Ian Jansen van Rensburg, Senior Systems Engineer Manager and Lead Technologist at VMware SSA, explains what he thinks is the most important part of a Digital Transformation strategy.
Digital Transformation centres on creating new possibilities for an organisation. It is about embracing innovation, adopting more inventive business models, delivering engaging customer experiences and finding better ways of working. And while hardware will always remain important in this environment as the delivery mechanism for unlocking digital potential, it is the software that creates unlimited possibilities, providing organisations across industry sectors with the flexibility, freedom and control to support their transformation journeys.
The catalyst that has pushed Digital Transformation into the mainstream – as opposed to being predominantly associated with ICT and financial services organisations – has been the normalisation of remote working in 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic and resultant lockdown conditions in many countries have necessitated a new approach to how companies operate. Fundamental to this is the distributed workforce where employees are no longer constrained by their physical office environment. Instead, organisations have had to adapt their systems and processes to manage those ‘out of sight’ workers to minimise the disruption to the business during the past several months.
A common misperception when it comes to Digital Transformation strategies is that it only involves technology. Yet, the extent at which remote working will likely be part of the ‘new normal’ for some time highlights the importance of keeping a people-centric approach in mind when looking at digital. Combining innovative technologies with a human focus is one of the most critical parts any Digital Transformation strategy must include.
Such has been the scale and rapid growth of the remote working environment, the proliferation of digital technologies and platforms in use have amplified exponentially. As part of their focus on remaining operational, many companies have had to migrate elements (if not all) of their systems to the cloud. The ‘work from anywhere’ mindset means businesses have had to adopt more flexible BYOD arrangements. As a result, every new device connected to an enterprise network represents a possible attack vector for would-be hackers. This means Zero Trust security models will become even more important as we head into 2021 and beyond.
Security is just one element that must be reimagined. The employee experience in fulfilling their roles and responsibilities while outside the traditional office environment must be front and centre. If people are to remain productive, they must have a similar working experience, regardless of where they are accessing the organisational back end from. Companies must therefore ensure their distributed workforce solutions deliver an integrated environment that encompasses security, employee experience, cloud access and data availability.
Soon enough, the term ‘remote working’ will simply give way to a world where working happens away from the office as a fixed and permanent environment.