2020 was the year enterprises and businesses around the world faced a great challenge – enabling remote work overnight. By now, thanks to solutions like VPN, VDI, DaaS and advanced Linux based endpoint OS and management solutions like Stratodesk NoTouch, the work from home hurdle has largely been crossed. 2021, however, faces a new, and potentially even more difficult challenge – making hybrid work effective and productive.
What is Hybrid Work?
While many companies will remain fully remote after the pandemic, even more are opting for something called “hybrid work”.
Essentially, hybrid work is when employees work part time in office, and part time remotely.
The Future of Work is Hybrid
Studies show that above all, hybrid work is the most popular option going forward post pandemic. Here’s why:
Employees Want Hybrid Work
In order to stay competitive and continue to attract the best talent, leading companies know that they will need to enable hybrid work. In fact, nearly half of all employees report that they would look for a different role if hybrid work were not an option.
The reason for why hybrid work is so popular with employees has to do with the many advantages of flexible work. For starters, flexible work enables employees to get their best work done when and where it suits them.
Additionally, hybrid work enables better work life balance, a recent study found.
Hybrid workers also are able to save money by choosing where they live, and are grateful to reduce their exposure to possible illnesses.
Hybrid Work – Advantages vs Remote Work
The data is conclusive enough to show the many advantages of flexible work. Indeed, most business moving forward will include some level of flexibility in their day to day business operations, with a staggering 9 out of 10 executives already envisioning a hybrid model going forward.
Many of the benefits of remote work and hybrid work are the same. Increased flexibility, greater job satisfaction and improved work life balance are benefits of both work models. However being able to work together in an office at least part time offers benefits that remote working cannot.
For example, connecting in person in office at least part of the time is likely to reduce the isolation, stress and possible anxiety that remote workers commonly feel.
Hybrid work also enables enhanced collaboration which can lead to more innovative ideas. When workers need to collaborate, they can meet in person, and then work alone for more focused activities.
Challenges Facing Hybrid Work
Although hybrid work may offer the benefits of both remote work and in office work, and in theory the cons from neither, to business leaders, it posses the challenges of enabling both.
Provisioning both in office and remote devices is a challenge. Adding complexity to managing remote devices is the fact that contemporary workers expect to do work critical tasks on both work devices and personal devices interchangeably.
Security is another major concern facing businesses in a remote work world. In fact, since remote work rose to prominence over a year ago, cyber attacks have increased. The attack on the Colonial Pipeline Co. is a perfect example of this. In that case, a single VPN account that did not use MFA was used to hold a vital oil pipeline in ransom – not only causing widespread panic over gas shortages but costing the company millions of dollars.
Clearly, businesses and organizations need to make securing devices, wherever they are, a priority in hybrid deployments.
VDI, Cloud Desktops and Making Hybrid Work Feasible
Many looking to make hybrid work a reality in their environment are turning to VDI and Cloud Desktops to solve the apparent challenges facing a more flexible future of work. VDI offers a compelling case. After all, VDI can remove some of the software licensing issues for endpoint devices. What’s more, it enables IT to centrally manage and configure virtual desktops, cutting down help desk requests. Lastly, VDI can add an important security layer to any deployment.
However, even with VDI, endpoints running individual Windows instances are still vulnerable to a vast number of common security exploits. This means that even for enterprises that have made the move to VDI/Cloud, they will still need an alternative to Windows to make their hybrid working dream feasible.
Stratodesk NoTouch Enables Hybrid Work
In 2020, enterprises turned to Stratodesk NoTouch to enable secure, effective remote work for their entire, dispersed workforces. In 2021, enterprises are turning to Stratodesk NoTouch to make the hybrid work future a reality here and now.
For example, one company leveraged Stratodesk NoTouch to enable their hybrid cloud deployment and manage tens of thousands of users both remotely and in office from one central administration console.
Many more take advantage of Stratodesk NoTouch’s ability to run on multiple devices in order to enable their hybrid workplace. For example, Stratodesk NoTouch can run on 32 bit devices, ARM based endpoints like the Raspberry Pi, and the latest, high performance gaming computers.
Read on: Nutanix and Stratodesk Enabling Hybrid Work
Stratodesk NoTouch GO Enabling Hybrid Work
Another way that Stratodesk NoTouch is making hybrid work a reality is through NoTouch GO. NoTouch GO is a lightweight device that can be used on personal devices to allow them to access virtual desktops on personal devices without impacting the native OS. That’s right. NoTouch GO enables virtual desktops to be accessed side by side with whatever operating system your workers run on their personal computers.
Stratodesk NoTouch, VDI and VPNs
Another way that enterprises are able to take advantage of Stratodesk NoTouch is through the combination of VDI and VPN. VDI and VPN are not mutually exclusive. Through integration with Stratodesk, they can be effectively leveraged together. Not only does Stratodesk include clients from major VDI/DaaS providers directly out of the box, we also support the top VPNs.
Stratodesk Enables Collaboration Tools
Ask any team what the pandemic caused them to do and they will tell you – it forced them to rethink how they communicate. And, of course, technology plays a massive role in this. This is why Stratodesk was so forward thinking. By working closely with industry leaders, we were able to deliver Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Cisco WebEx among other collaboration tools directly within our OS when the time came for multiple dispersed teams to use them.
Although the vast majority of business leaders today want to enable a more flexible, hybrid workforce, to do so will require seamless integration of complimentary technologies. By leveraging VDI, Cloud and Stratodesk NoTouch, enterprises can make their hybrid work dream a reality.
