At Citrix, we’re working hard to help our customers adapt quickly to a “new normal,” where remote work is ubiquitous. The COVID-19 pandemic has forced many of us to work from home, where we depend on low-latency, high bandwidth connectivity for video calls, webinars, digital conferences, and more.

Massive technological shifts were afoot before the pandemic, but the speed with which they’re happening now was unforeseen. Fortunately, Citrix has the technology to help organizations to transition and to deliver a great experience to remote workers.

And together, Citrix and Deutsche Telekom are uniquely positioned to deliver that user experience with Citrix SD-WAN, even over low bandwidth networks. While digital transformation has accelerated in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Deutsche Telekom and Citrix began our fully managed service journey with Citrix SD-WAN almost two years. Though we can’t look into a crystal ball and see what’s ahead, we know a shift from traditional office environments to distributed, remote workforces is happening now and fast.

Our experience has shown that it is possible to scale remote work the right way and quickly and that employees can be just as productive (or even more productive) outside the office. Here’s what we’ve found as we’ve worked with organizations to enable fast, always-on application experiences for remote workers:

  •  The ability to connect quickly and reliably from home is the top priority for remote workers.
  • The underlying technology isn’t important to remote workers, who just want a quality connection from home.
  • Secure, compliant connections are critical, and Citrix SD-WAN provides robust security features. Though VPNs might enable quick connectivity, they leave you at risk of attacks.
  • Being able to scale virtual apps and desktops in the cloud is key.
  • They must be able to maintain visibility and control at scale. Citrix SD-WAN can scale to hundreds of thousands of nodes per cluster, and Citrix SD-WAN Orchestrator gives you maximum visibility into traffic.

Deutsche Telekom and Citrix have worked with our joint customers to ensure reliable connectivity. For example, the German government is using Citrix technology to help to deliver critical services to its citizens. And transportation companies like Trans-o-Flex, which deliver supplies to supermarkets, hospitals, and other essential businesses, are using Citrix SD-WAN technology to help to manage their fleets.

As partners, we’ve had three focal points that have helped to guide our work to enable the scaling of remote work in Germany:

Embracing the “new normal” – The push toward digitization has gained new energy as companies have recognized that the “new normal” of remote work and distributed workforces is here. Of course, companies everywhere had long-term digital transformation strategies in place. But now, everything has to happen twice as fast. An important step in this process is the deployment of SD-WAN technology, which can be done as a managed service, enabling you to focus on your core business. Technologies like future cloud infrastructure and Citrix Cloud can enable the high-speed, secure connectivity required by corporate networks today.

Enabling collaboration with Citrix SD-WAN – Many organizations have shifted to 100 percent remote work for their employees. We’re fortunate at Citrix and Deutsche Telekom that nearly all of our employees have laptops, smartphones, or tablets that enable them to work anywhere. Our employees have what they need to connect to ADSL, fibre, and 4G simultaneously. Citrix SD-WAN can aggregate these into a single connection, enabling the incredible speed and low-latency connectivity remote workforces need to stay productive and connected with colleagues.

Accelerating adoption of Citrix SD-WAN – Our new normal will require organizations to make fundamental changes to support connectivity for dispersed workforces. Companies need to be agile, willing to adopt new apps quickly, and able to connect to their own data centres and public clouds. No company is immune to a crisis like this, and connectivity will be key to surviving and thriving. We’ll all travel less and use collaboration tools more, at least during the next 18 months. You’ll need the high-speed, low-bandwidth connectivity available with Citrix SD-WAN to minimize risk to your deployments. Together, Citrix and Deutsche Telekom can deliver a fully managed SD-WAN service.

Learn how Citrix SD-WAN can simplify your digital transformation, and connect today with Deutsche Telekom.