The world has adapted to hybrid work over the course of the last few years. While some businesses continue to operate exclusively in-office, according to the HP Teradici Hybrid Work Report, 60% of businesses surveyed view hybrid work as strategically important.
But organizations have also faced challenges from implementing hybrid work, on both the technological and HR front. The speed at which hybrid implementation had to take place was one of the reasons. However, many organizations are dealing with these challenges because they don’t have the right technology. People aren’t working in offices as they once used to. Deploying the same type of technology as before in a hybrid environment isn't effective.
A new way of working calls for new uses of existing technologies, specifically digital workspaces and digital workspace software solutions.
A digital workspace is a “secured, work-from-anywhere, integrated technology framework that can deliver, manage and control centralized company assets, including applications, data and desktops”. Digital workspaces encompass a wide range of infrastructure, including virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), data centers, edge, workstations, applications hosted on-premises or in the cloud, endpoints, collaboration technologies, management and administrative tools, as well as secure access policies and tools.
According to the Hybrid Work Report, 45% of respondents felt deploying remoting technology would help employees remain productive from anywhere. Since digital workspaces are virtual in nature, they are easy to access either via corporately managed devices or personal devices. With digital workspaces, employees can work from wherever they are, using any type of endpoint or operating system (OS), while collaborating in real-time.
As we learned from the Hybrid Work survey, there were five main types of challenges that businesses faced.
1. Remote technology implementation
The biggest challenge for respondents was around pixelation and latency from using remote desktops, according to 59% of those surveyed. 34% found it difficult to maintain and manage remote desktops, and 32% said implementing remoting technology was too difficult. 25% of users surveyed also reported staff reluctance to use remote technology, with 17% citing lack of internal buy-in from decision makers.
How digital workspaces can solve implementation challenges: Digital workspaces can be accessed from anywhere, using software such as HP Anyware, which is based on the PC-over-IP (PCoIP®) protocol. With PCoIP technology, all the data and applications hosted on a digital workspace can be replicated with near-perfect color accuracy and text clarity onto any endpoint. With user experience all but guaranteed, ITDMs can make smarter choices for the type of digital workspace that best suits their business needs, which improves the chances of internal buy-in and staff support.
2. Computing issues
When asked to choose which computing issues they had faced within hybrid environments, 50% of votes went to creating or revising existing work-from-home policies. 40% pointed to procuring hardware for staff, while 37% found implementing VPNs a challenge. 35% said installing virtual machines, DaaS, or VDI for remote desktops was the primary barrier.
How digital workspaces can solve computing challenges: Installing virtual machines becomes easier with HP Anyware technology and digital workspaces. All the company data is hosted in one space. Users only need to download the HP Anyware software onto their system, login using their credentials, and they’re instantly connected to the digital workspace. No VPNs required, nor any extra hardware. This makes managing work-from-home policies much easier for decision makers.
3. Technology
Remote technology has been a source of consternation for businesses and ITDMs. In keeping with the user experience challenges, 29% found remote desktop performance underwhelming, with 19% more saying collaboration was their primary issue. Ensuring security protocols were met was a challenge for 14%, and remote desktops and workstations themselves were a struggle for 13%. Unsurprisingly, deploying the right devices to the right people was a tech issue for 11% of respondents, followed closely by hardware support (10%). Proactive device management was a hurdle for 4% of respondents.
How digital workspaces can solve technology challenges: We’ve already highlighted how HP Anyware ensures high performance, lossless image and video quality, and low latency while accessing digital workspaces, which resolves issues around performance and workstations. Collaboration issues can also be solved with HP Anyware—users can invite colleagues to join them in a real-time collaborative session where both parties can assume keyboard or mouse control. Since HP Anyware is based on the PCoIP protocol, which is AES-256 encrypted, it can address the security concerns that keep ITDMs up at night.
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4. Company culture and HR
While tech and user issues are an expected fallout of adopting a new working model, company culture has also been impacted by hybrid work. 30% of respondents said team building has been a struggle, followed by 24% who find supporting and training employees a challenge. Management procedures have been an HR challenge for 15%, productivity for 13%. Hiring and onboarding within hybrid models has been tough for 11%. Only 6% have struggled with corporate policies.
Company culture issues are more likely to make businesses second guess adopting hybrid work. Negative impacts on company culture were a concern for 23% of respondents, and decline in collaboration for 20%, which was just ahead of worries about a decrease in productivity (19%), and data security risks (17%).
How digital workspaces can solve company culture challenges: Training, team building and onboarding using digital workspaces can mitigate a number of company culture issues. Digital workspaces offer training environments no matter where employees are located, what devices they’re using, or what type of internet, mobile, or tablet connection they have. When employees don’t need to worry about their connection dropping or lagging, their productivity improves. And as mentioned, PCoIP’s AES-256 secure traffic ensures that company data never leaves the digital workspace, even when accessed outside of the office, which eases management procedures.
5. Operational
There has also been an operational impact from hybrid work. 35% of respondents said maintaining hybrid technology was a major issue, and 20% found the processes involved in hybrid working was a challenge. Hybrid work costs were a struggle for 17%, and remote innovation for 15%. Rounding off the operational list was procurement, a challenge for 11%, with only 1% having issues with shipping.
How digital workspaces can solve operational challenges: There has been a lot of investment in hybrid technology but digital workspaces can consolidate data and access so there are fewer systems, workstations and processes to maintain. And when businesses deploy digital workspaces using public could infrastructure, they can shift hybrid work costs from CAPEX to OPEX, thus overcoming hybrid work costs.
HP Anyware secured access to digital workspaces future proofs businesses against changing infrastructure, networks, and the needs of a hybrid workforce. Easy to deploy, Anyware offers businesses in multiple industries the flexibility to choose virtually any hosts (cloud, data center, edge, workstation) and almost any endpoints (PC, Mac®, laptop, tablet), with extremely high security protocols, and the ability to be productive from anywhere, as well as collaboration features so your employees can work together even when they’re apart.
Learn more about digital workspaces from our whitepaper. Contact an HP Teradici sales representative to find out how HP Anyware can help your company embrace hybrid work.