How 3 major IT trends shape the future of work and why that is a good thing for you(r company)
To predict and influence your company’s future, you should understand three major IT trends which help you (or your competitors) to get ahead. Trends, like a SaaS first strategy help to decrease IT costs and improve IT control. These IT trends are not linked to an industry or geography, making them relevant to you. Incorporate them within your company to get the most value out of your digital workspace.
Three major IT trends:
TREND 1:
A SaaS-first strategy can dramatically increase a company’s growth
The global data flow has multiplied by 45 times compared to 2005, according to the McKinsey Global institute analysis. They discovered a link between a high data flow and the growth of a country as the countries are exposed to new ideas, research, technological solutions, talent and experience from across the world.
Looking at these statistics, it might not be a surprise that Gartner predicts that cloud spendings will almost double from $111 billion to $216 billion by 2020. To keep ahead of competition, more and more companies are implementing a SaaS first or SaaS only strategy. This means that they are replacing traditional software solutions with web-based software. Companies do this for multiple reasons:
- Reduce application and (virtual) desktop costs
- Flexibility while scaling up and down
- Always up-to-date
- Increase collaboration and information sharing
Moving to a SaaS first strategy to decrease IT costs and improve IT control
Many IT managers are looking for a way to replace their datacenter to decrease their infrastructure costs and to outsource the maintenance (updates, patches, authentication, etc.) of the software to the vendor or service provider. They implement a SaaS first strategy to migrate the applications to the cloud.
If an application isn’t available yet as a SaaS application, they either migrate to a different tool or look for another method to host the application in a different way. They first assess the usage of Platform as a Service (PaaS) or Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) for the applications which aren’t available yet as SaaS applications. And as they can’t move away from the applications, they are looking to host them using Azure, Amazon AWS, or when it’s impossible to use a public cloud, they choose a private cloud solution, hosting it, for example, in their country.
Supporting companies in their SaaS first strategy with one modern workspace
We help IT managers and architects to simplify their work by supporting their SaaS first strategy. In Workspace 365 we allow them to integrate both their SaaS as well as their hosted applications in one easy interface. This makes it possible to replace the underlying techniques, whilst employees still see the same digital workspace, and give one portal to log in to each application or document solution.
TREND 2:
Rise of the mobile workforce and devices
Millennials create equality on the workforce and are not lazy. Millennials, people who are born after 1980, crave for a flexible work environment according to research from EY in 2015 (previously known as Ernst and Young). Is it because Millennials are lazy? No. It’s because the rise of equality.
For Millennials the chances are twice as big that they have a partner who also works full time, compared to Baby Boomers (people born between 1945 and 1955). EY expects that 75% of the global workforce will consist of Millennials in 2025.
Working in virtual teams drives the transformation of the workspace
More and more people are working from home, the average number of days on which people log on from their house is increasing, creating a rising need for a safe and easy-to-use digital workspace. According to the New York Times the amount of people who work from home four to five days per week increased from 24% in 2012 to a staggering 31% in 2016. In 2017 the World Economic Forum predicted that these virtual teams will be the main driver for the transformation of the workplace.
The mobile workforce has a huge impact on workspace security and usability
Don’t mistake a mobile workforce for a group of people working from the warmth of their house. Due to the decreasing IT costs and increasing usability more people are able to use digital tools to increase productivity. Global Newswire reports that there is a 15% annual growth in the Bring Your Own Device market size up until 2020.
Having people bring their own devices, next to employees walking around hospitals, schools, restaurants and in public with tablets and mobile phones has a major impact on the digital workspace. The digital workspace should be easy-to-use, as there might not be anyone around to help. It should be safe as you don’t know where people will use the device, and you have less possibilities to secure it against theft.
TREND 3:
Microsoft, Citrix, VMware and others push the digital workspace
A logical conclusion after studying the statistics above, but these companies are pushing the market to a digital workspace. They want companies to move to Software as a Service or Platform as a Service as they are able to offer hosting and cloud solutions.
Microsoft is putting major efforts in their SaaS solution, Office 365. They create a platform with powerful technologies, which can be integrated in other software tools. Citrix is making the same move with their Citrix Workspace. They want to offer people one central starting point for their applications. Furthermore, VMware is increasing their operations to manage your entire app portfolio across hybrid and native public clouds.
As a Microsoft Gold Development partner and Citrix Silver Solution partner we are helping thousands of companies to simplify their digital workspace. Our mission is to simplify work. To do this, we simplify the powerful technologies developed by Microsoft and Citrix within one easy-to-use and safe digital workspace.
How we integrate and simplify Microsoft’s technologies (Office 365, SharePoint, Azure and more)
While we develop Workspace 365, we are always keen on using the best technologies out there. Before we integrate them into our digital workspace they are being tested and evaluated. That is one of the reasons we integrated SharePoint, OneDrive for Business and file servers within one document app.
Additionally, to provide safe access we have a deep integration with Azure. Using their techniques (e.g. Intune, conditional access, MDM), you can offer a digital workspace with Single Sign-On to all your applications and activate Multi-Factor Authentication (prompting you to enter a code sent to your mobile phone to make sure it’s you who signs in to the workspace).
How we integrate and simplify Citrix Workspace technologies
For the workspace we share a similar vision as Citrix. However, they currently only offer access to your applications and documents. And while people need simple access, you should aim to bring the information from the applications to the digital workspace, making access obsolete. That is why we integrate Citrix to bring Single Sign-On to remote desktop applications in one hybrid workspace.
Additionally, we use Live Tiles which integrate any business process. You can set up a modern workspace which features information based on your role, with statistics, news feeds, unread emails, your calendar, recent documents and more. Additionally, we have Live Tiles which allow you to interact with the workspace, e.g. a Task Lists, Support tile (integrating different support ticketing systems), social feeds (integrating Yammer) and any business process using our Business Apps.
Chapter 4:
Ahead of your work using a modern workspace
By closely monitoring the developments at our partners and customers and in the IT-market, we are able to provide thousands of companies with a modern workspace. We keep our focus on simplifying work while integrating new or existing technologies. Doing this we want to help customers and our partners to gain the most value out of their investments in their current and future IT services and modern workspace.
Simplifying work for IT managers – supporting your SaaS first strategy
By combining all your solutions in one platform, Workspace 365, we help IT managers and architects to manage all their applications, information and document solutions in one central workspace. We integrate old (file server and remote desktops) technologies and new (cloud / SaaS) solutions to empower you and help you focus on business processes.
Using our workspace it is easy to roll out applications, information and documents based on people’s role. Furthermore, you are able to use conditional access in an easy way to manage the access on specific networks, devices, operating systems or browsers.
We believe an IT manager shouldn’t worry about managing a data centre or updating their applications. You should get to focus more on supporting the business needs and assessing how you can improve business processes using the digital world. So, Workspace 365 supports your IT strategy if it’s SaaS first, SaaS only or anything else which combines both worlds.
Simplifying work for communication managers – more control on information flows
Most communication managers want more control on their information flow. That is why we have point-and-click solutions which allow you to integrate news feeds, social feeds (Yammer), videos and more into the workspace. Furthermore, we allow you to send notifications in the workspace, the starting point of everyone’s work day.
Simplifying work for ‘the people’ – one sign-in, one workspace
Imagine how wonderful it is, if you only have to login once, on any device and that you are able to quickly see all the information you need. No need to update or install anything. Just click and go. That is our mission. That is why you can already access any application (web or hosted), all your documents and a lot of different information sources from one Workspace.
Within Workspace 365 we focus on usability. Giving all your employees one interface, regardless of the underlying technologies, because technologies should never be their concern.
If you want to stay ahead of your competitors, giving your people a modern workspace, subscribe to our newsletter and we will keep you up to date on our mission to simplify work.
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Mark Grasmayer
Product Evangelist
Do you have any questions about Workspace 365? Send me a mail or message: [email protected]
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