Digital Workspace

In recent months, organizations across industries have been forced to adopt new approaches throughout their entire operations. Barbers started giving outdoor haircuts and accepting contactless payments. Schools have equipped their students and instructors with laptops, sent them home and invented new methods of teaching and learning on the fly. Sports teams have even played in empty stadiums, with professional basketball players enclosing themselves in a “bubble” for a COVID-free playoff tournament.

The pressures of the coronavirus pandemic have also led to changes in many data centers. This new business environment has forced companies to embrace modernization, especially those that may have previously lagged behind on needed changes.

Here are four ways that I’m seeing savvy IT and business leaders improve their data center infrastructure and operations through digital transformation.

Education and government organizations are accustomed to strict regulations on data privacy and security. Organizations must stay compliant with regard to how and where they store data; who can access it, how and for what purposes; and how they preserve privacy in data analysis. But this year, leaders in all sectors are taking another look at their data — and, in some cases, deploying master data management solutions — to maintain compliance in remote operations.

One reason for the renewed attention to compliance is that many organizations are collecting new types of data. In schools and colleges, for example, videoconferencing platforms may capture video and audio, along with academic and personal information. Many organizations have managed remote work by expanding their use of cloud computing, which triggers encryption and security protocols for data at rest, in transit and in analysis.

Onsite, organizations are gathering data through technology solutions designed to facilitate safe interactions and maintain social distancing, such as thermal imaging for temperature screenings or video recordings and analytics for occupancy control and contact tracing. All this data must be properly managed and stored.

Take a look under the hood of many companies’ collaboration environments today, and you’ll find what I call “organized chaos.” Employees are using collaboration tools to get things done, but they’re frequently toggling between different applications to message colleagues, manage calendars, share documents and initiate video meetings.

Many organizations support different collaboration tools across departments. This might make sense if, say, an engineering team benefits from a different collaboration workflow than what other business units use. However, collaboration environments are often not the result of strategic decisions, but rather an ad hoc approach when deploying technology tools.

In many cases, business units adopt a given collaboration solution simply because it’s one that employees are already familiar with. As a result, companies miss out on the benefits that come from adopting the tools that are best suited to helping them meet their business goals.

At this stage of the pandemic, remote work is nothing new for most of us. But thriving in this environment is still very much a work in progress. As we all acclimate to our home lives and work lives combining, organizations must continue to hone their IT strategies to address new security needs. How can they do this? It’s a question my CDW colleagues and I explored in a virtual roundtable we held called “Securing the New Remote Workforce.”

Let’s dive into a few key security takeaways this panel touched on.

When college students and their parents sign their tuition checks, they’re not just paying for the education they receive in the classroom or the degrees they earn at the end of four years of instruction. They’re paying, in large part, for the college experience.

But many higher learning institutions are currently operating with a remote learning model. Students at these schools can’t mingle on the quad, hang out in their dorm rooms or even study together in the library. To deliver the value these students are paying for, colleges and universities must find ways to create an online experience that comes as close as possible to replicating the energy and engagement of the on-campus environment.

Increasingly, colleges and universities are turning to student devices to help deliver that experience. Here are some lessons from institutions that are taking a successful approach.

Given the unprecedented business context of this year, things are even more challenging. Many organizations are still operating largely with a remote work model, and employees often join firms without ever even coming into the office to meet with their managers and colleagues — let alone HR personnel. Under these conditions, it is impossible to conduct traditional orientation programs, or even to simply sit down with new employees to lead them through the various payroll forms and other documents they need to complete.

Many companies are finding value in HR Service Delivery from ServiceNow. While the Now platform is primarily known for its IT service management capabilities, it can also deliver consumer-like HR experiences to employees, helping companies to get their workers up and running as quickly as possible.