With the news that several large corporations like Amazon are insisting that their employees return to the office full-time, you might think that the hybrid work revolution was simply a problem caused by the need for lockdown.
It remains to be seen whether this reversal will be successful or trigger another broader adjustment as employees search for employment that best reflects their needs.
Certainly, it should be seen as part of the continuum of an accelerating process of realignments as issues such as trust, technology, productivity, creativity, family, finance and mental health shape the future of work.
Why hybrid work is still a necessity
Whether hybrid working remains part of an organization’s core work strategy or not, it is critical that they retain the ability to do so to ensure business resilience. Disruptions that affect physical office attendance will continue to exist and are likely to increase as the world becomes more unpredictable. From severe weather events to social unrest and global political changes, there are a host of issues that will undermine attempts to confidently forecast medium- and long-term plans.
The ability to adapt as challenges and opportunities arise should be a critical consideration for all businesses. Developing an effective capacity for remote and hybrid work allows employees to work from home or other locations if the office becomes inaccessible. Regardless of other results in recent years, this is a lesson that should not be forgotten.
Why technology is a key enabler for business resilience
Technology adoption will be key for companies to achieve the level of business resilience necessary to support all labor policies. For example, virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) supports remote and hybrid work and can also be leveraged to improve other aspects of business resiliency, security, scalability, and efficiency.
VDI places PC or workstation resources on a server, rather than on a laptop or desktop device. This allows resources to sit alongside other server-based services in a central location, whether it’s an office server room, a data center, or the cloud. Virtual desktops are accessed with a low-spec device, often a cheap laptop or ‘thin client’, via an application or browser, over the network or the Internet. The end-user experience remains the same as long as the service has been properly specified and configured, meaning employees can work from almost anywhere with an Internet connection.
The key benefits of VDI
To ensure greater business protection, VDI (and its related infrastructure) should be located in a high-end data center to ensure additional levels of resilience. These would typically include dual and diverse power and connectivity, backup power generators, high levels of environmental management, and physical and network security (such as DDOS protection). These measures are important to reduce the risk of downtime, whether your employees are working from home or in the office. Public and private cloud providers will offer this level of service as a general rule.
Centralizing all business resources also improves security. Data remains within a centrally managed network, rather than being located or replicated across multiple external devices, exponentially increasing vulnerability to attacks. Employees only have cheap, dumb devices on hand, which are harder to hack and less problematic if stolen or damaged. Reducing the use of VPN, replication, and data from edge devices significantly reduces the attack surface.
Many VDI providers also offer scalability so that organizations adapt their resources to their current needs. This type of dynamic resources is one of the great promises of cloud computing and is extremely attractive, especially when long-term forecasting is a challenge. There is a cost associated with such dynamism, but balancing it with less expensive, dedicated core resources allows for both reliability and agility.
Perhaps the most underrated aspect of VDI is the efficiency it can bring to IT asset management. Administration through web-based control panels allows IT administrators to manage everything remotely, regardless of where the end user is located. Virtual desktops can be activated or deactivated in a matter of minutes, resulting in huge savings on time that would otherwise be spent deploying and decommissioning physical devices. Resources can be reallocated between machines, users quickly reassigned, and new images deployed quickly, simplifying office moves and reorganizations.
Take advantage of the VDI opportunity for all labor policies
There is some understandable nervousness about hybrid work and VDI. For many organizations, this still seems like a step too far from their long-established and comfortable work practices and technologies. In addition to the recent push by some organizations to return to working in the office, there has also been a parallel shift with other early adopters moving away from public cloud services; the latter is mainly due to its cost and lack of return on investment. Fortunately, there are more and more private cloud services offering better and more affordable offerings, ensuring that the promise of cloud and VDI can still be realized. This will be important in the coming years, which will surely be full of new challenges and opportunities.
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