There has been an unprecedented increase in remote working over the past few weeks due to COVID-19 (the coronavirus). Many of the largest companies in the world including Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, HP, Intel, Microsoft, Twitter and more are now either “recommending” that people work from home or – in some cases – mandating it. In fact, the Center for Disease Control (CDC) has officially advised that companies adopt remote work policies to help reduce the spread of the coronavirus, and MarketWatch reports that 46% of all organizations have now either partially or fully adopted remote work.
Interestingly, many articles have now been written about how these unfortunate circumstances may actually be the catalyst that finally pushes remote work into the mainstream. Many believe that this will finally show people how effective and efficient people can be when they work from home, giving way to much stronger support of remote work in general, even after this epidemic. 
And that might very well be the case. Research has been mounting over the years showing that working from home can dramatically increase productivity. But there have still been plenty of organizations who are skeptical and unwilling to test out remote work policies. Until now, where companies are presented with an imperative to protect their people. So this truly could be a watershed moment for remote work.
Unless…
…if, in the rush to protect their people, companies don’t first ensure that those people have the right tools to ensure they can still be productive when working from home. 68% of companies still report that desktops are their primary computing device for employees, compared with only 29 percent which favor laptops. That means that many of the employees who are being told to work from home would have to do so on their own personal devices – most of which will not have some of the critical software and applications that those people rely on to do their jobs everyday.
In our experience with the hundreds of companies we work with here at Cameyo – every organization has at least a handful of (usually at least 3-5) critical applications that are legacy Windows desktop applications – software that hasn’t yet been web-enabled. So if thousands of employees are told to work from home on their personal devices that don’t have those desktop apps installed – their productivity will be severely impacted.
In cases like these, it’s not “remote work’s” fault that those employees aren’t able to be productive – it’s the lack of access to the critical tools and applications the employee needs. So how can these organizations balance the competing forces of A) protecting their people by enabling remote work policies, and B) ensuring that their businesses can continue to operate effectively as people work from home?
First, identify all of the critical applications that your employees actually use. Utilize an app usage monitoring platform like Softwatch to get a detailed analysis of all of the applications in your environment, which ones don’t have web-enabled/SaaS versions, and see exactly how many of your employees rely on those legacy desktop apps daily. This will help provide you with a clear, detailed roadmap of which applications you need to focus on providing remote access to.
And don’t worry, we know what comes to mind when you hear the phrase “remote access.” You probably think:
- This is going to require remote desktop infrastructure (VDI), which means a huge upfront cost and ongoing licensing fees – not to mention a management headache.
- Or, if not VDI, this is going to require Desktop as a Service (DaaS), which is equally expensive, difficult to manage, and is – as an analyst said to us recently – “just VDI that has been crudely shoved into the cloud.”
- And regardless of whether you use VDI or DaaS, you’re probably thinking about the terrible user experience both of those methods provide when enabling remote access to applications. The long loading times and the lag in application performance that makes the experience maddening.
Thankfully, there’s another way. With a cloud-native virtual application delivery platform (like Cameyo), you can cost-effectively deliver any Windows application to any device (Mac, Chromebooks, tablets, employees’ personal Windows devices – anything), all from the browser. And unlike VDI and DaaS, you can get started and publish all of your applications to your people – including the ability to only provide access to the applications specific people need to do their jobs – within minutes, not months. Cameyo eliminates all of the infrastructure costs and management concerns of VDI, and reduces the cost of delivering access to applications on any device by as much as 80% compared to VDI.
And when it comes to the actual user experience that your remote workers will have – they will have access to the complete desktop version of their Windows software, all from a browser tab. Cameyo delivers similar application loading times, seamless integration with the user’s device (so they can do all the things they’d be able to do if the application was installed locally on their device), and desktop-like performance so that they won’t notice the difference.
You might be wondering if this ability to protect your people while also keeping them productive comes at the price of security. So you’ll be happy to know that Cameyo actually adds layers of security to help protect your people and your business. Because Cameyo separates the application from the OS, you can safely enable your remote workers to use their business-critical applications on any device without worrying about malware or other issues on their personal devices impacting your network. Cameyo also has built-in RDP monitoring and our “RDP Port Shield” technology to dynamically secure the RDP ports that other remote desktop products leave wide open and vulnerable to attacks.
The coronavirus outbreak is awful, and we have been encouraged by the worldwide response from businesses who are showing that they are dedicated to protecting their people at all costs. But productivity does not have to be one of those costs. Let us show you how easy it is to get started with Cameyo and to start delivering remote access to applications within minutes – you can get started for free, no credit card required, with a free trial here. Protect your people AND their productivity with virtual application delivery.