14 DAY TRIAL // Last week, we wrote about how a Google engineer hinted at a few changes that were going to be implemented for Google Hangouts, with the most interesting parts being the addition of voice support into the service and the lack of need for a Google+ account.
Now, the company is pushing Hangouts into the enterprise area. According to the company, Google Apps for Business customers will no longer need to have a Google+ account to make a call. They can, instead, use the existing credentials and join a video call.
“Any Google Apps customer can start or join a high-definition video meeting that connects 15 participants – from a computer or Chromebox for meetings device and coming soon to mobile phone and tablet,” Google writes.
Furthermore, to make video meetings with Hangouts and Chromebox for meetings even more accessible, Google is announcing a partnership with several providers, such as Blue Jeans and InterCall, which will let people join video meetings on their phones through their devices. With the new phone dialing support, users will be able to dial out from Chromebox to telephones.
As for the Chromebox for meetings, Google is aiming to make the device work better in rooms of all shapes and sizes. For instance, in larger conference rooms, you’ll be able to connect two displays to one Chromebox device to see the audience and project a presentation at the same time.
“And if you’ve ever wanted a dedicated setup for video meetings for your home, new personal calendar integration means you will be able to easily set up Chromebox for meetings outside the office,” Google’s Clay Bavor, Vice President of Product Management, Google Apps, writes.
IT admins are also going to find a new set of tools to better manage meetings from the Apps Admin Console, which will enable them to start, mute and end meetings.
Hangouts is from now on covered under the same Terms of Service that support all other Google Apps for Business products, like Gmail and Drive, the company announced.
The company promises phone support 24/7 and 99.9% uptime, which is generally accurate for Google’s products. The Internet giant usually manages to fix all issues it may sometimes have quite fast, and its services don’t have downtimes as often as some other companies’ products.
All in all, Google is making quite a few changes that will hopefully help provide a better service for all users, even if the company did focus on Business users this time around.
