Balancing the demands of our modern workplace

Our workplaces are under constant transformation. Beyond technology, our teams are becoming more fluid, our projects are more agile, and our business strategy is more dynamic.

Because of this, the workplace has gone from a place of passive attendance to active participation. Every element of workplace design needs to facilitate interactive and collaborative working styles.

The challenge then becomes: how do we create these environments without creating more complexity for our technology teams? Smart digital workplaces now need sophisticated tools for a controlling a diverse technology environment that is being shaped by three major trends.

All mobile, all the time

The days of fixed office PCs are numbered, with most workplaces switching to laptops and mobile devices that can be connected from anywhere. This allows us to take our work with us into meeting rooms, public transport and to our homes.

Because of this, it’s been estimated that mobile technologies will create $65 billion of labour productivity in Australia by 2023 – roughly the equivalent of $2500 per employee. This is because mobile devices enable us to:

• find information more easily
• make more efficient use of our time
• improve communication between employees, managers, and customers

In the clouds

In the workplace, cloud has enabled us to take advantage of new collaboration and project tools that enable real-time information access and communication. Software as a Service (SaaS) applications are now commonplace at every level of the enterprise and they’re considered an essential component of workplace experience.

In one study, delivering these experiences was found to create 22% higher engagement and also meant that employees were four times less likely to leave an organisation. This is because cloud tools enable us to:

• spend less time finding and storing information
• collaborate in real-time with colleagues and customers
• access a single source of truth

Connected but protected

While mobility and cloud drive collaboration, engagement and productivity, there is more demand than ever for solutions that can keep our users, applications and data secure. This is because the movement of devices and users within legacy networks makes the role of cybersecurity far more complex.

While we can easily protect tethered desktops, the sheer number of mobile endpoints using cloud applications requires new solutions. Particularly when we consider that 22% of organisations report having limited resources available to respond to a security threat and data breaches. Network security solutions need to solve the problems of:

• monitoring traffic on wired and wireless networks
• segmenting users based on role, device and application
• automating policy decisions and enforcement

Staying ahead of the need for mobile cloud connectivity and security requires a new approach to network infrastructure. It demands tools and technology that can cope with the dynamic demands of today’s workplace while simultaneously reducing the complexity for IT and network administrators.

Vizstone can help you design and transition to the workplace of tomorrow by combining our network transformation expertise with Aruba’s next-gen CX switching portfolio. These solutions are purpose-built for today’s workplaces, with a single platform from edge access to the datacentre that includes intuitive management tools and distributed analytics that transform the IT network operator experience.

Get in touch with us today to reduce the complexity in your workplace networks while keeping your users and data secure.