Just a couple of months ago, most IT departments were forced to scramble to enable remote work for most (if not all) of their workforces. While some viewed that as a temporary challenge at the time, it is now universally clear that people working from home is part of the new normal moving forward. 
But the “new normal” is a term that being thrown around a lot right now, so what does that really mean?
This does NOT mean that every employee at every company will be working from home permanently. Even for companies who have announced that employees CAN work from home forever, it does not mean that everyone WILL work remotely on a permanent basis.
But the new normal DOES mean that – in most companies – a significant portion of your people will likely be working from home on a more regular basis. For many people who have jobs that can be done from anywhere, they might indeed just work from home forever. Others will likely take a hybrid approach – working from home on some days, but coming into an office for key meetings or events. Other jobs simply can’t be done from home, and those people will continue to be in the office/physical location outside the home.
So the new normal will mean something different depending on the employee, their role, and the needs of the business.
Regardless of what the composition looks like within your company in terms of permanent vs. non-permanent remote workers, one thing holds true for all businesses when it comes to the new normal:
There can no longer be a differentiation between how IT handles “internal” employees and how IT handles “remote” employees. In fact, those tags need to be eliminated altogether. And you know what, it’s about time. For IT departments that embrace this change, the new normal presents the opportunity to dramatically simplify how you deliver solutions to your workforce.
For example, whereas you previously had to think about what people needed IN the office compared to what people needed OUTSIDE of the office, you can now assume that most employees will be outside of a physical office at least some – if not most – of the time. So it no longer makes sense to have two separate approaches or buckets of solutions that you use for each.
Instead, we need to shift to a model where all employees are provided with digital workspaces that provide them with everything they need to be effective – access to all of their desktop applications, web applications, files, etc. – from anywhere, on any device, all from a single pane of glass.
In the past, virtual desktops were usually what was suggested for these situations – but that requires virtual desktop infrastructure, and that “I” in VDI is where problems begin. The infrastructure required to enable virtual desktops at scale is incredibly costly and complex, and the user experience is notoriously bad. We dig deeper into the issues with VDI here if you want to learn more.
Especially as we move into uncertain economic times, organizations cannot stomach products that add significant (and ongoing) costs, tons of management overhead, and that present a myriad of security issues due to the increased attack plane. Instead, organizations need:
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- Cost Reductions – IT will continue to be asked to invest in solutions that can reduce costs over time, not add cost. VDI is notoriously expensive in terms of both hard dollar costs upfront and the ongoing cost of management.
- Productivity Enhancement – It’s not enough for a digital workspace to just enable employees to access their business-critical resources. If the user experience is bad, or if it requires users to change their behavior, productivity will be impacted. The new normal requires digital workspaces that can provide access to everything people need to be productive in a single place, with a seamless user experience that requires zero learning curve.
- Security Improvement – VDI is a hodge-podge of pre-cloud technologies that have been cobbled together over time, which presents a myriad of attack vectors that need to be secured. And as one analyst we spoke with recently put it, DaaS is essentially just “VDI technology that has been crudely shoved into the cloud.” In the new normal, IT departments need cloud-native solutions that are built with security as their foundation, not VDI/DaaS solutions where security is treated like a feature.
Cameyo’s virtual application delivery platform provides the cost-effectiveness, seamless user experience, simplicity, and deep security that is required to build the foundation of the digital workspace for the new normal. Cameyo enables you to provide all of your people with all of their Windows desktop applications and internal web apps on any device – all without the need for VPNs. This means your people work the same way they’ve always worked, using the ACTUAL applications they’re used to – but those applications run on any device, from the browser, without anything having to be installed on people’s devices.
This means you no longer have to think about the OS the person is using, what version of the software they have (and constant updates), or whether or not they’ll be able to securely access their business-critical resources regardless of what their network quality is like at home (we have customers with 10K+ users who run business-critical software flawlessly – even over 2G/3G networks – with Cameyo, since the apps are delivered via HTML5).
And better yet, Cameyo can be deployed in hours (as opposed to weeks or months for virtual desktop solutions), and at an average cost-savings of 75% when compared to VDI like Citrix. But don’t take our word for it. Emir Saffar, CIO of Ur&Penn, a Swedish retail chain with 126 locations, recently made the switch from Citrix to Cameyo. Here’s what he had to say:
- Simplicity – “Unlike Nutanix Xi Frame and Citrix XenApp, there is no complicated infrastructure to deploy and manage. Not only were we up and running with Cameyo in less than three hours, but we can also deploy new apps almost instantly. We never have to re-image or deal with a Golden Image. Cameyo could not be easier.”
- User Experience – “Cameyo provides a native application experience with no performance lags, through the browser. From a user experience perspective, they use the same desktop version of the applications they’re used to – but those applications simply run in a browser tab instead of needing to be deployed and managed locally. There’s nothing new to learn on the user’s side.”
- Cost – “Right off the bat, Cameyo doesn’t require any complex infrastructure and you don’t need to hire a third-party engineer to set it up – so that’s a huge cost savings rights there. Also, since Cameyo is able to support dozens of users per instance instead of an architecture that requires one server for every user, that provides dramatic savings as well.”
So, don’t fear the new normal – embrace it. You can see for yourself how easy it is to get started with Cameyo, and you’ll be able to publish your first application within minutes – just start your free trial here.