Rethinking post-pandemic hardware strategies

As Covid restric­tions ease in the UK, busi­ness­es and staff are turn­ing their thoughts to how the world of work will look going for­ward. 

As we know, many office work­ers have been ful­ly remote since the pan­dem­ic hit and are not keen to go back to pre-Covid ways of work­ing. Employ­ees increas­ing­ly want flex­i­bil­i­ty with regard to when they are required to be in the office, with more than 60% of UK work­ers sur­veyed by O2 Busi­ness ear­li­er this year believ­ing remote work­ing should be the default. 

But are busi­ness­es real­ly ready for this remote work­ing future? The same sur­vey shows 65% of work­ers are con­fi­dent their employ­ers are pre­pared for the future of work, but this sug­gests there are still around a third of busi­ness­es that may strug­gle.

Com­pa­nies rang­ing from NatWest to Gif­f­Gaff and EY are plan­ning for more flex­i­ble work­ing poli­cies going for­ward, with some even man­dat­ing some remote work­ing as they cut back on office space. But this move towards flex­i­bil­i­ty requires more than just pack­ing staff off with a lap­top and wire­less mouse, as hap­pened at the start of the pan­dem­ic. 

While soft­ware and con­nec­tiv­i­ty are impor­tant, busi­ness­es will also have to rethink their tech­nol­o­gy strate­gies, requir­ing hard­ware ven­dors, ser­vice providers and users to be aligned. Here are some post-pan­dem­ic tech­nol­o­gy con­sid­er­a­tions.

1. Wireless connectivity that can cope with telecommunication

A major pain point for work­ers in the office pri­or to the pan­dem­ic was slow inter­net con­nec­tion. The need for fast and reli­able WiFi, espe­cial­ly for smooth com­mu­ni­ca­tion with remote employ­ees, will force busi­ness­es to boost their wire­less con­nec­tiv­i­ty, accord­ing to Brett Green, gen­er­al man­ag­er at cyber­se­cu­ri­ty com­pa­ny Exclu­sive Net­works. 

“Office wire­less net­works are usu­al­ly designed to cater for dense­ly pop­u­lat­ed areas, cen­tred around banks of tight­ly packed desks or meet­ing rooms. [Net­works] are tuned to pro­vide enough per­for­mance for good inter­net and email expe­ri­ences,” explains Green. 

“Now, we’re less focused on the den­si­ty, due to the reduced foot­fall and more inter­est­ed in pro­vid­ing flex­i­ble work­ing spaces around more open lay­out envi­ron­ments that can deliv­er high-per­form­ing con­nec­tiv­i­ty that sup­ports video col­lab­o­ra­tion.”

2. Remote patching regardless of location

Work­ers oper­at­ing from mul­ti­ple loca­tions means IT depart­ments don’t have the vis­i­bil­i­ty over devices – who’s using them and how – that they did pre-pan­dem­ic. Com­pa­nies have also become more sus­cep­ti­ble to attacks from cyber­crim­i­nals, with the num­ber of cyber secu­ri­ty threats faced by busi­ness­es up 20% in 2020, com­pared with 2019, accord­ing to data from spe­cial­ist inter­net ser­vice provider Beam­ing, in part caused by the shift to remote work­ing.

“Cor­po­rate resources are no longer restrict­ed with­in a phys­i­cal perime­ter that IT depart­ments can mon­i­tor and secure,” says Nigel Sed­don, vice-pres­i­dent of EMEA West at IT asset and ser­vice man­age­ment solu­tions firm Ivan­ti. “As more employ­ees use per­son­al devices and net­works to access busi­ness appli­ca­tions, the line between busi­ness and per­son­al data becomes blurred.”

Busi­ness­es can edu­cate employ­ees on how to secure their devices to mit­i­gate cyber­at­tacks when access­ing the office net­work remote­ly, but this won’t elim­i­nate cyber­se­cu­ri­ty risk alto­geth­er. They will also need to invest in the right tools to offer remote sup­port, such as remote patch­ing, which allows patch­es and updates to be installed on any appli­ca­tion, soft­ware or device oper­at­ing on a net­work.

3. Real-time monitoring of devices to improve worker experience 

For remote hard­ware main­te­nance, Green is expect­ing to see a shift in invest­ment towards real-time mon­i­tor­ing of user com­put­ing. This will enable busi­ness­es to access infor­ma­tion, such as bat­tery health, proces­sor effi­cien­cy and how the mem­o­ry is being used, on a worker’s lap­top. The data can be col­lat­ed and analysed to pro­vide a user expe­ri­ence score for each remote employ­ee. 

“Instead of rely­ing on remote work­ers to report their prob­lems, the IT ser­vice desk becomes a more proac­tive func­tion, iden­ti­fy­ing those with poor user expe­ri­ence scores and using remote tools to iden­ti­fy the prob­lems,” explains Green.

The IT depart­ment can inform the user of the prob­lem and pro­vide them with a solu­tion. But in the sit­u­a­tion when there’s no quick fix, busi­ness­es could alert field ser­vice tech­ni­cians in the area to car­ry out main­te­nance, rather than send some­one out from the office, reduc­ing IT down­time. 

A big advan­tage of using a com­bi­na­tion of real-time mon­i­tor­ing and remote patch­ing is that work­ers won’t have to send away their devices and wait for them to be repaired and returned to them. Instead, they will be able to work from the office or at home seam­less­ly and, hope­ful­ly, with­out much of a drop in pro­duc­tiv­i­ty. 

4. Leasing devices to reduce e‑waste 

The pan­dem­ic has nudged many busi­ness­es to accel­er­ate their dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion ambi­tions and to embrace the Inter­net of Things. A down­side of wider adop­tion of wire­less and con­nect­ed tech­nolo­gies, though, is that there are more devices both in and out­side the office. This means more tox­ic elec­tron­ic waste. 

One solu­tion to the prob­lem is dema­te­ri­al­i­sa­tion, argues Andy Tomkins, sus­tain­abil­i­ty engage­ment man­ag­er at Canon EMEA. In an ide­al sce­nario, a busi­ness would lease elec­tron­ic equip­ment and devices then, at the end of the lease, the hard­ware provider would recall the prod­ucts to be repaired, recy­cled or reman­u­fac­tured. 

“When a lease comes to an end, the man­u­fac­tur­er takes back the used device and refur­bish­es it as new for the next cus­tomer. By redesign­ing prod­ucts in this way, [hard­ware] man­u­fac­tur­ers can re-use parts from old devices to build new machines,” says Tomkins. 

Leas­ing tech­nol­o­gy is not suit­able for every com­pa­ny, with its use depend­ing on a par­tic­u­lar business’s tech­ni­cal require­ments. But bump­ing sus­tain­able prac­tices, includ­ing elec­tron­ic waste poli­cies, to the top of the busi­ness agen­da makes com­mer­cial sense and helps reduce car­bon foot­prints. 

In order for this to work, how­ev­er, hard­ware man­u­fac­tur­ers will have to be on board, stress­es Tomkins: “All the prod­ucts avail­able under this mod­el will need to be designed with max­i­mum recov­ery of raw mate­ri­als in mind.”