The age of remote working is truly upon us and today’s global events have been a rude awakening for businesses globally
A huge portion of workers have suddenly been forced to work from home in order to stay safe. Unfortunately, many businesses did not have the technology in place to cope with this immediate shift. To tackle this change and maintain continuity, IT decision-making has also undergone rapid changes. Previously sceptical business leaders are now looking to off-premise tools that make their modern workforce much more agile and are investing accordingly.
That said, a remote workforce is truly only as good as the tools that can facilitate a more flexible approach. Such a fast rise in off-premise working has presented new challenges for businesses, causing barriers to such successful work flexibility. Previously, just 35% of employees were actually able to complete 100% of their tasks whilst working outside of the office – a concern for many business leaders whose entire workforce are now confined to working in their homes and on personal devices.
To unlock the true value of their workforce, companies must simply take steps to enable employees with access to the tools that keep them productive from anywhere in the world, whilst minimising the added risks of more staff working outside of the office – such as security, accessibility and employee satisfaction.
Up in the clouds
How? The power of the cloud is now lending itself as one way to deploy solutions quickly and with minimal friction. With many businesses looking to hosted desktops and applications to enable flexible or remote working for employees through nothing more than a device and simple internet connection – and are now seeing the business benefits coming to fruition. Not only are 80% of remote workers citing higher productivity, but these flexible, cloud-hosted workspaces can also add further business value, aiding the recruitment drive by opening up the talent pool for key difficult-to-recruit roles.
Hosted technologies are on an upward trajectory and are being used as a vehicle for flexibility. Moving data and information onto an off-site secure hosted environment allows employees to access all of
their work from wherever they may be in the world, using whichever device they wish. Hosted technologies are being more widely adopted to create a truly remote workforce, which ensures maximum productivity, keeping businesses secure and employees satisfied.
Due to data always being in one secure hosted environment, the security is high as data is never downloaded to an individual device, therefore reducing any risks. From an employees point of view, all they have to do is login to the hosted environment by using a two-factor authentication method, giving them access to all of the files needed. For decision makers, giving access to data, tools and information within a hosted environment can help them to deliver on the promise for remote working – without heavy investment in a complete new suite of IT resources.
Additionally, hosted technologies allow employees to be more productive by working without any limitations. By working on a hosted platform, there are minimal boot times; no need for multiple passwords and the ability to pick up any work how it was left it – no need to save any work. Not only this, but if any issues arise when working remotely out of the office, other teams can also work to help resolve this remotely, by accessing the problem from a different location.
The future workplace is virtual
With an ever-growing reliance on specialist software to complete tasks both remotely or on-premise – and on any device for that matter – the capabilities of hosted technologies have evolved once more and Virtualisation is now at the heart of workforce mobilisation. Virtualisation is allowing businesses to run a number of systems on multiple applications, making Desktop-as-a-Service possible and removing the need for additional hardware which can eat hugely into strainedIT budgets.
Eliminating the pain points of hardware upgrades for graphically-intensive applications and with all processing taking place in powerful data centres rather than the end user’s device, the technology can assist decision makers in removing the complexities of sophisticated hardware and help employees to operate in the age of flexibility. With virtualisation, communication is at the centre of many organisations, and virtualisation offers these organisations the ability to close any gaps between clients, teams and partners.
The technology is now being widely adopted, with organisations tipped to spend an extra 10% on virtualisation in 2020 on average. Virtualisation is effective in a number of scenarios, particularly if employees work across a number of different applications; offering the flexibility for a more productive experience. Although virtualisation is highly recommended for businesses today, they need to ensure they have a skilled team to implement the sophisticated technology. When leveraged correctly, this technology can remove the more testing roadblocks to flexible working and empower employees once restricted to a single, on-premise device with tangible business benefits.
Times are changing. Global events are etching flexible employment into the future of the nation and the time for a new approach to workplace technology is now or never. Companies that assess the needs of their workforce and use technology to create more flexible experiences have the power to unlock productivity at scale. Further still, those that fail to have correct infrastructure in place to support this new era of working risk being outperformed by more progressive competitors.
About the Author
Pete Watson is CEO of Atlas Cloud. Founded in 2010, Atlas Cloud provides a range of Hosted Desktop services and cloud-hosted technologies, helping you to work remotely, store all of your company data in our secure data centres and operate effectively and securely. More: www.atlascloud.co.uk
Featured image: ©Metamorworks
