CDW Google Workspace for Education Reviews

We use them for troubleshooting purposes and we use their Little SIS product, which integrates with and builds and maintains our Google Classrooms and the students in and out of the classrooms.

The North American Google Tech Collaborative, all of the message boards and blog posts, and all of their monthly updates in the meetups, are invaluable in helping us know what's coming up with Google. That whole piece is great. If we have an issue or something we haven't seen before, there's a good possibility that either one of the Amplified staff, the developers, or one of the other members of the Collaborative has seen it before.

And our teachers benefit from the features of Amplified, such as Little SIS. They don't have to manage their classroom rosters and their classrooms are already built for them. And I manage them twice a day on a daily basis, which means they don't have to focus on that part. It just works for them and they can do other things that are more important to their teaching.

The most valuable aspect has been the Little SIS product. It helps us a lot with our Google Classrooms and issues that we have with them, and it gives us a lot more insight into Google Classrooms use. It's excellent for helping IT admins roster Google Classroom classes. I wouldn't want to do it without it, now that we have been using it. It's also great for performing bulk updates. I run the sync updates every morning, myself. And it's phenomenal for helping us manage our Google infrastructure.

Also, the Google for Education Audit feature is great. The audit is very in-depth and can help pinpoint problems and issues even before they happen.

In the Little SIS interface, when when I'm doing a student search and trying to see where they're rostered, for example, it would be nice to have a little more insight into what the students are actually doing. It would be good to see how much time they spend in their Google Classrooms and how much time they're expending working on assignments. That's one thing where it's somewhat limited.

We did our first audit with them about five or six years ago.

Since implementing any of their products, I can count on one hand how many times it has crashed. There may have been five times that I've had issues where it seemed that it might be down.

It's very scalable. I was able to deploy to one school, and then I was able to ramp it up to the whole district, with thirteen schools in total, with no issues.

We use it in multiple locations and have about 550 teachers and 6,500 students that are affected by Amplified.

Amplified's flexibility is something I really like. It's been a really good product and they're always open to suggestions and always there with support too, which is great.

They are very knowledgeable when it comes to Google Workspace for Education. Their ability to support and maintain Google Workspace and Google Chrome OS is amazing and they're great to work with.

We used to use a number of other products, things we haven't been using for the last couple of years. In the beginning, the audit that Amplified did for us was a way for us to go through our Google Admin panel to make sure all the settings were correct. Then we used another product of theirs called Gopher for Chrome as an inventory-type solution, but we've gone with a different inventory system at this point, although we have considered possibly going back to using Gopher for Chrome as well.

The deployment was pretty straightforward. Little SIS took two or three days. And that was with our student information person having to get the data into the form I needed it to be in. It was two of us involved in the process.

The Google Classroom management piece has provided us with a big return on investment. It's given me more time to focus on other things. It gives the teachers more time to focus on what they're doing. And during the last few years, with COVID, it was good to have the administrative ability, when a teacher was sick or not available, to put subs into the classrooms co-teachers.

I don't know what that price is now because we haven't had a recent audit, but the price at the time was just right for us.

Overall, their pricing is fair, right there with the market. For us, what helps is that because we are so ingrained with CDW, when CDW and Amplified combined, the pricing we received from them was right at market value, and sometimes even less than other products that we might look at.

We really did not look at any other options at the time. We looked over what their audit process was, what it could do for us and our Google domain, and the price at the time. 

We're only using some of their products and it's not that they're perfect in every way, but I haven't experienced issues where I would want to see improvement.

I believe Amplified offers a trial period, so before you jump in with both feet, definitely do the trial. Do it on a smaller scale so you can see the processes of setting things up and getting it ready to go. Be sure to ask for a trial of the Collaborative to see what value you can get from that. There is almost no question that hasn't been discussed in there and you can usually find an answer to almost anything.

I discovered CDW Amplified for Education when I was working at another school, and we were looking for a better way to manage our Google environment. When I learned about the solution, it was called Amplified IT. I came across them while looking at a reseller for either GoGuardian or SysCloud.

We wanted to back up our system because a principal who had left the school took things with them. We needed a filtering solution to protect students and staff. While I'm aware of Little SIS, we never implemented it at my school because of multiple schools not having the right SIS to work with it.

I was exposed to a lot of useful tools through Amplified. For example, GoGuardian is a tool that I've used in a couple of different school districts. We don't have that here, but if my current organization was looking for a new filtering solution, I'd recommend GoGuardian based on my experience working with GoGuardian and the Amplified team. If we were looking for a backup solution, I'd go with SysCloud because of my experience working with the SysCloud and Amplified teams.

If we were looking for Chrome management and tracking tools, I would go back to Gopher for Chrome and the other lab tools they have because of my experience. Ryan and the Amplified team introduced me to those tools.

It's hard to say how working with Amplified affected the teachers. When I began using the tools they offered, it did eventually get to the student's level, but the teachers weren't in those conversations. I can't say that the teachers were directly impacted, but they benefited indirectly. I don't know if I had any teachers who joined those sessions who could say that they learned something that they could apply to their work. I was the one that turned it over to them.

Amplified helped us utilize Google Workspace for Education more effectively. It was a phenomenal experience. They have cornered the market in the understanding of the solution's backend and created opportunities for us to provide feedback to Google about bugs and feature requests. Their connection to Google was powerful, and many things changed as a result.

I liked the customer service aspect. Amplified holds your hand, and you never feel like you are being sold something. I was being educated and given the opportunity to make my own decisions based on what I needed to see. That was one of the selling factors for me. They weren't pushy. If I needed a solution, they had three or four options to choose from.

They later developed a networking group that I found helpful. I became a big fan of that. I was answering questions for other people while learning about Google, and the other products they offered.

I used a version of Google for Education Audit before, Google Workspace. Depending on how many Chromebooks or Chrome licenses you buy, you can get Google for Education Audit as an incentive. They would look into our environment and give us some suggestions, but I don't recall if they were the company that did the full audit, or if another company did prior to my arrival in one of the schools.

I used Gopher for Chrome and the tools that they have. I've used some of the other labs that they launched. Those were helpful. They had a full Chrome inventory at one point that was used to track all of our systems. Gopher for Chrome was used to track the last user who logged into a device. Those were powerful tools.

I haven't seen the same level of outreach since CDW purchased Amplified. When they were a separate company, there was a little more flexibility and a more personal touch. CDW purchased Amplified IT to add more resources, but I think I've lost that direct connection to the team that I used to have. I would like to see them return to the customer service model they had before the acquisition. 

In the past, I could contact our rep, and he'd call me back within minutes. I could have a one-on-one call with their product expert or a video session to figure out a problem. I never felt like I was being nickeled and dimed on that. 

Also, if you purchase tools from them, you should be entitled to join their communities for free. They charge a separate fee to be a part of that community. If you don't qualify for that incentive, it could be cost-prohibitive for a school to purchase that part. The community was the most helpful aspect, and I'm no longer a part of it. I feel disconnected from that group. 

I started using Amplified in 2015 or maybe a little before then. 

There were problems in the past, but they were quickly resolved because I could send an email or text to our contact, and it would be resolved in minutes or I would get confirmation that they were working on a solution.  

The product lines they offer are built for the biggest environments, so they can also work in the smallest.

I rate CDW's support an eight out of ten. They're responsive, but it feels different compared to before the acquisition. CDW's knowledge of Google Workspace for Education is pretty strong. They have a good sense of what's happening because of their acquisition of Amplified. I think they needed that as their outlet. Before that, they were knowledgeable, but they weren't as knowledgeable because they weren't doing it in the same way.

CDW has a strong relationship with Google, and they understand what all their customers are going through. They've seen all the problems or pitfalls you may face before you experience them. 

Positive

There was another solution called EdTechTeam that was emerging at the same time. It was a similar deal where you received an incentive if you purchased a number of Chromebooks. Sometimes it was professional development or discounts on solutions within the Google environment. They might dive into the backend of the admin console and provide some recommendations on how to make you stronger. They were a leading partner, but I don't know where they went. Amplified is still around.

The setup is straightforward, depending on the product. It never took long because of Amplified. Sometimes it took a while because our data wasn't clean or some other issue, but we always had that hand-holding process, if necessary, where we could get some support from Amplified directly. I always have small teams working with me on the deployment. It's typically me and two other people. 

Every product I've used from Amplified has made my job easier. I can offer protection and backup solutions to my supervisor or provide teachers with the support they need to deal with problems on the platform. When a teacher has issues, I can bring in the vendor and Amplified's representative to help negotiate that conversation and get that problem fixed. It's a high return on investment. I've been with them for so many years, and I've gained a lot from them, particularly our representative.

I think it's unfair to blame Amplified for prices going up because the vendors themselves are the ones changing the prices. Amplified tries its best to take the smallest possible cut, so the schools don't feel it, but there must be some kind of markup. 

When I paid to be a part of that community, I could purchase at a discount because of cooperative pricing. That helped, but it didn't always go that way. As the company began offering more bundled products, the price began to rise. Amplify did what they could to keep the price low, but sometimes they couldn't get it as low as we wanted to. In other cases, they included more training to make up for it. They realized that the service level should stay high as the price went up, so they would throw in additional hours for setup, integration, troubleshooting, professional development, etc.

I rate CDW Amplified for Education a ten out of ten. If you are considering Amplified, you should be ready for bumps along the road but know that someone will be there to help you through it. There are knowledgeable people out there, so you shouldn't feel like you need to go at it alone. 

We primarily use the solution for a Google audit and for the added tools provided to integrate with the Google admin console. The first problem we tried to solve was to find a way to integrate with the Google admin console, in particular using tools that allow us to rapidly onboard and offboard Chromebooks. We had a good experience doing that, so we started to use the platform to audit for blind spots we may have had in our security settings.

We're a school district, so technically, the deployment is one district, but we have three different school buildings. We have under 1,500 end users. 

Amplified improved our organization by validating areas where we are on track and by helping us reduce our blind spots. The world is changing so fast, so it's nice to have another set of eyes, a third party outside of the district, that can tell us when we're on the right track and alert us about security risks.

The most valuable element of the product is that the people we work with at CDW are excellent; they're very reliable and knowledgeable. 

Amplified for Education is pretty good with regard to customization and flexibility. If you need the product, it's very helpful, and I can see how some of the aspects we haven't used could be valuable to other organizations. Once we explain what our problem is, they're pretty flexible. 

We use the solution's Google for Education Audit feature with Gopher for Chrome to pull information from the admin console and manipulate data. We can add serial numbers, device IDs, student IDs, etc., and push all changes back to the console with a couple of clicks rather than going one by one. The Google for Education Audit feature is excellent for diagnosing problems and recommending solutions; it provides a 50-60 page report on all the present features. CDW did an onboarding call ahead of time, followed by another call to discuss the findings of the report, and they put us in contact with specific departments to fix whatever issues were there.  

We previously used the Little SIS Premium feature, and it was great for helping IT admins roster Google Classroom classes; the setup was rapid, so I got it up and running in 30-60 minutes.  

One of the product's best selling points is how the Little SIS Premium feature helps IT admins perform bulk updates, so I rate them ten out of ten for that one.

Little SIS is excellent for helping IT admins manage their infrastructure; this is the solution's bread and butter, and it does it very well. I give CDW a ten out of ten here too, as whenever we pitched ideas to the developers, they would usually integrate them into the product not far down the line.

I rate the product ten out of ten for helping us work with Google Workspace for Education. If anyone called me and asked me what I would recommend, I'd highly recommend Amplified IT.  

CDW could be better at marketing precisely what they and their product can do. There are sometimes cases where we didn't know the company had a specific capability. It can also take some work to get ahold of the representative we need; our rep is excellent, but we sometimes need to schedule with others, and there can be delays when scheduling in Google Meet. The system works fine for the most part, but it would be nice if we could bring someone onsite occasionally.

We've been using the solution for three to four years. We started using Amplified IT before CDW acquired them, and once they were acquired, it made it even easier as we already had a standing relationship with them.

Amplified is highly stable; we never had any downtime. 

The scalability has been tricky from a licensing standpoint as we're such a small school; we're right on the cusp of 1,000 students, which is where the price break happens. CDW has always been great to work with, so I don't mean that as a knock; it's been a little challenging sometimes.

We've contacted tech support numerous times, and their knowledge of Google Workspace for Education is great. The only issue is not an Amplified or CDW problem, but more of a Google issue in that they keep changing the names of their products. Amplified IT is pretty good at informing us of those changes, however. 

The CDW team's ability to support and maintain Google Workspace and Chrome OS is pretty hands-off. Our CDW rep and Amplified IT rep are both excellent, so it's pretty easy between that and the solution not requiring much maintenance. 

Positive

Before using Amplified, we had an internal tool. 

The initial setup was pretty straightforward, and that got better over time. Even in the early days, the solution was very easy to set up and deal with, but it benefitted from the backing of a large corporation like CDW.

We didn't have a concrete implementation strategy; we grew with them as they grew and as our needs expanded. Two staff were involved in the deployment; myself and the Director of Technology. The product doesn't require any maintenance from our side. 

I can't give an exact dollar amount, but with the landscape changing so quickly and as a tiny school district, it's precious to have an external source letting us know we're on the right path. It helps us when we're preparing for budgeting, and it also helps with the non-technical admins, such as principals and the superintendent. We know that if there ever was a situation where we got into any issues, we could call CDW, and they would help us work through them.

Overall, the pricing is pretty good, and we don't have any complaints. The admins were initially hesitant about approving the audit, but once they saw the comprehensiveness of the report, it was clear we got our money's worth.

We evaluated many options but determined Amplified was the most robust and economical.

I rate the solution a ten out of ten. 

We stopped using the Little SIS Premium feature after a couple of years through no fault of Amplified. Our student information system had the system included, so it became redundant for us to pay extra for the same feature.

The tool is relatively low-impact regarding empowering our teachers because we use it more on the infrastructure side. That's only because we have yet to push forward on the aspects that would be most relevant to teachers, but I know the product would be successful if we went in that direction.

I advise those evaluating Amplified to speak with one of the reps if they have any concerns and get a demo of the product. Once you use it for a short time, you'll be sold on its capabilities.

We primarily use CDW Amplified to manage Google Workspace for Education, and we implemented the product to make management easier.

The solution saved us a lot of time on administration.

Regarding Amplified for Education for empowering our teachers, it helps ensure the process is managed, smooth, and working for them. Teachers don't have to worry about management because we take care of that for them. 

We can access North American Google Technical Collaborative with Amplified, a great resource that utilizes peer resourcing. 

Regarding the solution's tools, the most valuable feature currently is the space and storage monitoring. 

Amplified for Education's flexibility and customizability are pretty good; we can make feature requests, and they're usually very open to our suggestions.

We use the Google for Education Audit feature. We recently just completed one, and it's a beneficial service for diagnosing problems and recommending solutions. We aim to conduct an audit every two years.  

The Little SIS Premium feature is a very helpful tool for helping IT admins manage their infrastructure. It simplified the process a little and is better than relying on the admin counselor.  

We also use Little SIS to perform bulk updates with Gopher for Chrome; it's very straightforward to use, pulls excellent information, and the Gopher component is handy too.  

Overall, Amplified is a precious resource for helping us work with Google Workspace for Education. I would find it difficult to manage that without its tools and assistance.  

A web interface for some of the information stored on Sheets would be a welcome change, especially with the ability to delegate to Level 1 techs or even technical coordinators within the schools. Then they could assist in the management or see some statistics. Much of what Amplified does is Sheet driven, and I like the Sheets, but having a web GUI is better for some.

We've been using the solution for around five years.

The main products are very stable, and we rarely see serious issues. A more peripheral product I've used maybe twice has been down for a couple of weeks, but I don't know its user base.

The solution is scalable; it can handle significant loads. We're a sizeable district with roughly 15,000 end users.

The tech support is very responsive, and we've never had an issue where we needed to hound them; they generally find the problem and fix it.

Until the acquisition of CDW Amplified for Education, the CDW team's knowledge of Google Workspace for Education was likely lacking. 

CDW's ability to support and maintain Google Workspace and Chrome OS has progressed since the acquisition of CDW Amplified for Education. 

Positive

We didn't previously use a different solution. When we started using Amplified, there were very few other options available. 

The initial deployment was extremely straightforward, and I carried it out myself. Initially, I worked with the one tool I needed immediately, Gopher for Chrome. Then, I went down the line authorizing other services to talk to the domain. Amplified doesn't require any maintenance on our end. 

The solution provides an ROI, especially in terms of saved time. What now takes me five or even fifteen minutes, could previously have taken all day.

The pricing is reasonable for what we get out of it. 

I rate the solution a nine out of ten. 

We use the Little SIS Premium feature, though not to sync classrooms; we use it as more of a classroom management tool.

I advise those considering the product to take advantage of the complete evaluation, including all the features you're interested in. Talk to their support to help you get set up, and don't assume you can figure it out alone. It isn't difficult, but getting an idea of the support and how the tools function is reasonable.

CDW Amplified for Education provides Google support for those tough questions that don't have a straightforward answer. They offer training and tools to enhance the Google Workspace environment for our district. We also purchase licenses through them. Amplified provides user training and third-party tools for the Google environment that Google doesn't provide.

Amplified's training is top-notch. They offer certifications and run admin boot camps, which are fantastic for getting my team up to date. Their training team does an excellent job of getting us educated. Though I've already taken the class, I go back periodically because Google constantly changes features. 

There are significant changes every month or so, so you need to pop back into their training. They will go over what's new. You need to attend these training sessions because Google has a business mentality instead of an education mindset. When you go through their training, they'll tell you about all the stumbling blocks or hazards you may encounter because Google made some changes. 

Chrome Gopher is the primary way you will handle your Chromebook infrastructure. It allows you to make mass changes to descriptions and asset tags in your organizational units. You can do everything that will enable you to make these gigantic fleet moves and keep your Chromebooks where they should be. It's a fantastic tool that Google does not provide. Google only allows you to modify one Chromebook at a time, but it's different when you have 21,000 and need to change 4,000. There is much to maintain, and you can't manage Chromebooks without tools like Gopher. 

Gopher allows us to put all our users on a nice little list and look at the attributes of their accounts, such as passwords, associated email addresses, etc. You can reset passwords or configure the account to reset on the next login. Gopher lets you reassign Chromebooks to organizational units as your students move through grade levels. 

When students leave your district in June, you can build a customized Google Sheet of all users and compare that with a list of seniors to suspend all the accounts that have graduated. Your console doesn't have a way to do this, so you need to go through every senior and manually move each account one by one. It isn't feasible to manage people like that. These tools are essential for a K-12 environment. You simply can't run a Google Workspace environment for education without a product like this. 

Amplified allows you to structure your users and Chromebooks with Gopher tools, providing instant infrastructure that can be properly managed. You also need a content filter that adjusts to the student's grade level. My elementary school students need different rules than high school students. High school kids can view sexual education materials but not kindergarteners. It empowers the teachers by creating an infrastructure that they can count on and don't have to worry about. Everything is built on that.

Little SIS is fantastic. Before we had Little SIS, it was problematic to find a substitute when a teacher had to go out on sick leave. We didn't even know what classes she had. Now we can go into the system to grab her schedule and assign a co-teacher for an indefinite or specified period. We can also dispatch a tech to fix a problem in the classroom so it doesn't impact the teachers. 

It allows a system admin to look at the classrooms that our teachers create. Google provides no native ability to look at these classrooms, modify them, or interact with them. They are literal black boxes we have no control over or information about. Amplified's tools give us visibility into that environment, which is critical for an educational workspace.

Without Little SIS's insights into the classrooms, we could have situations where a teacher is on leave, and no one can get into their classroom to assign a substitute. You would need to hack into the teacher's account to see the classwork, and you honestly don't want to do that. It even emails teachers to let them know this is happening and to expect the account to be there for this period.

Little SIS helps admins manage infrastructure so that we can monitor all the classes. We can watch out for student-created types and shut them down or restore classes that teachers accidentally archived. 

Their Gopher tools are pretty flexible. I have implemented them in several different situations. Gopher allows me to pull all my Chromebooks into a Google Sheet and apply mass updates. I can make several sub-forms to create the functions that I want to happen, plug that back into their form, and press the update button. It enables me to create my workflow, plug it into theirs, and update my entire fleet. It's better than having someone's proprietary solution that can't be customized where you have a limited pre-defined set of options. 

Google Sheets is like my own personal playground. I can make whatever sheets I want. I've built forms that dynamically grab a set of Chromebooks from a larger list. I can grab 30 serial numbers and tell Gopher to update only these records with these fields, etc. I can quickly organize my fleet and build a structure and workflow. 

Google for Education Audit encompasses a few things. This is a wide use case scenario. Sometimes we need to audit things coming out of Google. Password changes are an audit of that particular user event. We can use it as an investigative tool. For example, if someone accidentally sent out an email with sensitive information, we can find out who received it and pull it from those inboxes. 

I haven't used it much for diagnosing problems besides pulling back emails and identifying when password resets aren't happening because there's an issue with the sync between Active Directory and the place where our Google passwords are stored. If a password reset fails, we don't get a good warning about it, but the audit can tell us that all the passwords stopped on this day. 

I wish Amplified would develop a few more tools. There are a few functions that I want to do through an interface like Gopher. For example, I want a tool that lets me quickly browse my organization's publicly available Google documents. 

I want an administrator to be able to check which documents everyone on the internet can see with a link. It would help everyone in the organization understand what they've shared and with whom. It would also be great to have a tool to look at all the Google Drives in our district and who has access. 

More in-person training classes would be nice. They used to come to a school or organization and host seminars, but they stopped doing that. It seems to be entirely online. That provided some additional contact that people could leverage for advice after class. I miss that, but it's hard to criticize Amplified because they do everything well.

We started working with CDW Amplified for Education in 2017. 

I'm terrified that their tools might crash because I need them. I've never thought about it. They've always been there, and I've never considered being without them. Fortunately, it has never been an issue. 

We went from a couple of hundred Chromebooks to 21,000 and didn't notice a difference. Their tools just work.

I rate Amplified's support a ten out of ten. I regularly contact Amplified because they're a great source of information. Occasionally, odd things happen. It isn't daily, but fairly often. For example, they have a system to assign Google licenses to all students in specific Google groups. We have a dynamic way of adding all of our students that are current and in the correct grade levels to a group. Every morning, an Amplified process ensures that everybody in that group gets a Google Workspace for Education license. 

However, I had to pull some grade levels out of there because they didn't need it, and it shot an alert at me that was like, "Hey, we pulled out more than 75 licenses. Is everything okay?" I had to respond and tell them it was fine, and that they should run the process. Weird things often happen in the Google environment that they need to check. Sometimes a person has an email alias that causes problems because nobody knows about it. 

Some of these accounts are ancient, and a new account might not work because there is already an alias in the system. You can contact them and ask them to go through your entire structure to see which of your 16,000 users has this alias. They'll chew through it and let you know.

I work with one person the most, and I don't think I've had a question she couldn't answer. They've always fixed my problems unless they run up against one of Google's limitations, and that's as far as it can go. I can't think of a time when they could give me an answer. 

Positive

There wasn't another solution that offers what Amplified does. Yesterday, I found my former coworker from a district in Texas where I worked back in 2014. We were chatting about Google. They also use Amplified because it's the only company that knows what it's doing. I don't know of anything better. 

In theory, people could use GAM and do a whole lot of typing themselves, but I don't envy that individual. Amplified is making custom tools for all this stuff, and that isn't sustainable in an environment like ours. There's constant turnover, and it isn't going to work if we only have one guy making custom code.

I could say it's a little expensive, but there's nothing to compare it with. No one is doing anything like this, so it's difficult to say if their prices are higher or lower than they should be. Everyone wants everything to be free, but that's not the world we live in. It's invaluable because there's no other way to do it. 

I rate CDW Amplified for Education a ten out of ten. I've never met someone from Amplified who I didn't like. I've never had any problems with them. They've always gotten back to me with information. Everybody that I work with at Amplified has been amazing. If they ever offered me a job, I'd take it, but I don't think I've got the skillset they want.

Before adopting Amplified, you should consider which team members you need to train because you can't afford to train everybody at the highest levels. You also need a budget to buy tools. That's one downside. They don't offer a simple all-in-one package where you get all their tools on an annual license. That would be great. It's a la carte. I wish that all of our billing was done at the same time. It would be nice if all the enrollment and collaborative tools were in one package.

You need to get all your ducks in a row in the accounting department. Once you start using these tools, you can't live without them. They only go for a year, so you must ensure you get them yearly. Amplified will take care of you, so you don't need to do much groundwork on your own.

We mainly use them for support and all of our program updates for Google. They are a huge help with support with the Google for Education domain.

They helped us get our Google Workspace set up correctly, all the security aspects and best practices.

They have also saved us a lot of time. They do a lot of the research when new things come out and have given us products that help us to better organize our district.

The most valuable feature is the monthly Google updates.

We have also used Google for Education Audit three times and it has been very helpful for us. We've changed several things based on the audits and Amplified's security recommendations.

If they supported more products, that would improve things. Right now, they only support one classroom management product. If they could integrate with more products, rather than just one of each type, that would be helpful.

I have been using Amplified for Education since it started.

As far as I've seen, they've done nothing but grow, so they seem very stable.

As a school district, we have grown by almost 10,000 students in the last five years, and we haven't seen any difference. The programs work smoothly.

They are very helpful. I can call them for anything that I need and they point me in the right direction.

They are very knowledgeable about Google Workspace for Education. They work so closely with Google that they know what the newest updates are and the bugs that exist. I have contacted a couple of people in their support department who weren't as knowledgeable and they had to escalate it, but that's pretty common with support services.

Positive

We did not have a previous similar service.

The initial deployment was straightforward. But we've been with them for so long that we have added pieces as we go.

There were two people involved in the deployment: the person who purchased it from them and another for the implementation. There wasn't really an implementation strategy. The only features they had when we started were the audit and Google updates. Everything else has been added since then. We started with them to get the audit done and implement the changes that they suggested.

There's no maintenance involved on our side as a result of using the service.

The ROI is that it saves us a lot of time. Their Gopher tools save us a lot of configuration that we don't have to do on the back end.

The pricing is very competitive and you receive a great amount of information for the price. It is well worth the cost.

When we went with Amplified, there really wasn't anything else out there because Google Workspace was so new for education.

Go with the audit as your first step. I would suggest the first thing you do is hire Amplified for the Google domain audit. It shows the inside of the company itself and how much knowledge they have.

Overall, Amplified for Education is instrumental in helping us work with Google Workspace for Education, day to day. We use them on a daily basis.

We use them primarily for support in our use of Google Workspace. We also use them for Workspace domain audits. And they have worked with us on some integration projects as well, helping us with some user and backend management pieces.

We were really looking for someone who could give us timely and accurate support on the products that we were using. The Google pieces are great and extremely powerful, but a number of times you need to have that person that you can go to immediately to answer a question, and CDW Amplified for Education has been that "person" for us.

We're able to use things in a more timely fashion because we're able to get questions answered about things that would normally hold us back from doing some key tasks.

It is also empowering our teachers because it's giving us, on the IT side of the house, the tools that we need to make their lives easier. We have been able to simplify the toolset that they're being asked to use. We're able to make sure that everything is working as they need in the classroom so that they don't even have to think about it. They can just use the tools for instructional purposes and not have to worry about anything else.

Overall, for working with Google Workspace for Education, CDW is invaluable. It's not really a question in my mind as to whether or not we are going to use it from year to year. It's more a case of thinking about what we are going to add or how we should modify the offerings we have from them to help us do our jobs better.

What we use on the most regular basis is their help desk. And something that we have used time and again is full audits because that has given us the most insights into the system as a whole. The audits have enabled us to run much more smoothly.

Also, Little SIS, for helping to roster Google Classroom classes, has been game-changing. Things like bulk updates are things that have made our lives significantly easier. It also helps IT admins manage their infrastructure. We've been able to simplify a lot of our processes and reduce duplication of efforts across systems, particularly in the areas of users and user management.

It's tough to come up with something that needs to be improved. If I had to come up with something, it might be having a single dashboard for all their different services that connect to the Workspace domain.

I have been using CDW Amplified for Education for four to five years.

There haven't been any issues with stability.

We haven't had any issues with scalability either.

They've been fabulous. They have been open to all sorts of questions and issues. They're needs-based. They look at what we need to do and go from there. They're extremely responsive and willing to help, either via support tickets or a webinar.

The CDW team's knowledge of Google Workspace for education is top-notch. Their ability to support Google Workspace is doing everything that we need done.

Positive

We used other companies for certain aspects, but no one really covered the breadth that CDW covers for us.

The money spent is worth it.

The pricing is incredibly competitive. It's not a matter of cost, and their service offerings are fabulous. Cost is never the determining factor in what portion of their services we're going to use. It's just whether we actually need that piece for what we're doing.

Prior to getting on a call with them, outline all of your specific needs across all the different Google tools that you're using. Try to be as exhaustive as possible with that work leading into a call so that you know what questions to ask.

The main product we use is called Little SIS, but we've also used them for some technical advisement on the Google Admin console.

We use the Little SIS product to mass organize Google Classrooms. That means we can bulk-upload hundreds of users, add co-teachers, and add students on behalf of teachers and other users of Google Classrooms. It gives us administrative capabilities that we didn't have already through the Google Admin console.

The audit was also helpful, offering a detailed look at our admin setup.

I've also taken advantage of multiple webinars that they offer, where they provide opportunities to learn from their experts. They know a lot because they work with many different schools that have a variety of issues. You can definitely learn from their experiences when listening to others teach about technology. Sometimes a speaker can come across as a know-it-all, someone who makes you feel that if you don't know something you're probably not high up on the tech ladder. But I've never felt that way with regard to CDW Amplified for Education. They understand that everyone is coming from a different place and is at a different level, and they want to help everyone reach whatever goals they're trying to achieve.

While CDW doesn't get to the level of teachers, it empowers tech leaders and administrators, and the people who are setting up the infrastructure for Google Workspace for Education. Consequently, it can empower teachers and students. But CDW's audience is predominantly technical leaders and technology specialists.

The ability to bulk-upload users into Google Classrooms using Little SIS has been life-saving. Otherwise, we would have had to upload them one at a time or use a product called Gam, but the Little SIS interface is very user-friendly and allows other people on our team to assist in the process.

Rostering Google Classroom classes is one of the main reasons we have it. There may be other ways of doing it, but Little SIS does it with ease. And because we use Google Classroom for so many things now, beyond just a traditional teacher's class, such as for a counselor for a whole grade level, a club activity, or study hall teacher—which means we have some larger scale Google Classrooms in place—it makes sense to have the ability to bulk-upload students. And it makes sense that it also be done by people who wouldn't necessarily have the time or technical know-how to do it. That ability of Little SIS is very important.

We don't do much customization of the product, but it's reasonably flexible for what it is. It gives us the ability to do certain things and gives us reporting of some metrics. The flexibility is also in the ability to allow roles and users to have certain capabilities. For example, I can allow a department chair to have access to the teachers only in their department, as opposed to giving them access to the entire school. That was a feature that was very useful early on and an example of the flexibility of the product.

The Google for Education Audit feature was also pretty useful. We had them do it and we were able to have a follow-up call. They gave us some advice on best practices that they recommended for our Google Admin console. We then met as a team and discussed which ones we wanted to implement and to review the results of the audit together. Everything was very friendly and there was no pressure to buy something or consider adding more features or hours to the consulting package. It was very much: "Here is what we've seen and noticed and here are some action items for you if you'd like. And if you need additional support, let us know." It was very easygoing, without pressure to purchase anything, and has never involved a sales pitch. It feels like they are looking out for folks like me, tech directors at schools, and they really do want to try to help us make sure we have the best practices in place.

Speaking to the empowerment of teachers, and maybe this already exists, but I would like to see them develop and market more for teachers. Maybe they could hire teachers or teacher leaders to deliver the same types of programs and opportunities that CDW seems to have been focused on with technical directors and tech leaders. They could do the same thing for the teachers. Teachers are definitely willing and interested when it comes to learning more about the technologies that they're using. That could be an area of growth for CDW.

We have been using Amplified for Education for about five years.

The stability is very strong. It's up 99.999 percent of the time.

It's also very scalable.

I contacted their technical support once and they have a lot of knowledge of Google Workspace for Education. They're also very knowledgeable and have a strong ability in supporting and maintaining Google Workspace and Chrome OS.

Positive

We did not have a previous similar service.

The deployment was straightforward. It took an hour or two to deploy Little SIS, while for the audit there wasn't really any deployment necessary.

Our strategy with Little SIS was to check out the product and test-drive it with a small group of my team. We then rolled it out through the department chairs who were going to use it, did some training for them, and supported them as we moved forward.

We have about seven active users and there is no maintenance of it on our side.

Our ROI is from the audit results and changes we made to our Little SIS usage. For the price we paid in previous years, there was definitely a return on investment, mostly in time saved, efficiency, and the goals we were able to accomplish using it.

One of the reasons we started using Little SIS was that it was included in a bundle or we got some credits when we purchased Chromebooks. Now we've purchased it outright and continue to find value in it.

The pricing has been competitive. I have a renewal notice for next year and the prices are increasing. They're coming closer to a point where we definitely have to look into the value of Little SIS and what that product offers us.

I know that Google is working on a product that is very similar to Little SIS and that will be interesting to see when it is fully released and we can do a comparison.

Regarding the audit, some of the services are more expensive than they need to be, but I work in a place that has a pretty strong team when it comes to what we generally need help with. But for smaller institutions and departments, it makes sense to have something like CDW to provide some additional technical support, because CDW has the experience that a smaller school may not have access to.

My advice is to think about the typical problems you're trying to solve and if CDW has a product or offering that addresses them, definitely consider it and weigh it against any other options, if available. CDW is going to be a contender for many schools.

CDW Amplified for Education has definitely made a name for itself as one of the premier organizations that support Google Workspace for Education and schools that are using it. As a part of the CDW environment now, it's a pretty powerful combination in terms of purchasing, but also for support. It's very important not just to spend money on the technology, but also to make sure that the technology is going to be used and that you train successfully on it. It seems logical to have a pretty strong presence in training and support alongside purchasing.