How Do IT Tasks Change When a Company is Quarantined?
Because of the COVID-19 pandemic almost the whole world faced a new reality - the organization of remote work of employees and ensuring minimal risks of virus infection where remote work is impossible. Protection against malware and Trojans is of the same importance as against COVID-19, and McAfee software review 2020 gives insights on how you can secure your digital environment.
By the beginning of the pandemic, various enterprises were at different levels of readiness for remote work. For some, it was a common thing, others practiced a five-day working week with one day of work from home while maintaining all functionality, and others were cut off from the outside world by concrete walls and firewalls. Now the role of IT in companies has come to the fore, and those who have digitized services earlier have found themselves in the most winning situation.
How to Set Up Remote Access
With cloud solutions, everything is simple: they are available both from the office and from home. But most medium-sized and large organizations have already deployed enterprise services to support their operation (for example, mail, CRM and ERP systems, document circulation, etc.). It is impossible to move them to the cloud overnight. So the main task is to provide access to the organization's computer network. The approach to this task may vary, depending on the requirements of the enterprise.
For example, if you have enough possibilities to share and track email messages while using personal devices, you can offer collaboration tools such as Microsoft Teams and Skype for Business, Slack, Matrix, etc.
If you want to interact with a variety of enterprise systems, such as accounting systems, ERP and CRM systems, and others, you can offer remote connection by building VPN tunnels based on both free and commercial software. This approach is useful when an organization provides its employees with laptops or computers. If you do not offer enterprise devices, you can use low-power or personal employee computers by installing the required applications on a terminal server or by providing access to remote desktops using VDI technology.
Among the tasks that business process managers address to the IT service, there is also control over remote employees. Sometimes, managers are worried that the staff will spend time on social networks instead of solving work issues. Thus, you can use technology solutions to monitor the performance of remote employees. This solution stack consists of a user environment based on VDI technologies, information security systems and tracking of user actions, and computing architecture.
Communication and joint work systems became mandatory for staff in the mode of self-isolation. In the office, to discuss any issue, you can approach the employee, arrange a meeting with several colleagues in the meeting room, etc. With employees working from home, this is obviously impossible, and audio and video conferencing, instant messaging, file sharing systems come to help. Fortunately, companies that produce such solutions do not try to get the most out of the situation. For example, Microsoft, for its collaboration product, Teams provides a semi-annual version for free with fairly broad functionality.
Bottom Line
What changes can be expected in the future? The virus has now created a demand for laptops, workstations; servers have reinforced data centers due to increased load, as well as increased demand for communication and collaboration systems. After the end of the pandemic, it is possible to predict the intensive development of automation and digitalization of business processes, the emergence and/or development of tele-absence technologies, where, for example, a person works remotely with the hands of a robot.
