Brendan McAravey, Country Manager at Citrix South Africa.
With mobile workers now equalling the number of traditional office workers, South Africa can ill-afford to be left behind this trend.
At the recent Citrix Synergy 2018 conference held in Los Angeles, the company’s leadership showed a vision of how the office of the future will shape up. The main message from the event was “the future of work is right now”.
Citrix believes that digital transformation, cloud and new workstyles are forcing businesses to rethink how and where technology is deployed and secured.
David Henshall, president and CEO of Citrix, during the keynote address at the Citrix Synergy 2018, said for the first time in history, the number of mobile workers will equal the number of traditional office workers. Even some traditional office workers now find themselves working remotely on some days of the week. People now work in multiple locations throughout the day, he said.
Adding to this trend, the idea of millennials coming into the workplace is something that has been spoken about for some years now. However, this is no longer just talk but a reality that organisations have to grapple with.
According to the Work Foundation, 69% of millennials who are now moving into management positions believe office attendance is unnecessary on a regular basis and 89% prefer to choose when and where they work over a traditional nine to five position.
In addition, a third would choose social media freedom and device flexibility over a higher salary. So, along with millennials, Generation Z will pressure companies to transform their offices and embrace a more flexible way of working.
“Organisations have to adapt all the time. The workforce is constantly changing; the make-up of our team and our expectations continue to evolve. For years, we have been speaking about the idea of millennials coming into the workplace, but guess what? They are here, and they are making a huge difference across the board. These are people who are considered born-digital; they grew up on the Web; they grew up on mobile; they live on social platforms; and they believe that technology should just work,” Henshall said.
Today, even a traditional office worker typically works in four different locations. For example, one can start working on their smartphone of tablet on their morning commute to work. At the office, they switch on their PC to do one or two things. They head to a meeting, and return to work. In all these locations, organisations must ensure that employees are as productive as they can.
However, this does not come without challenges that organisations must take heed of. This includes the ability to manage and secure all the devices that enable the office of the future.
A recent Citrix commissioned IPSOS study ‘How is technology shifting key SA sectors’ focusing on the South African market shows that workplace mobility is high on the list of priorities for local organisations. According to the study, in regards to workspace mobility, the current 42% of users will increase by 25%. The benefits of workspace mobility in SA include higher productivity (50%).
However, the downside of workplace mobility includes the need for supervision (40%), security concerns (31%) and the need to interact with colleagues (30%). The biggest challenge is harnessing and securing the vast amount of data that organisations and individuals are producing.
Citrix is of the view that organisations need to shift to people-centric computing, enabling companies to deliver a superior work experience that unifies everything an employee needs in one place, while meeting the strictest compliance and security needs of the organisation.
To achieve this, organisations need an integrated workspace to enable people to securely access their web, SaaS, Windows, Linux and mobile apps, desktops and files from anywhere and across any device.
To ensure employee engagement and productivity, companies must deliver a unified workspace experience that adapts to how and where work needs to get done; one that gives IT the confidence to support and manage their choice of network, cloud or device; and provides a holistic security framework that dynamically detects and applies policies everywhere from the data centre to the most remote endpoint.
With an array of cloud services on offer, choice is something organisations must not take for granted. Thus, they need the tools and insights to pursue their individualised cloud strategy with confidence, and the flexibility to easily move workloads between clouds as business needs evolve.
New and ever-increasing threats also demand organisations to have modern approaches to security that enhance productivity, not hamper it, so the other biggest talking point at the event was how organisations can achieve a holistic approach to security that adapts to the way people work, rather than forcing users to work within security restrictions.
By Brendan McAravey, Country General Manager, Citrix South Africa