Week 2 of Citrix’s Business Bootcamp will show you how to achieve significant business benefits by getting out of the office.
Have you ever stopped to think what it was like being an SMB just a decade ago? For some of you, this scenario might even have been a reality.
You would have needed a physical – and often costly – office environment, complex IT infrastructures, assets such as PCs and desk phones, and e-commerce was only starting to pick-up. Added to this, employees had to go to the office to get work done, meaning your sales channels and ability to recruit the best talent was limited by geographical reach.
Fast forward to the modern day, however, and we are a mobile, global and collaborative workforce.
How many of us have responded to emails from our smartphone, or worked on an important business proposal in the confines of a local coffee shop on a laptop? Similarly, I’m sure many of us have purchased goods from a retailer overseas, or collaborated over email with fellow professionals who live interstate or internationally.
New mobility technologies – from consumer devices hosting a plethora of applications, through to cloud offerings like those discussed in last week’s session – are powering a new, more productive way of work.
We can use technology to access everything we need to effectively do our jobs wherever we are, and from whatever device we’re working from. At Citrix, we’ve labelled these mobility platforms as ‘Workspace-as-a-Service’ (WaaS). In its most simple term, WaaS enables SMBs to embrace a mobile workstyle by delivering secure, seamless, anytime, anywhere access to all business applications, services, and data across corporate and personally owned devices.
The WaaS platform is managed by your services provider partner, utilising cloud services like Amazon or Microsoft, taking the stress out of IT management and system upgrades, enabling you to focus on growing your business. Having a cloud provider manage your IT means your business applications are delivered, managed and supported on the web through pay-as-you-go-models, empowering you to rapidly deploy and take advantage of the latest services coming to market. As a result, WaaS allows you to release cost and time resources so that you can invest in and focus on business areas delivering significant value to your bottom line.
Alongside this, thanks to collaborative technologies – including Citrix GoTo Meeting and ShareFile – you can seamlessly and securely work with others wherever they are in the world. This means your business can draw upon the expertise of the best industry talents.
This is all due to the new way of working enabled by new technologies…and we’ve not even touched on how the internet allows you to sell to a global audience, compared to the regional markets you would have been restricted to only a handful of years ago.
Combined with the benefits for SMBs outlined in the Federal Government’s 2015 budget, it’s never been a better time to be an SMB.
Successful SMBs today will make WaaS platforms work for them to create an environment empowering you to work in a way that best suits you, and when you need to.
However, with so many enterprise mobility offerings on the market, Citrix appreciates it can be a daunting task selecting the technologies you need to integrate within your WaaS offering to achieve this new world of work and realise the huge benefits it promises.
To help you build the best and most secure WaaS environment, we’ve pulled out three important pillars that make up an effective enterprise mobility platform:
Secure Access –As highlighted last week, data is your most valuable asset, meaning you must implement various measures to safeguard it. Citrix recommends prioritising the IT network and applications – after all, it’s much easier and efficient to manage one network rather than multiple tablets and laptops running Windows, Android or Mac iOS. This can be achieved by deploying specific virtualisation technologies, such as Citrix XenDesktop, XenMobile, XenApp, and XenServer, enabling anytime secure access to services regardless of your device.
Similarly, if employees are sharing large files over email that contain sensitive data you need to ensure they are using services that meet your security requirements.
Collaboration – When you have employees that work remotely, it’s critical you offer technology allowing them to seamlessly and rapidly communicate as if they were in an office together. Enterprise ready video conferencing tools, like Citrix’s GoTo series (GoTo Meeting; GoTo Assist; GoTo Training), allow users to effectively collaborate to help meet your business objectives.
Management – Controlling and accessing a multitude of applications remotely has the potential to create a complex IT environment that is difficult to manage. As such, you should look to integrate access to all corporate content – be it data, applications, or services – for secure and seamless delivery, using solutions such as Citrix Workspace Suite. Alternatively, if you’re running your business in the cloud a platform management solution, like Citrix Workspace Cloud, can help simplify the on-demand nature of the platform.
Business mobility should no longer just be a luxury. It’s a necessity and something your employees expect you to deliver. If you successfully implement the tools and services outlined above there is much to gain – from business growth to recruiting the best talent – and we’re looking forward to seeing the SMB community embrace WaaS platforms to achieve its full potential.
If you’re interested in learning more about how mobility can help your business operate, collaborate, and innovate, why not sign up for Citrix Mobility Conference 2015 – Australia’s premier industry conference on mobile workspace solutions being held in Sydney in early July.
About the Author:
Ian Curnow, Senior Manager of Productivity Sales – Enterprise Mobility, Citrix.
Citrix Bootcamp:
