Today’s modern workplace has changed – from meetings held in traditional rooms, from manual paperwork to technology powered meetups, and sophisticated applications and systems. The influx of massive technological advancements over the last decade or so has dramatically reshaped the workplace.
But now there is a new challenge facing businesses. It brings together a multitude of topics including intergenerational, geographical, technological and commercial.
How do organisations provide a modern workspace that meets the needs of business owners, staff, and customers, yet is flexible enough to change as things continue to evolve?
The one important and critical thing holding back many organisations is security. Data is the lifeline of any business. Any threats to securing data make customers anxious and pose a huge risk to organisations.
Thankfully, a balance can be struck. You need to understand the options out in the marketplace, know what you need and figure out what you don’t know.
Trends in the modern workplace
We are all embracing the technology evolution in our personal lives. We expect similar things more and more from our business interactions and workplaces. The IoT (Internet of Things), the cloud, portable devices, the 24/7 economy. You may even have found yourself rolling your eyes in frustration at a time-consuming business interaction thinking: Why don’t they have an app for this?
If you’re not leading the way in your sector, you’re playing catch up, and customers have no compulsion in switching to brands or organisations that make their lives easier.
How can businesses keep up? There’s not one simple answer. The workplace is constantly evolving. Customer and employee demands are also ever-changing. Organisations must manage employee expectations and preferences to work while maintaining a secure workplace.
Agility versus security
It can suit both businesses and staff to offer flexible work arrangements including working remotely, using collaborative technologies or BYOD (Bring Your Own Device). We’re now working with a generation that expects a more agile and flexible environment.
But how do you control processes, data, and communication? Or ensure there are checks and balances in place to prevent breaches, data losses and other disastrous events?
A further complicating factor is that most organisations are also grappling with a mix of new and old technologies. Many legacy applications are still business critical – it’s never a matter of just replacing the old with the new and starting over.
The Hybrid working environment
Despite all of the above, some organisations carry on with ‘business as usual.’
For example, some businesses have a Standard Operating Environment (SOE) – where all applications, platforms, and data are contained within the devices at your workplace. This may be the only environment supported by your organisation right now.
Device compatibility and data security are solid in this setup, but the compromise is steep up-front costs, limited device support, limits on users and a high amount of infrastructure management. It will get more and more difficult to attract talented staff and deliver on employee demands in today’s modern workplace.
A fundamental driver influencing how work gets done, and when, is to support an increasingly remote workforce and the rise of cloud-based applications. Virtual Desktop Environments (VDI) and BYOD are common options.
In a virtual desktop work environment, data is hosted in a centralised location on-site (or in the case of desktop-as-a-service, by a third-party service provider) and users can connect remotely. These set-ups provide a good balance of security and agility. They do, however, rely on a consistent connection to the data centre, and get very complicated when it comes to device compatibility, licensing, compliance and other logistical demands. There are also high infrastructure costs with VDI.
BYOD tops the score when it comes to flexibility, employee desire and low up-front costs for the organisation. But questions around security are rife, and application compatibility and operational support can also cause huge headaches. To tighten up security, the option of Corporate Owned, Personal Devices offers organisations a way to get back in control of application and data security but at a higher cost than BYOD.
The evolution from workplace to workspace
This new way of working has shifted the way mobile devices and applications are accessed in the workplace. Embracing the shift, means organisations have a good mix of physical and virtual environments. The workspace concept brings all the necessary work tools together into one platform.
Businesses already operating in a semi-hybrid fashion (e.g. BYOD and SOE) are at the start of their ‘workspace journey’. But many organisations find it difficult to maintain and secure the various devices and environments. They need to enhance productivity and increase efficiency and, with new disruptors introduced daily in the workplace, this can be a hard task.
This is where partnering with an IT provider that specialises in this space can be revolutionary. Rather than running into problems, you can have your digital workspace designed and implemented specifically to suit your exact needs.
Achieving the ‘golden triangle’
The only way to get that golden triangle of meeting the needs of flexibility, data control and peace of mind is with a digital workspace. Nexon provides adaptable solutions in delivering a workspace.
For more detailed information on modern workspaces, download our whitepaper or get in touch for a conversation.
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