It’s always a pleasure to speak with Carisa as she shares her enthusiasm for the market and the variety of experiences Citrix customers are working through today. We also touch on the potential importance of user experience monitoring and how it may play into future remote work decisions.
Business Applications & End-user Computing
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The COVID-19 crisis is creating a new normal for IT executives and knowledge workers alike. Citywide closures, stay-at-home mandates, and social distancing measures are forcing many people to work from home to help flatten the curve of a global pandemic. For IT executives, meeting the needs of these remote workers calls for new technologies, stringent protection measures, and operational agility. Knowledge workers, on the other hand, must take advantage of collaboration platforms while minimizing distractions and overcoming technical shortcomings.
Despite these challenges and persistent health and safety concerns, COVID-19 presents a prime opportunity to redesign the workplace, rethink how work gets done, and get a head start on the future.
ESG conducted an in-depth survey of 500 North American senior IT decision makers and 1,008 corporate knowledge workers now working at home. Survey participants represented midmarket (100 to 999 employees) and enterprise-class (1,000 employees or more) organizations in North America (United States and Canada).
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Listen to hear how Citrix is helping customers and the unique position that Citrix holds in the market with its ability to deliver a variety of work-from-home solutions. Vishal also shares how important the cloud consumption model has been during these times and some potential maneuvers he sees as customers think through what’s next.
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Brad shares some great perspective from a customer point of view and what he is seeing with Workspot customers during the COVID-19 pandemic. We chat through the varying degrees of success businesses are having, the work at home kit, and the different measures businesses may take to rebound back to a mix of remote work and office work.
Listen in to learn more about BYOH (Bring your own home) and Double DaaS:
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ESG’s Master Survey Results provide the complete output of syndicated research surveys in graphical format. In addition to the data, these documents provide background information on the survey, including respondent profiles at an individual and organizational level. It is important to note that these documents do not contain analysis of the data.
This Master Survey Results presentation focuses on the technology impact of COVID-19 in terms of both enabling more employees to work from home and the impact on original 2020 IT budget levels, as well as expectations for how the remote work landscape may change.
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ESG’s Master Survey Results provide the complete output of syndicated research surveys in graphical format. In addition to the data, these documents provide background information on the survey, including respondent profiles at an individual and organizational level. It is important to note that these documents do not contain analysis of the data.
This Master Survey Results presentation focuses on the experiences and changing work habits of corporate knowledge workers related to their current work from home (WFH) status resulting from the COVID-19 outbreak.
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Matt and I have been sharing stories and formulating IT strategies for years. We recently had a chance to catch up and share our perspectives on how businesses have adjusted and some potential plans for the future. I always appreciate being able to grab time with Matt and capture his insight into what matters most to businesses.
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Given the events of COVID-19 and the need to support remote work, I had the chance to catch up with Andrew Miller, CEO at Cameyo about VPN alternatives. I remember deploying VPN 20+ years ago and while the technology was the right fit at the time, I question whether it is the ideal solution for remote work today. Listen to what Andrew and I have to say about VPN solutions and alternative means to help make remote work work.
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I recently had the chance to speak with James Stickland, CEO at Veridium, to hear firsthand how our Enterprise Strategy Group research regarding usernames and passwords from the Digital Work Survey maps to what James is seeing with businesses today.
In the video, I share research regarding an end-user perspective on:
- What technology challenge has the biggest negative impact on productivity at work?
- What improvements would you like to see in terms of the technology experience IT provides?
Watch the video to see more and learn how passwordless helps WFH work.
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Anyone tracking virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) has seen numerous claims over the past 5+ years that “this is the year of VDI.” The technology has been compelling but limited in deployment for corner cases and specific employee profiles. It’s never bounced past these use cases. Until now.
COVID-19 has found companies left unprepared for this unplanned event and without a solid business continuity plan in place for WFH (work from home) employees. Prior to COVID-19, business executives were reluctant to support WFH and feared the impact to employee productivity. The technology to deliver a secure workspace for an employee is rarely the issue but was often used as an excuse to restrict WFH policies. A small percentage of companies had a local business continuity plan in place for local natural disasters, but few had plans in place to address the scale of WFH we are seeing today.
Since companies were unprepared, they naturally rushed solutions for WFH employees knowing that there were security risks, questionable impact to productivity, and unknown network issues. As companies work through addressing any shortcomings, now is an ideal time to consider VDI and other digital workspace technologies that can deliver a secure and productive experience for WFH employees. ESG research validates that the top benefits of VDI are improved security, reduced operational expense, and improved employee productivity gains. This is exactly what businesses need right now.
ESG research continues to monitor how VDI is empowering WFH employees and more importantly, the role VDI and digital workspaces will have post-COVID-19 and how business can prepare as we welcome back some normalcy to our lives.
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IT organizations that are running a data center have a set of challenges on their hands given that the teams are working from home (WFH). Data centers are like your automobile that requires hands-on scheduled and unplanned maintenance. Well-run data centers are a fine oiled piece of machinery that is constantly worked on to meet and deliver business demand. IT organizations are masters at this, but what happens when the team is mandated to WFH?
Managing and maintaining consumption from the cloud is very different. IT ops teams manage cloud services remotely because it is the only way they can be managed. While businesses have embraced cloud services, the level of maturity varies greatly from one organization to the next. Due to employees having to WFH, including IT organizations, they have a new appreciation for the investment in cloud that they have already made and will likely put cloud on the fast track for these reasons:
- Remote Access: The cloud was designed for IT to securely access, manage, monitor and maintain cloud services remotely. IT operations teams and developers can all maintain the continuity of access while WFH continues.
- Unplanned scale: Simple break/fix tasks in the data center are going to be difficult enough with a reduced onsite staff in place. During times like these, businesses are not going to truck racks of IT gear into their data centers, but still may need more capacity. The answer…cloud.
- Threat detection: As unfortunate and wrong as it is, times like this leave companies vulnerable. The major cloud providers all have threat intelligence that can be used to help protect a business that is operating in the cloud and help reduce the overall risk from multiple threat vectors.
The advantages of cloud will shine as IT organizations continue to WFH and businesses will further accelerate cloud consumption initiatives. During this time, business will likely prioritize cloud over on-prem and not look back.
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The technology to help businesses deliver a secure and productive experience for employees as they work from home has been around for years. Businesses have implemented virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) and desktop-as-a-service (DaaS) to enable remote employees, but the technology has never broken through a relatively small percentage of the employee base or been used outside of specific use cases. ESG has spoken with numerous companies that invested in VDI or DaaS to help address local business continuity, but now companies are finding themselves having to maintain business continuity globally. Something they have not likely planned for.
I am seeing companies find themselves in one of these four situations:
- Those organizations that didn’t have a policy or technical support. They are starting from scratch in all areas and need to scale up quickly.
- Those that had policy/technology on a limited scale and not very mature. They need to mature current processes/technologies and then scale them.
- Those that had policy/technology on a limited basis (e.g., local business continuity) but good deal of maturity. They need to scale.
- Those that had policy/technology on an extensive basis. Maturity level can still vary but this is where they have to double down.
Each of these situations requires a different approach and level of investment. Unfortunately, companies that had to rush work from home (WFH) enablement took shortcuts that have left company information exposed and have raised a slew of security concerns.
The technology works. VDI and DaaS are proven and trusted technologies that can deliver an entire desktop operating system, applications, and data to an employee working from home. The security threat is greatly reduced since the user workspace is hosted in a data center or with a cloud service provider and projected to the user. I have been pushing the limits of this technology and can validate that I am a productive work from home employee that accesses a Windows 10 desktop that is hosted with a cloud provider, and I use a smartphone with an external keyboard, mouse, and monitor as my primary device. The technology works and can enable rapid scale for businesses without compromising security.
Nobody plans for an event like COVID-19. But we have the technology that can support the massive shift to WFH. The question now remains: Once we all work through these times, how will companies leverage the WFH experience to create new opportunities and empower their workforce?
