#34 Embracing Workspace Evolution
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on Mon Jan 04 2021 16:00:00 GMT-0800 (Pacific Standard Time)
with Darren W Pulsipher, Robert Looney,
In this episode, Darren Pulsipher, Chief Solution Architect, Public Sector, and Robert Looney, Americas Data Center Sales Manager for Intel, talk about using a strategic approach to embrace the current workplace evolution. The COVID pandemic created major challenges and transitions in the workplace. Intel is helping customers leverage technologies to best address ongoing challenges in the new normal.
Keywords
#covid #mfa #remoteworker #cybersecurity #people #technology #vdi #vpn
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Digital Workplaces are Evolving
Since we are past the initial chaos of the transitions necessitated by the pandemic, we need to ask what is coming next and, moving forward, how we can leverage what we learned to conscientiously invest in where we want to be.
One major lesson was that the organizations that were already agile fared well. They were able to get their remote workforce going quickly. We don’t know exactly what the new normal will be, but we do know it’s going to retain a lot of the same aspects that were accelerated over the last eight months, such as enabling a remote workforce, but at the same time being more collaborative. Intel wants to reach new customers who need more resources to operate out of their own four walls and become more agile.
Your Workplace Needs New Capabilities Intel Bridges the Gap
Intel engages in creating solutions by helping customers understand the vast Intel ecosystem with different models that can fill the gaps in performance, stability, efficiency, and price. Intel can share the learnings of thousands of customers to help solve problems and provide capabilities that IT organizations sometimes can’t do on their own.
Business Requirements are Paramount
In the past, a CIO might have been focused on only three things: security, resiliency, and efficiency. That is not the case anymore. What used to be tantamount to keeping the lights on, staying out of trouble, and running efficiently, is now far more complex. Companies must be forward-thinking to enhance the worker, the workplace, and the transformations they are undergoing in terms of meeting customer and supplier commitments.
In addition, agility is a requirement since circumstances can rapidly change and businesses must adapt in multiple directions while still meeting these needs.
Finally, more automation via artificial intelligence is an enabler for driving areas such as better collaboration and worker experience enhancement. With a distributed workforce, for example, there is no help desk with a person who can walk over and help with your issue. That might not be the most efficient scenario anyway, so perhaps chat bots or machine learning in a CRM system would be more efficient and allow more shared information. This type of technical automation with common troubleshooting could produce more connections, insights, and productivity in the end.
Your Workplace is Evolving
Business requirements and strategies are changing, especially around workplace evolution. Some organizations will continue with full remote operations, some will want everyone back in an office when it’s safe, and there will be every configuration in between. Regardless of the situation, organizations must embrace a strategy to make sure they can reach workers any place, any time, and on any device, whether from necessity or choice.
Process improvement is also key. You don’t want to continue to add processes on top of those you don’t need anymore. Evaluating areas for improvement, whether it’s internal infrastructure or third party capabilities, will add efficiency and value. Rather than building a huge infrastructure that requires management and is burdened by using only its tool sets, organizations should evaluate the incredible amount of ecosystem opportunities that are plugging into as-a-service tools. Outsourcing services that are not your company’s key strategic assets or strengths might make more sense.
Another area to evaluate is data management. With, for example, all of the data in the collaboration tools, data sprawl becomes an issue. A clear and effective strategy is necessary.
Along with data management comes security. Data is spread all over the place now, so organizations must embrace, evaluate, and deploy good security tools and good workflows around data practices.
Intel Delivers
There are six main capabilities in the evolving workplace where Intel can help: app and data access, manageability, enhanced security, connectivity, collaboration infrastructure, and multi-cloud atmospheres. Although Intel only produces silicon, the capabilities, scalability, and security of it meets the smallest to largest needs of organizations.
Intel seeks to exist across multiple environments and offer manageability of those resources. Although customers will not buy assets such as processors, accelerators, memory and storage, and so on directly from Intel, they will leverage the robust, proven ecosystem of products such as hardware players, OEMs, software providers, system integrators, and cloud service providers that Intel makes possible.
One of Intel’s strengths is its support of this ecosystem. For example, Intel has 15,000 software engineers that develop code, but none of it is sold. Instead, they help develop the ecosystem by providing new solutions built on top of the silicon. Silicon is the mechanism to provide solutions to help people solve real problems. A good metaphor is that the distance between Intel’s loading dock as a manufacturer and the final customer’s loading dock is too far apart for Intel to drive a truck themselves. The ecosystem delivers across that gap.
Solution Areas you Might be Evaluating
How can customers best leverage the capability of the ecosystem? Intel can give recommendations in the six key areas, whether you are struggling with a VDI solution such as deciding whether it should stay on premises or be in a virtual desktop or RDS service, or coming up with a VPN strategy that will assure connectivity.
Part of the solution is in understanding that since Intel works in such a vast ecosystem, they can help meet myriad challenges. Intel is not necessarily going to sell you a processor, for example, but help you get your workload put on the best piece of silicon possible, which could be in of the cloud service providers, or in multiple clouds, in and outside of your own data center. Intel’s goal is to give you efficiency, portability, and agility in these processes.
Embrace Workplace Evolution: When or Where do You Want to Start?
Intel has your organization’s best interest at heart because if you are successful in your business, you’re going to come up with new way to use data and new ways to use infrastructure to provide more value to your customers, and in the end, consume more. Your strategies and growth and development are your own, but Intel is going to give you the foundation to make good choices.
Look for opportunities to engage with your Intel representative. They have a bevy of resources to help you leverage the extensive network of partners that can address your issues and your goals.