Insights

Workspace-as-a-Service delivers ultimate control over boundaryless workspaces

Sreejesh Varier, Product Manager for UST CloudDesk

Workers are no longer confined to isolated cubicles and siloed environments. Today, seamless interaction is key when it comes to ensuring "extreme" productivity.

Boundaryless workspaces are quickly becoming a requirement for collaboration. Increasingly sophisticated interaction models enhance productivity and user experience. But that has the potential to create security and compliance headaches.

The pandemic accelerated the trend for remote work, placing stringent demands on IT and operations leaders to balance costs with productivity. Many are investing to make workspaces more resilient, hyper-agile and cost-efficient.

Embracing Workspace as a Service (WaaS)

More businesses are adopting workspaces as a service -- a fundamental change for managing virtual environments and delivering cohesive, digitally native user experiences. Outsourcing WaaS allows enterprises to phase out outdated remote management technologies and quickly enable global workforces with the tools and permissions necessary to do their jobs in the new normal.

Statistics confirm that remote work is gaining favor among businesses, with the WaaS market growing from USD 4.76 billion in 2014 to USD 9.41 in 2019. Workplace-as-a-Service requires more than just software and hardware changes; it’s a shift in the entire thought process where businesses leverage the expertise of a service provider to instil greater productivity in their everyday workflow.

Workforce-as-a-Service solutions enforce device-independent access to corporate data. This enables both on-prem and cloud infrastructures to conform to the specific organizational, security, and compliance policies. It also provides employees the freedom to work in a flexible manner whether using their own device or a corporate issued asset.

Unified Endpoint Management for Workforce Mobility

Unified Endpoint Management establishes a single, unified and cohesive interface from where all user endpoints can be conveniently managed. Using smart dashboard tools enable IT organizations to push critical patches and information to specific groups and users as needed. Endpoint management is critical for managing BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) with tools that seamlessly secure devices and enforce governance policies.

Workspaces-as-a-Service can incorporate Unified communication, messaging, mobile device management and telephony in addition to enterprise mobility deployment to provide a robust service layer that crosses into emerging technologies like IoT, VR and AR. Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) as a Service provides network access to workspaces enabling greater portability. Not every organization will need every possible service offering but scalability is a key value driver and an enabler for achieving better digital agility.

Managing Incident Response through Service Desk

With more endpoints profiles and permissions to manage, it becomes more important for IT organizations to efficiently prioritize and respond to incoming service requests. By standardizing security enforcement and compliance with policies and actionable remediations, service desks can help prioritize what’s critical while reducing incidents by as much as 30%.

As engagement moves from voice to other channels, outsourcing the service desk makes it easier to adopt social, voice, chatbots, and virtual assistants. Engaging partners to manage omnichannel service desk requests can support SLAs, getting the most pressing issues prioritized appropriately. Virtual assistants are becoming an industry-standard tool for optimizing triage and enforcing best practices. Combining remote support with self-healing deployments can help teams debug and get back on track faster.

As more businesses shift to the cloud, remote support may well be the only feasible way to meet the needs of the enterprise. Funnelling IT services through a single point of contact like a service desk provides the visibility to respond in a timely way to volumes of support incidents. Whether based in the cloud or on-prem, contact centers can be strategically aligned to ensure all customer contacts and incidents are handled across multiple channels and geographies.

Towards Immersive Collaboration and Endpoint Security

Immersive collaboration introduces new, more efficient approaches to engage teams across diverse geographies. IoT, AR, and VR are enabling these connected, impactful virtual experiences, but good user experiences become essential to maximize productivity and minimize costs. Constantly measuring and optimizing these experiences is key to continued long-term success. Orchestrating seamlessly across touchpoints, modern workspaces will be able to intelligently anticipate and resolve user needs.

IAM (Identity and Access Management) secure immersive collaboration tools’ access to systems and data resources. Endpoint security protects all potential system pathways continuously across the network. End-user computing solutions manage not only physical devices but also field services like hands and feet support, hardware maintenance and monitors for security threats, keeping vulnerabilities in check with timely patches and upgrades. Centralizing control eases management constraints and accommodates for differences in regional services.

Prioritization Areas: Getting Started

As the pandemic forces businesses globally to adopt remote working at an unprecedented scale, it’s essential to develop and implement a resilient workplace management strategy. Here are four key areas to consider:

● Invest in a Unified Endpoint Management Tool: Does your business have a single source of truth to monitor all endpoints? Is it seamless to deploy and orchestrate across multiple touchpoints and channels?

● Evaluate Mobility Requirements: What workforce mobility challenges will surface? How will you handle security?

● Formulate a Connected Workspace Strategy: How will you provision for IoT-connected workspaces or using AR/VR to create collaborative experiences for your workforce?

● Secure All Endpoints: Ensure you have an omnichannel endpoint security management solution that can secure the entire perimeter and pathways from endpoints to centralized servers.