In the wake of pandemic-related workplace measures easing, we have all seen the seismic shift towards hybrid working or “working-from-anywhere”. It’s reframed both employees’ expectations and employers’ hiring policies. Let’s start with some data.
According to a recent survey conducted by PWC, 74% of Australian “knowledge-based workers”, favour the hybrid working model, with the preference to work from the office 3 days per week. At the same time, the Purpose Bureau has reported that businesses offering jobs with a ‘WFH’ option in Australia, increased exponentially (95 per cent) from March 1 to December 21, 2021.
Behind the smoke and mirrors
While the idea of an “elastic workforce” is taking root, the limitations of corporate IT and legacy enterprise networking infrastructure are surfacing. The reality is that when the pandemic forced most of the workforce around the world to adopt a remote working model, IT security professionals reported significant increase in job stress and burn out as workers moved to virtual activity.
A growing number of IoT connected devices, coupled with the continued need to provide secure connectivity to services hosted in the cloud and data centres for these remote workers and IoT devices, network infrastructure and operations teams have never been more stretched. And when it comes to IT and security, there is no room for human error.
Furthermore, as business operations across the region continue to resume to its pre-pandemic rhythms, IT teams will be stress-tested once again. When the Australian Government announced the easing of workplace restrictions, another layer of challenges and responsibilities for IT teams was added. They have had to juggle access for remote workers while planning return-to-office projects. Legacy networking management tools are also inadequate to support these teams, creating complex manual processes and increasing risks of errors, performance issues or downtime.
Networking infrastructure sets the foundational building block that makes digitalisation a reality and for applications to come alive. Almost like the first domino chip of digitalisation, if a network experiences any downtime and “topples”, it creates a cascade of successive mishaps to occur. Business-critical applications will stop working, town halls and webinars will need to be rescheduled and employees might lose access to company servers, affecting productivity.
However, that does not have to be the case and IT teams should no longer be flooded with help desk tickets with today’s emerging technology.
No longer a domino chip, but a brick wall of digitalisation
Just as we have adopted technology to enable our work-from-home setups, the networking solutions we rely on also need to be similarly updated. Advanced networking solutions today are armed with Artificial Intelligence (AI) capabilities that can help organisations and their IT teams conquer these challenges.
Big data and machine learning algorithms can augment and automate day-to-day IT tasks, ranging from performance monitoring and reporting, to data correlation and analysis. Globally, it is predicted that we would generate 463 exabytes of data by 2025. For comparison, if one gigabyte is a single grain of rice, one exabyte would be 25 tonnes! Not only will leveraging AI allow IT teams to quickly analyse and process colossal amounts of data, IT teams will be empowered to proactively anticipate and resolve any issues before they even arise.
In addition to the growing demand for AIOps, there is also an uptick in adoption of flexible consumption models, such as Network-as-a-Service (NaaS). By combining the capabilities from different solutions, IT teams can be freed from mundane everyday networking issues and be empowered to innovate and protect assets.
A study by Aruba found that 65 percent of Australian companies agreed that having the flexibility to scale their network based on business needs is key to their interest in NaaS. As organisations look for ways to improve productivity, as-a-service models like NaaS will represent a way for IT teams to keep pace with innovation and ease operational management of networks. With these combined capabilities to advance networking solutions, networking infrastructures no longer take on the role of the first domino chip but a brick wall that withstands external stresses and supports digitalisation initiatives.
When organisations are armed with network optimisation and resiliency, they reap the benefits of heightened operational efficiencies and improved security. In fact, 75 per cent of top global IT organisations have indicated that they are looking to utilise AI operations to refresh their IT workforce by the end of 2023.
Remotely located, digitally connected
Secure and robust networks will continue to be critical in ensuring the workforce is connected at any place and any time. Faced with the fluidity of hybrid and remote working arrangements and preferences, organisations must appreciate revitalising their network infrastructures to ensure that their workforce stay digitally connected, securely, round-the-clock, whether they are remotely located or back in the office.