A
EDITOR ’ S
&
HOW WILL TECHNOLOGY ADAPT FURTHER TO ENHANCE REMOTE WORKING ?
INTELLIGENT
37Q
The Riverbed Future of Work Global Survey paints a clear picture of where companies are , and where they intend to go and the technologies needed to get them there . Globally , businesses expect a nearly 50 % increase in employees working remotely post COVID-19 .
The biggest barriers to the success of a remote workforce in the Middle East , as uncovered by this survey , are training or manager support ( 43 %), the need for software or technology to optimise or improve performance ( 40 %) and the need for better visibility into network and application performance ( 37 %).
Given these challenges , it follows logically that in an effort to drive greater remote working performance , UAE and Saudi business leaders have already begun to identify their priority strategies and technologies to enhance remote work for
INTELLIGENT TECH CHANNELS TECH CHANNELS Issue
MENA MIGALLY , REGIONAL VICE PRESIDENT , META AT RIVERBED
their employees and their company . The top initiatives these regional business decision makers plan to undertake through this year and the next include updating company-wide remote workplace strategies and policies ( 48 %), deploying technology to automate remote network operations ( 47 %), re-evaluating and / or re-architecting the IT environment ( 46 %) and gaining better visibility of network and application performance ( 45 %).
Given how rapidly and successfully organisations in the region have been able to adapt to the new normal , it ’ s no surprise that Middle East business leaders expect to gain long-term benefits for their employees and bottom line as a result of increasing their remote workforce , including : better worklife balance ( 56 %), increases in employee retention ( 48 %), savings from office space and related costs ( 48 %) and better use of technology ( 48 %).
The rise of cloud-native
COVID-19 , and the resultant geographical spread of employees , brought about a fair share of challenges for businesses operating on hybrid systems – a model combining on-premises and cloud infrastructure . The sprawling nature of the hybrid infrastructure meant IT teams were left with a complete lack of visibility into their network performance and employee activity . Subsequently , they were hit with a vast increase in performance issues .
By contrast to their hybrid counterparts , cloud-native businesses – which have their
systems exclusively based in the cloud – found the transition to remote working far easier . With no on-premises infrastructure to grapple with , employees could work from home , much as they did from the office , with little-to-no impact on their ability to access the applications and files that they needed . As such , cloud-native businesses are inherently better at responding to uncertainty and change and we can expect businesses , especially in the SME space , to increasingly favour this IT paradigm . Finally , tools that maximise the performance and reliability of apps and remote workers or that drive enhanced network visibility , regardless of location will be absolutely fundamental to highfunctioning organisations in this new paradigm . This is an area Riverbed is very focused on with our customers – with solutions such as Client Accelerator , SaaS Accelerator and unified Network Performance Management . Together , our NPM and application acceleration technologies offer the most complete network visibility and performance solution to enable working from anywhere .
51