Google’s Chrome OS has long been a decent computing option for those looking to grab something which was simply lightweight and quick to boot up, and over time it’s grown into a rather formidable OS for consumers. Google has made it clear though since Chrome OS has been around that it isn’t just a great option for individuals. It’s also a sound option for businesses and education as plenty of schools have started integrating Chrome OS laptops into their institutions for students. It seems that Google has realized however that they could do more to make the Chrome OS platform a little more suitable for the business market, which led to them unveiling a new more business-centric version of Chrome OS.
This isn’t an entirely new version of the platform but rather just some changes and tweaks Google made to give businesses more functionality when using it for work purposes. Sometimes businesses might need to utilize older programs from a different OS and these new changes reflect those needs with more support for virtualized systems so businesses could potentially run legacy programs that aren’t cloud-based from a Chrome OS machine. We saw something similar to this from a company called The Sixt Flag, which showcased a virtualization solution which would allow people to run Windows OS inside of a Chrome OS powered machine like a Chromebook, thus giving them access to things liek Microsoft’s Office applications and other Windows-based legacy programs.
Dell took the opportunity to build on these changes and recently introduced a range of new Chromebooks with varying price points that allow for a virtualization environment to be used, with included tools for managing multiple machines, set to hit the U.S. first before expanding out to other regions where they might be of use to businesses. other companies that typically worth with virtualization solutions like Citrix and VMWare are also working with the new changes Google made to their operating system which, when completed, should give businesses more options. Where Chrome OS was once just a new option for consumers as an alternative to the long-standing Windows and OSX computing platforms, it has now started showing its true colors as an option for the business market as well.