As one of the largest companies in pest control and office hygiene, Rentokil Initial has a large dynamic staff spread across the globe. As one of the early adopters of Chromebooks, they have been able to reduce the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) on endpoints while making management and deployment more secure and less time-consuming.

Who wouldn’t want to boost adoption rates of new and better tech and simplify end-point management? Right. Rentokil Initial saw the opportunity to do this whilst working with G Suite (Google Workspace). By adopting a global ChromeOS strategy they achieved both these things.

Of course, change comes with its challenges, especially in the early days. But currently, ChromeOS has been adopted by 65% of the employees, making Rentokil Initial one of the largest ChromeOS users on the African continent. By focusing on the frontline workers and introducing the power users more slowly, Rentokil was able to drive adoption quickly.

‘When we do security maintenance and support for our endpoints we often forget we have Chromebooks. They are practically maintenance-free and need very limited support.’ - Tashwill Carelse, IT Director, Sub-Saharan Africa, Rentokil

The shift to ChromeOS hasn’t gone without its bumps in the road and there are still some power users that remain on Windows endpoints. At this time, though, there’s no real need for dedicated Windows machines anymore. ChromeOS has matured over the years, and nowadays even supports running Windows-based applications through Parallels.

Additionally, IT infrastructure has changed a lot, moving towards cloud-native and web-based applications that can be accessed from a browser.

ChromeOS was not officially supported on the African continent, making it difficult to get the hardware and support we need. But we turned it around. Even when the pandemic disrupted global distribution channels, the facilitation of Chromebooks went on.

‘Incentro has made our pain, theirs. You can definitely count on them to pull through and do everything in their power to give their customers a good experience.’ - Tashwill Carelse, IT Director, Sub-Saharan Africa, Rentokil

Although it is highly rewarding, being an early adopter hasn’t been easy, especially with the pandemic making endpoint deployment and maintenance exceptionally difficult.

Advantages ChromeOS

  • The key benefits why Rentokil is still running on ChromeOS? Here they are:

  • They are less expensive to purchase and need less powerful hardware to create a good experience

  • There is no need for additional software like antivirus; they are secure by default

  • There is less maintenance and support, freeing the IT team up to support with activities growing the business

  • New devices and employees are up running with 0 effort; no need for lengthy onboarding processes

Over the last three years, we have been providing Chrome-based hardware to early adopters in the African region. For 2021, we expect that ChromeOS will be officially supported in the region and we’ll be able to provide Chrome-based hardware to many more companies.

Do you want to learn more about ChromeOS or receive a demo (device) to try it out yourself, reach out to us.