Opinion


Giving resellers the key to unlocking end user continuity, pro- ductivity and flexibility


More than 39% of adults in employment are now working from home, compared to around 12% last year


Until recently, the transition to working from home was unfolding at a gradual pace for many businesses. Although there is much research to back up the benefits of flexible and remote working, many business leaders remained sceptical, believing that office working remained the setup that would be most productive and beneficial from a cultural perspective. Dave Manning of Giacom examines the options.


The current crisis delivered an ultimatum for many business- es – cease operations or deploy technology to enable employ- ees to work from home for the foreseeable future. There are, of course, several industries where working from home is not an option, but for the ma- jority, there are ways to simply facilitate it – demonstrated by the fact that more than 39% of adults in employment are now working from home, compared to around 12% last year. Many employees are thriving working from home. And the hours they have gained back while working from home are not going to be something they will want to give up easily – two-thirds (63%) of work- ers said they are open to full time remote working and nev- er going back to the physical office once the crisis is over. It’s becoming clear that the future will not be a permanent office-based workforce but will shift to a hybrid model com- bining both remote and office working, allowing for a larg- er degree of flexibility. This approach


of working fuelled


by the pandemic is clearly favoured, as 77% of UK em- ployees believe a mix of of- fice-based and remote working is the best way forward post Covid-19.


For those companies set up


to work from home, it’s clear that if business continuity and productivity are maintained – or even improved – during a crisis, they will long term as well. But companies that ar- en’t properly set up to support remote working are missing out on significant business val- ue gains. To facilitate hybrid working long term, employees must be equipped not only to survive, but to thrive. So how can resellers support end user organisations in transitioning to this new way of operating in the future?


A cloudy future


The lockdown enforcement saw the need for businesses to adapt to this new way of work- ing almost overnight, resulting in a huge surge of enquiries to resellers to get employees working


remotely as quickly


as possible. Even with cloud- based solutions


gaining pop-


ularity over the years, a lot of business infrastructure remain on-premises. Businesses need to be moving to a cloud-based infrastructure where the tech- nology they deploy allows for the flexibility to work remotely and on-premises


if required.


For IT companies supporting SMBs who want to future-proof their businesses and replace outdated on-site servers, the


cloud offers a fixed cost server solution to IT companies sup- porting SMBs, while delivering secure storage and easy provi- sioning as well as scalability – ensuring a futureproof solution for end users.


Productivity tools


Collaboration tools have come of age and the race is on to both develop and implement smoother integrated IT com- munications, video, voice strategies so that business can perform at an even higher level whilst working from home. Sim- ilar to the transition from letter writing to email, businesses are realising they can actually get more achieved in the same time with cloud-based tools and people not having to trav- el miles around the country on public transport, in cars or in- ternationally by plane. And as virtual collaboration tools develop even further to deliver advanced capabilities, employee productivity will only increase. Resellers will be the crucial


advisors to compa-


nies in order to facilitate their needs, backed up with support from CSPs to help navigate through the most relevant and valuable


cloud


their end users. Secure setup


Resellers have undoubtedly al- ready experienced the surge of businesses looking to get staff up and running with remote collaboration tools, such as Mi- crosoft Teams etc. But in the


solutions for


While we are all looking forward to this crisis being over, given the nature of the pandemic it’s unlikely that there will be a hard stop to lockdown. Even with the government now lifting some of the restrictions, we can expect a combination of working from home and office working with social distancing and other measures still in place for some time to come. And research has found that 74% of business leaders in- tend to shift some employees


AV News September 2020 P21


rush to get everyone online and maintain business continuity, security considerations like- ly slipped much further down the list. Given the continued increase in frequency and so- phistication of cyber-attacks, especially those capitalising on the current crisis through phishing scams, ‘Zoom-bomb- ing’ incidents and the like, it’s never been more important to prioritise cyber security. This is especially true for those organisations that are new to the concept of remote work- ing. While they may have had a solution in place for keeping the corporate network secure within the physical office, a virtual business requires differ- ent tools and techniques. This is where resellers can play a crucial role as key consultants to end-users on how they can keep their data secure and deploy reliable, cloud-based backup solutions to safeguard their sensitive information even further.


Hybrid infrastructure


to remote working permanently. No one knows exactly what that journey will look like, so busi- nesses require the toolkit and technology to enable a hybrid working infrastructure now and into the future. Moreover, lockdown measures may be starting to ease gradu- ally, but if the UK is faced with a second wave of the virus, or we experience another crisis in the future, additional lockdown measures may have to be put back in place, as was the case in Singapore that struggled to contain a second wave. Flex- ibility is therefore crucial to


Author’s biography


Dave Manning joined Giacom in 2017 and leads the opera- tions teams with a highly en- ergetic and driven approach to successfully meet the de-


mands of a cloud-first envi- ronment. With more than 20 years of experience in strategic and operational


safeguard business continuity and


enable organisations to


maintain optimum productivity levels even in the midst of an- other unprecedented event. The key will be for resellers to support end users in deploying tools that support this new way of working. From unified com- munications and collaboration software, to cloud-based back- up and security tools that keep the corporate network safe no matter where the user is based, resellers hold the key to un- locking end user organisations’ continuity, productivity and flexibility.


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