For over six decades, Turner Industries has been a cornerstone of the industrial contracting sector, committed to efficiency and operational excellence. Our tech optimization began approximately two and a half years ago with a decisive pivot to Google Workspace to upgrade our productivity tools. However, we hadn’t fully tapped into its potential until we deployed ChromeOS, Chrome Enterprise Premium, and Cameyo. This shift completely reshaped our infrastructure, and helped us boost our security, and deliver significant cost savings.
Adopting tools from Google’s enterprise ecosystem was a strategic choice driven by clear economic and operational needs. Cost was a factor since the purchase price is lower than traditional business devices, but they also offer greater longevity. We anticipate eight to ten years from our Chromebooks, which is a 100% to 125% increase in device longevity compared to previous options, thereby reducing our refresh cycles. This extended lifecycle, coupled with the immediate savings on software, like eliminating multiple antivirus licenses, built a robust case for long-term cost reduction. We also saw a reduction in IT support and maintenance costs. In total, the cost per device is 40-50% less than our previous hardware, totaling $700,000 in savings across 1,200 devices. Beyond the savings on new hardware, we can use ChromeOS Flex to convert our existing devices, offering an additional $600,000 in savings.
Opportunity for more strategic work due to saved time
Not only are we saving money, but we are also saving time. With ChromeOS, the time to deploy is now measured in minutes rather than the hours previously required to image and configure our previous machines, saving our team an estimated 1,750 hours annually. Furthermore, the inherent security and self-managing nature of ChromeOS minimizes the time my team spends on patching, installing applications, and handling routine security tickets, freeing up resources for higher-value strategic work.
The move to ChromeOS also created synergy with our established Google Workspace environment creating a fluid, modern working experience for our 21,000 employees.
We can also manage all endpoints using Chrome Enterprise Premium, enforcing critical security policies like Data Loss Prevention (DLP) across the Chrome browser, regardless of the device type. While our frontline teams are experts in their fields, their focus is on productivity rather than cybersecurity. The sandboxed environment ensures that even if a worker inadvertently downloads a malicious file, malware cannot execute or compromise the system allowing our team to focus on their work without risk.
Cameyo solved our challenge of accessing legacy Windows applications. Historically, as an industrial contractor operating at hundreds of client job sites, we relied heavily on a different VDI solution to allow field workers to securely access our network and applications, often over guest Wi-Fi. By completely replacing our legacy architecture with Cameyo, we gained a more stable, simpler, and cloud-native virtualization platform that is easier to manage.
ChromeOS is now utilized across nearly every discipline at Turner Industries, from frontline employees and sales teams to our executive leadership. Our CEO, COO, and CIO are all dedicated ChromeOS users. Our COO, historically a heavy Excel user who many thought would never switch was one of the first adopters and has since fully embraced Google Sheets. They believe in leading by example and they rely on ChromeOS for its simplicity and speed. Furthermore, the familiarity of ChromeOS for younger employees, who used it throughout their education, eliminates the learning curve and leads to instant productivity upon hiring.
Embedding Google’s ecosystem into the heart of Turner Industries’ IT strategy has yielded a transformation that is simultaneously structural, financial, and cultural. We have moved beyond the complex, costly, and resource-intensive architecture of the past to embrace a stack defined by simplicity, intrinsic security, and operational efficiency. For an organization of our scale, this modernization effort has established a new standard for how industrial excellence is supported by technology, confirming that a centralized, secure, and modern cloud-first infrastructure is the architecture for the future.
