How prepared was your organization for the pandemic of 2020? If your answer is “not very,” you are not alone. Few could have predicted the circumstances that sped up the work from home (WFH) movement and catapulted remote access to the forefront for many organizations. Prior, there was a steady trend by some to support geographically diverse workforces with an emphasis on remote access. For most companies, however, a 100% virtual workforce was never the intention, nor were infrastructures and architectures designed to support it. Then came 2020 where, like it or not, remote access became the norm and organizations had to support entirely remote workforces as a requirement to continue to do business.
Mandatory work from home orders forced employees, students, teachers and government officials to update their technology proficiencies in real time, presenting a stressful, hyperfast learning curve; and implementing an additional layer of secure remote access should not increase their mental burden. Organizations need employees to be productive and stay connected without friction. Workers need flexibility to work on their own devices (tablets, phones, or laptops), and access all their applications, both SaaS apps in the cloud and on-premises.