The Google bus pays a visit to Swansea

by Nicholas Fearn , December 3

The big, blue Cloud Tech Solutions Google bus paid a visit to Swansea’s infamous Wind Street yesterday.

Parked outside co-working space TechHub, it was there to fly the flag for Google cloud-based products such as Google Drive and Docs.

During the day, over 100 people went on board to learn more about they can use these services to transform their businesses and working lives. Many were start-ups from TechHub and DVLA employees.

The bus has been all over the UK and has attracted over 2,000 visitors since setting off in September. It’ll continue on its journey for another year.

Sponsored by Acer and Intel, it sports Chromebook setups so people can see what the cloud is all about and a meeting room where talks are held.

Steve Dobson, sales director of Cloud Tech Solutions, said: “The aim of the bus is to show businesses and people how they can transform the way they work using cloud-based technology and digital solutions.

“For SMEs, the cloud is low-cost and easy to use. They don’t need expensive infrastructure in order to get set up and can do so quickly and without any hassle.”

“We’ve had people who’ve come on the bus to try out the technology and adopted it the next day. It’s popular with businesses as well as students.”

Paul Harwood, co-founder of TechHub Swansea, said: “We had a great response from local businesses as well as the local press for this event – even with the weather as it was.

“Google were chuffed with the superb enthusiasm and uptake. We saw well over 100 people on the bus and will hopefully see SMEs and startups evangelising about Google and the tech they saw.
“Microsoft Word and Excel used to be the only players in town, but lots of students use Google Docs now. And it’s probably the case that they will take that into the companies they work within in the future.”