Hybrid working has become embedded in modern work culture. Once limited to a handful of specialist roles that could be performed remotely, it has now become the default for countless businesses, and has cemented itself as the future mode of working for many organisations.
In fact, 94% of workers reported preferring hybrid working, and it’s recognised by the government as a form of flexible working that employees have a right to request. But while it offers undeniable benefits, it can pose challenges for IT teams. To keep hybrid workers productive, they need technology that supports them. We’ve identified three key areas where businesses with a hybrid working model should focus their IT strategy: devices, security, and collaboration.
Devices are often the cornerstone of IT strategy – the intersection between users and the applications and services they rely on. Hybrid work puts device choice into sharp focus. To work from anywhere, users need flexible devices that can run the key applications they need without issue, whether they’re regularly switching between home and office, or just hotdesking in a corporate workspace. Traditionally, this flexibility has been the domain of laptops, but as mobile devices become more powerful, they’ve become an important part of end-user computing mix as well. Consider whether provisioning a corporate smartphone or tablet may be the better choice for users who are regularly working on the go, or moving between different sites throughout the business day.
For users who work with more compute-intensive applications, giving them the necessary processing power in a flexible device profile may be cost-prohibitive for your business. However, there are other approaches available. By employing a virtual desktop solution like Azure Virtual Desktop, users can offload their compute requirements to a dedicated infrastructure, either on-premises or in the cloud, allowing them to use less powerful devices but still harness the performance they need.
Adopting virtual desktops across the business also allows for a more radical rethink of device strategy. Since users can access their desktop from a wide range of devices, businesses can incorporate bring-your-own-device (BYOD), where users have the option to log onto a virtual desktop from their personal device, rather than having a corporate device.
By definition, hybrid working creates a more dispersed IT environment, as users access business-critical applications and confidential data from any location they’re working from.
But this can potentially open up new avenues for cybercriminals to exploit. As such, it’s vital that your cyber strategy keeps hybrid working secure. Mobile Device Management (MDM) solutions have a crucial role to play in this regard. While these solutions originated to manage mobile devices, most, such as Microsoft Intune, are capable of administering all corporate and personally owned client devices.
By utilising MDM, businesses can monitor and take actions to secure devices remotely, limiting the potential risk of user devices being compromised or stolen to gain access to a wider corporate environment. Other tools like Windows Autopilot work with MDM to enable secure zero-touch device deployment for hybrid workers who aren’t able to come into the office to receive devices in person.
The potential risk of a widely distributed IT environment can be reduced even further with secure access service edge (SASE) network solutions. These allow your users to securely connect to your business infrastructure and applications, helping to keep bad actors out of your environment.
It’s also important to limit the risk of bad actors with legitimate user credentials – whether they’re insider threats, or external attackers who have compromised an account. Access control solutions like Microsoft Entra ID help protect sensitive data by controlling access to files, and make it easy to identify and lock down compromised accounts to keep your business safe.
Taken together, SASE and access control solutions help to establish a zero-trust network architecture (ZTNA), which serves to supercharge your cyber security. ZTNA is based on the principle of “never trust, always verify”. Rather than giving users full access to the IT environment after an initial login, ZTNA requires users to re-prove their identity when moving through the environment, providing a system of checkpoints that can be used to lock down cybercriminals, even if they’re able to compromise your defences.
It’s no secret that hybrid working requires collaboration software to just work. Most businesses have already settled on their go-to collaboration tools – whether that’s Microsoft Teams, Cisco Webex, Zoom, or something else entirely. Recent developments, like the ability to organise and join Webex meetings through Microsoft Teams, are breaking down the barriers between these options, but it’s important to ensure you’ve picked what’s best for your business.
For collaboration, the next frontier is AI integration. While AI-powered transcription is nothing new, the presence of more comprehensive AI assistants can offer a huge productivity boost, especially for users with regular meetings with internal stakeholders and external contacts.
In Microsoft Teams, businesses can either use Microsoft 365 Copilot or the range of AI features included in Teams Premium to gain access to features which summarise meetings, track action items, and flag content that’s of note to a particular user. Collectively, these features are enabling greater productivity and helping users find new ways of working together.
In terms of hardware, smart meeting rooms have proven themselves to be a great way of bringing people together physically and virtually, using cutting edge technology like intelligent camera tracking to help meetings retain the feel of everyone being in the same room, even if they’re spread across the globe.
Advances in augmented reality are also enhancing the smart meeting room experience, with the potential to take that feeling even further than ever before. Innovation is also occurring on the smaller scale, with new meeting room technology that better accounts for environmental factors like ambient noise to deliver a more real-life experience.
Whether you’re already in flight with hybrid working, or are laying plans to adopt it, every part of your IT strategy should be tailored to work with it– but you don’t need to go it alone. Our IT and Cyber offerings are designed to work perfectly together – whether individually, or part of a broader connected cloud solution.
If you’d like to learn more about any of the solutions we’ve discussed here, or get started preparing your business for hybrid working, get in touch with our Business IT team today.