Hydro Ottawa lights up the future of work with Gemini for Google Workspace

“The collaborative nature of the Workspace tools has not only accelerated our existing processes but also shed light on any shortcomings within them.” — Santhosh Jayasankar, Manager of Enterprise Architecture, Hydro Ottawa Limited

Snapshot: Powering Canada’s capital city requires powerful tools. That’s why Hydro Ottawa relies on Google Workspace. Learn how Workspace helps the electricity provider:

• Harness the power of secure collaboration

• Augment everyday tasks daily with Gemini for Google Workspace

• Remove friction from day-to-day processes to deliver better, more cost-effective services

The mission and the challenge

What if generative AI could help power a nation’s capital? Hydro Ottawa is on a journey to find out.

Since 1916, Hydro Ottawa has managed critical infrastructure for Canada’s capital, distributing electricity to 364,000 homes and businesses. At Hydro Ottawa, security is the cornerstone of their operations. They take a zero-risk approach when adopting new technologies, going beyond their core offering to provide customers with safe and reliable power. 

This is why the company chose Google Workspace as its collaboration platform in 2020 and why it opted into the Gemini for Google Workspace pilot in 2024. Here’s how Hydro Ottawa uses Workspace and Gemini to power productivity and generate more reliable, cost-friendly services.

The switch to Google Workspace and Gemini

Hydro Ottawa’s journey with Workspace began with Google Meet at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. When teams couldn’t meet in person, the company needed a secure solution that could keep them connected with as little friction as possible — and Meet seamlessly filled that need. By the time Theresa Sippert joined as Manager of Information Management less than a year later, Workspace fueled nearly all of Hydro Ottawa’s communication and collaboration needs.

“Since Hydro Ottawa had already adopted Google Workspace, it was easy for me to integrate into the team and get up to speed while working remotely during COVID-19,” Sippert says. “Everything I do now, from asking quick questions in Google Chat, to writing in Docs, to building presentations in Slides, happens in Workspace.”

During the pandemic, the Director on Sippert’s team also started a bi-weekly Meet to give people a place to connect and socialize with their team. “It was more of a networking moment than a business meeting and was a fantastic way to feel like part of a team when we couldn’t be on site,” she says.

As generative AI expanded across industries, the team wondered how to safely bring its power to Hydro Ottawa. “If you want generative AI to work for your organization, you have to take it to where the data is,” says Santhosh Jayasankar, Manager of Enterprise Architecture at Hydro Ottawa. “Since much of our unstructured data, like emails and documents, is stored in Google Workspace, we already had robust security measures in place through the platform. This made joining the Gemini for Google Workspace pilot a no-brainer.”

The pilot began with 50 people and quickly grew to over 100 as team members discovered the value Gemini could bring to their everyday tasks. Deployed across all divisions to give every team an opportunity to explore its capabilities, Hydro Ottawa uses Gemini to:

• create job posts for recruiters

• conduct legal and technical research

• write policies

• generate content for internal and public-facing communications across channels

• summarize large documents and Google Slides presentations

• provide structured meeting agendas

“Collaboration is an important aspect of any work environment, and if you can’t do that with the tools you have, you’re blocked before you’ve started,” Jayasankar says. “The collaborative nature of the Workspace tools has not only accelerated our existing processes but also shed light on any shortcomings within them.”

Looking ahead

Hydro Ottawa’s usage of Workspace and Gemini continues to grow, with additional users onboarded every week. The team has also started using Gemini in the side panel of Workspace applications to make it even easier to perform quick tasks like summarizing emails or documents, or searching shared drives to access relevant information.

"The Google Gemini pilot gave us a lens into the productivity gains and automation opportunities that AI could bring to our organization as we work towards the energy transition in our sector,” says Mark Fernandes, Chief Information & Technology Officer at Hydro Ottawa. “It enhances our employee experience and puts the necessary tools into their hands to better serve our customers."

Sippert agrees: “AI is everywhere and the Gemini for Google Workspace pilot was an opportunity to shape the technology before it became available to the masses. We got to be on the ground floor of something exciting and be part of something bigger than ourselves.”