was going so well that we ended up continuing that and invested more dollars to make that happen.”

Google Chrome, she said, has recently introduced an AI-powered device manager to give administrators greater power over their fleet of endpoints and a place where they can query items like user activity, update status, device and policy lookups, troubleshooting and initiate reboots using a natural language dialog box.

In the 10 years that Subramaniam said she has been on the Chrome team, it wasn’t always easy to grab the attention of resellers. Now with more than 70 distribution partners and 5,000 resellers around the world, she said Google has won a seat at the table.

“Now we are right there with a seat at the table and partners are calling us,” she said. “In fact, this is in my presentation, I said, ‘Lets make this the best year yet because we have the full stack and we’re really excited about our story.’”