From the speed of modern business to the rapid response to COVID-19 enabling millions of people to work remotely, cloud technology has been at the forefront. At no other point in time has there ever been such a need for the instant availability of IT resources enabled by the cloud than during the coronavirus pandemic.
Telecommuting is no longer a choice for many workers. It’s a necessity. In fact, Upwork predicts 73% of all teams will have remote workers by 2028. And Gartner predicts that, by 2030, the demand for remote work will increase by 30%.
Let’s take a look at the latest telecommuting trends and the industry-leading products and services we offer to make the remote work journey as simple and painless as possible.
The Network Challenges That Occur When People Start Working Remotely
Increased Cyber Security Risks
While digital tools offer excellent support for remote workers, shifting work patterns on such a massive scale can have serious unanticipated implications for IT and cybersecurity. You must assess your company's core IT infrastructure for remote working, secure applications and devices for the remote workforce and embed cybersecurity into business continuity plans.
Cyber Criminals Know More People Are Working From Home
Latency & Slow Network
Latency can occur for several different reasons and can mean reduced productivity and poor connection during video calls, and even run-time errors, for employees working from home.
Different causes of latency:
Cause | Remedy |
Slow internet connection |
|
Slow VPN equipment with insufficient redundancy |
|
Network Instability
Misconfiguration
80% of network outages is caused by misconfiguration of network settings and can me mitigated by using automation to deploy changes to network setting. Manual deployment will almost always result in misconfiguration and network instability if not tested in a test environment before deployment.
Old equipment
Obsolete and unsupported equipment will most likely result in network instability, so make sure you are proactive in replacing old hardware when you are planning network upgrades.
Hardware failures
Hardware does fail and when it does it will cause network errors, so make sure you have a regular maintenance plan in place, apply patches to keep hardware up to date. Perhaps more importantly, it is important to build in redundancy, to avoid single points of failure that will bring down the entire network.
Other reasons for network failure
Power failures, human errors, and incompatible changes to software and hardware set up that doesn’t work as intended, are examples of other types of network failures.
Practical Steps For Business Readiness & Resilience
From the speed of modern business to the rapid response to COVID-19 enabling millions of people to work remotely, cloud technology has been at the forefront. At no other point in time has there ever been such a need for the instant availability of IT resources enabled by the cloud than during the coronavirus pandemic.
1. Evaluate Cloud-Based Communications and Collaboration Tools
UCaaS and CCaaS solutions offer innovation, agility and scale. Providing individuals with the right communications and collaboration tools is crucial to enable an efficient remote working environment.
2. Provide Devices That Optimize Productivity
Ensure the software-based communications and collaboration services experience includes adequate audio and video communications and noise canceling headsets.
3. Manage the Cyber Risks of Remote Work
While digital tools offer excellent support for remote workers, shifting work patterns on such a massive scale can have serious unanticipated implications for IT and cybersecurity. Companies need to assess the core IT infrastructure for remote working, secure applications and devices for the remote workforce and embed cybersecurity into business continuity plans.
4. Put a Business Continuity Plan in Place
Stay connected and prepared. As governments make significant interventions in response to the coronavirus, businesses are rapidly adjusting to the changing needs of their employees and customers while navigating the financial and operational challenges. Businesses need a plan that contains contingencies for systems, processes, assets, human resources and business partners - every aspect of the business that might be affected.
Creating A Fast, Secure & Stabile Network Access For Your Remote Workforce
Most businesses today, experience challenges with a booming amount of employees working from home, and a network architecture that has not been able to follow suit with the exploding use of cloud services. It’s time to update the network architecture to support the increased use of cloud services and still ensure a fast, stable, and secure access to on-site services.
SASE + SD-WAN = Hybrid Network
SD-WAN is the new WAN and great for connecting multiple on-site locations but not ideal when you need to include cloud software and cloud storage. A SASE network is created for the purpose of including cloud services in a centralized security stack but not at connecting multiple on-site locations. So if you company, like most companies, are using both cloud services and on-site services in multiple locations, then a hybrid network is most likely what you need, in order to create the fast, secure, and stabile network that supports the entire organization, including remote work stations.
Hybrid Network For Accessing Cloud & On-Site Services
A hybrid infrastructure is an IT infrastructure design and environment that consists of a mix of on-premises data centers, private cloud and public cloud. Operating systems and applications can be deployed on any part of this environment, depending on the business needs and requirements.
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