Week 4 of Citrix’s Business Bootcamp is all about taking full control of your cloud-ready, mobile workforce
When you stop to think about it, the simple purpose of IT is to provide tools which allow us to work faster and smarter, and that help us achieve our business goals.
By moving your business to the cloud and creating a mobile workforce you’re on your way to realising this, and now it’s time to fine-tune your IT network for ultimate success.
With IT now playing an increasingly influential role across your business, it’s likely you will find yourself managing multiple employee requests to work from a number of different devices, as well as challenged to make the user experience consistent inside and outside the office.
I hope you see this as a huge business opportunity rather than just a challenge.
As your employees become more mobile, IT networks are becoming increasingly complex and are being placed under unprecedented levels of pressure to perform in a secure environment. Failure to address this complexity and growing demand means your investment in cloud and mobility technologies could become ineffective. Simply, your IT network would become overwhelmed with user demands and data traffic, resulting in a negative impact on user experience.
Insights into Actions
Effective management of your IT systems is therefore crucial today given its growing importance to your business. You require deep visibility and control of business applications and online services to ensure your network’s smooth running.
This can be achieved by consolidating all applications you use – from a suite of productivity offerings through to cloud-based services – into one interface, with a technology like Citrix NetScaler with Unified Gateway. Taking this approach provides your employees with remote access to a single platform hosting all the tools they need to do their job, enabling them to work and access data across a range of applications. Ultimately, users can access any application, using any device, through just one URL.
Look to deploy a single interface that offers single sign-on capabilities, as this will improve productivity further. Instead of having to login to each application individually, by signing in to the single interface employees can automatically be logged in to each application on the platform, giving them more time back to focus on core priorities. Similarly, it allows you to grant your partners and customers access to the relevant applications they need to input information to.
To ensure the smooth running of your IT, you also need to monitor application performance and react accordingly, which can be achieved with technologies delivering insight into the traffic passing through your IT network – such as Citrix NetScaler Insight Center.
A Well Made Investment
The increased network control required for businesses today and the speed at which you must react further demonstrates the value of cloud services. It is simpler and faster to make changes in cloud or virtual environments than through on-premises IT, enabling you to realise benefits faster, or avoid missing out altogether.
As your business becomes increasingly reliant on technology, it’s critical you prioritise managing the network upon which it is built and delivered – just because IT is getting smarter doesn’t automatically mean it’s easier to manage. This allows you to optimise the investments made in cloud and mobility technologies to deliver an effective experience allowing users to work smarter and faster than ever before.
About the Author:
Phil Caleno, Senior Manager NetScaler, Citrix ANZ
Citrix Bootcamp:
