Lance Hart hosts a discussion on building the workforce of the future with Justin Rice, Vice President of Solutions Consulting, and Jon Lloyd, Practice Principal. They discuss the commonalities across organizations shifting to an ‘anywhere workforce’, focusing on three key trends: maintaining a great user experience, network architecture, and security.
Many companies want to build an ‘anywhere workforce’, with remote work now well-established as the new standard for many businesses. The ability to work from anywhere has become more critical than ever, and companies are starting to recognize that to attract and retain top talent, they need to offer flexible work arrangements.
This post will discuss the commonalities seen across our clients as they shift toward an anywhere workforce. It will also explore what it takes to enable the workforce of the future and provide insights into the key considerations organizations need to keep in mind when making this transition.
1. Ensure seamless user experiences
When meeting user expectations, the first step is to understand those expectations. Users have little patience for delays and downtime. They demand always-on connectivity. In the past, businesses achieved this by building high availability in their data centers and connecting all their sites with private, low-latency networks. That has all changed with the move to distributed workplaces. Now organizations must attempt to manage dozens, hundreds, or thousands of devices and connections from all over the globe.
The workforce of the future will shift even more towards remote work. Companies must rethink their approach to application delivery. The misconception that closing offices means reducing employees is far from the truth. As more employees decide to work remotely, organizations must focus on delivering applications to employees who can work from anywhere.
Jon said, “What we are seeing is the most informed non-technical person [the customer] you’ve ever seen across our industry. Meaning, at home, I’ve got three wireless access points from Wi-Fi. My home is networked better than it has ever been. I have this expectation of always on. I have this expectation of 15 to 30 connected devices in my house and constant streaming and high bandwidth dedicated just to my house.”
Cloud adoption has been rising for the past ten years, and the shift to remote work has accelerated this trend. Distributing an application globally requires utilizing a cloud provider. However, there are concerns about network control and redundancies. Jon elaborated, “I always challenge customers about one particular misconception: them saying, we’ve closed a hundred offices, we’ve closed a thousand offices. [I say] you haven’t. You’ve opened 500, a thousand, 5,000, however many employees you have [working from home offices].”
To address these concerns, multi-cloud has become a familiar new strategy. Multi-cloud allows businesses to distribute applications across multiple cloud providers. This approach ensures that if one cloud provider experiences an outage, an application is accessible through another provider.
Read more: How integrated cloud security affects your bottom line
2. Optimize your network architecture
With the shift towards a distributed workforce, ensuring your network architecture is optimized to support remote work is essential. Your network should be able to handle the increased traffic from remote users and provide a secure and reliable connection.
At the early onset of the pandemic, many organizations initially lifted and shifted their applications to the Cloud without considering whether these applications were cloud-native and ready to take advantage of cloud tools and cost efficiencies.
As organizations gain experience with cloud migration, they are discovering the economic benefits of making traditional applications cloud-native. Refactoring conventional applications for the Cloud allows organizations to take full advantage of cloud-offered benefits, including cost savings and flexibility.
Additionally, implementing a virtualized network architecture, such as secure access service edge (SASE), has the benefit of streamlining multiple network functions with next-gen security.
Justin elaborated, “Having a single dashboard to log in for your entire SASE framework—so your network connectivity, your VPN, zero trust network—having an entire dashboard, if you will, to manage that, helps make that transition [to distributed environments] for your IT organization so much smoother.”
Read more: Secure cloud networking in 2024 with SASE and SD-WAN
3. Prioritize security
In recent years, security has become a top concern for organizations. With the constant threat of cyberattacks, ensuring that your organization has robust security measures to protect your data and systems is critical. Securing sensitive data and mission-critical systems includes implementing strong access controls, using encryption, and regularly monitoring your systems for threats.
The transition to remote work means centralized security models are no longer effective. Organizations must adopt decentralized security models that can protect employees working from anywhere without relying solely on firewalls.
Jon sees two significant trends in security, “The first is convergence. The idea of having seven different vendors for seven different layers of security, those days are over. You don’t get the cost efficiency. It’s too hard to manage. The second piece is… secure access service edge… that’s the difference is what we’re saying is, it’s not about a firewall. If I can live and work anywhere and my application can live and work anywhere, I have to secure it as close to the application as possible.”
VPNs are increasingly inadequate, and SASE networks built on zero trust networking principles are the clear alternative. As Justin points out, “Certainly the shift from just an end-to-end VPN solution to zero trust network access is a big way to protect not only you, the employee, but also the organization.”
Supporting the digital workforce of the future
Cloud migration has become the essential strategy for enabling and supporting the workforce of the future, but it is crucial to approach it strategically and thoughtfully to ensure maximum benefits. Organizations need to consider the economic and security implications of migrating to the Cloud and take steps to address these challenges proactively.
CBTS has guided hundreds of clients through the cloud migration process. Whether modernizing an application, adopting a fast and secure network architecture, or shifting to zero trust security access, CBTS has the experts and industry relationships to make your digital transformation as painless as possible.
Get in touch to speak to one of our experts.
