Work from Anywhere: Road ahead in 2021

Hello friends

I am back after a long time. Things have been quite bumpy at my end and I believe the same for most of us – courtesy “Covid”. We all are restricted to our homes for our own safety which has its own positives and negatives. Whether we like it or hate it but this is the way going forward.

Work from Home(WFH)

This Corona period has also changed our way of working. We are working from home and it will stay the same in near future. There has been several studies around this subject which suggests so. As per Microsoft report, “45% of its employees are likely to continue to work from home“.

Are we ready for this shift?

Work from home has its own benefits like it saves time and money for travel to office. As per study, “Londoners could save over £40K in commuting costs if WFH continues”. It also provides opportunity to spend more time with family but then lot of surveys across globe finds extended working hours and no overtime pay for majority of employees. The other major issue is that most of companies don’t have infrastructure and tools to support WFH. This has lead to frustration and challenge for employees to continue their working.

Major IT challenges

The major IT challenges experienced due to WFH are as under:

Slow corporate devices are unable to sustain heavy workload
Increased pressure on service desk and longer queue to resolve the issues
Legacy management tools which are unable to support remote devices
Security concerns as devices are connecting from anywhere
Lack of infrastructure to support remote devices

Road ahead…

So as we discussed this situation is here to stay and most companies have already announced that WFH will continue in 2021. To tackle this unprecedented situation, its important to adapt and get future ready. Few key considerations for IT are as under:

Be proactive – Its important to proactively detect the issue and resolve it before it occurs. Telemetry data from machines should be analyzed and corrective actions can be taken based on insight. Tools like Tachyon can be big help here.
Intelligent security – Its important to adopt lightweight but intelligent security solutions. Using legacy tools can eat up most of device resources (CPU, RAM, Network) making it slower. Its important that machines should always be up-to-date against vulnerabilities and updates should be supported over internet. Adding internet support functionalities on management tools as become pivotal as CMG/CDP should be added to SCCM. Intune is another offering from Microsoft to manage remote clients.
Automation – Its important to shed help desk workload and do automation to resolve repeated issues. Automation around servicing tools like ServiceNow can also help in faster resolution and employee delight.
Self Service – Most of the IT issues are repetitive. Users should be provided with easy to use tools to resolve their day to day issues. It will decrease service cost and save time.

IT need to be step ahead

If you are IT professional, it becomes even more important to adapt these changes. You need to train yourself and learn new skills to remain competitive. There are various certification from different vendors on their technologies. Microsoft certification can be checked here.

There is upcoming conference on Work from Anywhere on 17-18th Nov where you can hear from renowned authors, CIO, top executives and even a astronauts about the future. You may register to attend the sessions.