Redefining business as usual

A seismic shift from the traditional, office-based routine has unfolded rapidly before our eyes: With nearly half of the American workforce working from home in the first half of 2020¹ and an estimated 25–30% of the global workforce expected to work from home multiple days per week by the end of 2021², organizations the world over are having to redefine “business as usual.”

While most enterprise-level organizations had some degree of contingency planning in place for one-time or regional events, many have learned painful lessons about their level of preparedness for a longer-lasting, global disruption that’s expected to impact how people do business for the foreseeable future.

Whether it’s unreliable network options for dispersed teams, mission-critical applications being hosted exclusively in on-premises datacenters, or a whole host of other challenges, too many organizations have recognized after the fact that their IT infrastructure is simply too constrained to support this new future of work.
 

True remote work comes with a host of advantages, including avoiding the productivity traps that commonly affect employees while on-site⁵. But without the benefits of optimized voice, image and video virtualization offered by today’s leading cloud-hosted virtual app and desktop solutions, your staff’s productivity levels could actually be suffering when working remotely. And, studies have shown that all the stress your dispersed workforce feels about staying productive can in fact have a dampening effect on their output⁶.

When you host mission-critical workloads, apps and desktop tools in the hybrid cloud, you pave the way for your dispersed workforce to work from home as efficiently and effectively as they could in the office. That’s because, with hybrid cloud hosting combined with virtualized desktop infrastructure (VDI), you benefit from optimized bandwidth and access to resources, built in.

The result: Employees get the high-definition user experience they’ve come to expect when working on-site (including streamlined log-in, seamless app and desktop functionality across all devices, and robust printing and voice, image and video optimization) without the same distractions inherent in working from the office.

As many have discovered, organizations simply weren’t set up to support the degree of remote work⁷ that’s been necessitated by business disruptions brought about by Mother Nature, cyberthreats and more. Yet, work must go on.

As a result, more than a third of employees are using web browsers installed on their own devices (which are not managed by their IT teams) to access web based, SaaS applications⁸.

The problem? When employees log into corporate systems through non-corporate-provisioned laptops, smartphones and other devices, they’re inadvertently making life easier for cybercriminals, who are doubling (and by some reports, tripling or quadrupling⁹) their efforts to infiltrate corporate networks. That’s because an astounding 75% of employees polled don’t know how to prevent cybersecurity breaches¹⁰. Combine that behavior with the increase in traditional Virtual Private Network (VPN) usage—which are much more difficult to keep updated when they’re being used by remote workers all day, every day—and you’ve got some serious security risks on your hands.

If you’re looking to offer more secure and reliable network access to your remote workforce, consider switching out your traditional VPN for a security solution that’s based on zero trust fundamentals, like granular access for authorized users based on identity, time, device posture and other contextual factors. With these types of solutions, you get a fully-managed, globally available cloud service that auto-scales to match any surges in remote work as they occur—tightening the reins on access security while giving your employees their choice of where they work, when and on which device.

Gone are the days when mobile work was a choice. Now and in the future, “business as usual” is the ability to work seamlessly from anywhere, over any network, and on multiple devices. To assure long term success in this new environment, IT leaders must build resiliency into foundations of their organizations. Virtualization technology like Citrix DaaS, especially when hosted in the hybrid cloud, delivers the flexibility, security and infinitely scalable performance that supports the diverse ways that employees do their jobs.