SPECIAL
“The pandemic has forced businesses to get past any resistance (based on perceived
disruption) they might have had to moving their communications to the cloud.”
The show
must go on
Welcome to the Remote Working Special. The
Channel has been busy working away to ensure
customers are able to continue their operations
over the last few months. Those vendors that
sell Remote Working Technology have been
experiencing a surge in demand which has
never been seen. Although the global COVID-19
pandemic has sparked the recent uplift the big
question is how much of what we learn and
implement now will stick once this is over? Has
the pandemic just accelerated the inevitable?
In this special we hear from some of those
vendors helping businesses get through this
challenging time. We have asked them where
businesses are fi nding pain points and some of
the dangers which must be overcome to ensure a
successful transition to Remote Working.
Alison Hastings, Regional Channel Leader, Avaya UK&I
Remote working
is here
There has never been a more important time for
communication and collaboration solutions that enable
people to work remotely. Ali Hastings, Regional Channel
Leader, Avaya UK&I, explains why evaluating your longterm
needs will crucial for businesses going remote
Although it might appear
that the increase in
remote and collaborative
working has been caused
by the COVID-19 pandemic,
this shift in the ways that
employees communicate has
been coming for a long time,
driven by a new generation
of workers with evolving
preferences and expectations.
ey want convenience,
exibility, autonomy in making
decisions, and personalisation.
According to Strategy
Analytics, the global mobile
workforce is set to increase
to 1.87 billion people in
2022, accounting for 42.5
percent of the world’s working
population. Gartner has
predicted that by 2023, only
one-third of workers will
choose the o ce as their
preferred working location.
Challenges – cloud and
security
Prior to COVID-19, as
companies invested in
collaboration technology, many
were faced with the challenge
of mounting complexity and
fragmentation – although
they had phones, conference
numbers, messaging, SMS, fax,
video software and more, these
weren’t working seamlessly
together or across every device
and from any location. e
pandemic has forced businesses
to get past any resistance
(based on perceived disruption)
they might have had to moving
their communications to the
cloud.
While it’s great to see
many businesses making the
move to cloud UC in these
challenging times, budgetary
and time pressures shouldn’t
be allowed to in uence good
long-term decision making.
Security problems caused by
introducing consumer products
to the business network are not
new – it’s a lesson we learned
with the rise of shadow IT,
which has left many IT admins
still struggling to ensure
employees use o cial le
sharing applications instead of
unregulated alternatives such
as personal email, USB drives
or cloud-storage applications.
Businesses must carefully
evaluate every cloud UC option
– just as they would any other
technology during less stressful
times – and select the solution
that best ts their established
IT strategy while meeting both
near and long-term business
objectives.
40 | Comms Business Magazine | May 2020 www.commsbusiness.co.uk
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