Five Top US School Districts Select Neverware's CloudReady to Accelerate Transition to Google Chrome Ecosystem

NEW YORK, April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Neverware, the New York-based developer of the CloudReady operating system, announced today that five large school districts across the United States have selected the company's CloudReady operating system to repurpose their existing computers into Chrome devices as part of initiatives to embrace the Google Chrome ecosystem.

The School District of Lee County (FL), Clay County District Schools (FL), Lincoln (NE) Public Schools, Henry County Schools (GA), and Alaska's Anchorage School District represent more than 240,000 students across the United States.

The districts join Neverware's customer roster of more than 700 US school districts already using CloudReady as a seamless, cost-effective way to transform their Windows and Macintosh computers to Google's Chrome OS ecosystem and manage them alongside Chromebooks using the Google Admin console.

Chromebooks dominate the US education market; according to Futuresource Consulting, the devices accounted for almost 60% of US K-12 computers shipped at the end of 2017. CloudReady is built on Google's open-source Chromium OS, the same technology that powers Chromebooks. By installing CloudReady, schools and businesses can purchase new Chromebooks as budget allows, while concurrently replicating the speed, simplicity, and security of Chromebooks on nearly any PC or Mac they already own, regardless of manufacturer or age.

"CloudReady has allowed us to extend the life of our older equipment," said Dwayne Alton, Executive Director of Infrastructure Services for Florida's Lee County Schools. "At the same time, it has helped us ease our transition from Windows to Chrome OS by allowing new and existing equipment to live in the same ecosystem. The fact that [CloudReady] is supported for state testing is a big bonus."

For many schools, the costs associated with using digital testing for state-mandated assessment have led them to CloudReady as a way to increase their number of Chrome devices without purchasing new hardware.

"By leveraging CloudReady, our district was able to save more than $500,000 in device purchases that are critical for Georgia Milestones preparations," said Jeffrey St. Aime of Henry County Public Schools. "The ease of deployment and the support from Neverware made it a seamless transition for us."

Kirk Langer, Chief Technology Officer for Nebraska's Lincoln Public Schools, commented, "Solutions to extend the life cycle of aging computer hardware are very common, but solutions that actually deliver a reasonable user experience are exceedingly rare. CloudReady is one of those rare exceptions that delivers a simple, elegant and highly useful solution that converts aging computer hardware into a very suitable Chromebook."

Hal Friedlander is the former CIO of the nation's largest school system, the New York City Department of Education, with over 1.1 million students in 1,800 schools. The DOE began deploying thousands of CloudReady licenses in 2016.

"From a CIO's point of view, there are three things you need to know about Neverware and CloudReady," Friedlander said. "First, CloudReady was built for schools from the beginning. That means they have already solved all those deal breaker corner cases unique to school districts. Second, Neverware respects you. Their total product and pricing transparency proves it. Third, CloudReady works exactly as advertised. There are no surprises or engineering gotchas."

Friedlander added, "Unlike so many products where implementation ends up costing double what you were told, CloudReady will lower costs from the beginning."

The announcement caps an eventful six months for Neverware: In March, the company announced its intention to acquire UK-based Flint Innovations, the company behind Flint OS, another Chromium-based operating system. That announcement, in turn, followed Neverware's October 2017 Series B round of funding, which was raised to scale Neverware's sales and marketing efforts and was led by Google LLC.

About Neverware
Neverware is the New York-based developer of the CloudReady operating system, which enables schools and enterprise organizations to transform their existing hardware into simple, secure, and fast Chrome devices that can be managed seamlessly alongside Chromebooks. Since CloudReady's launch in 2015, more than 1,400 schools across all 50 states and in 24 countries around the world have used CloudReady as a cost-effective way to modernize aging hardware, expand student device access, and simplify device management.

For more information, or for a free trial of CloudReady, visit www.neverware.com.

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SOURCE Neverware