Is your IT environment ready to meet the demands of the next generation of workers?

Over the past five years, many IT organisations have struggled to keep up with the streamlined and ever-advancing personal technologies owned by employees and changing expectations about how people like to work.

Does your organisation enable staff to:

Access personal IT from anywhere in the world when on holiday?

Have email, voice mail, instant messaging and personal content to hand 24 hours a day?

Expect working wirelessly to be the norm?

Use video as part of a normal web-based conversation?

Regard the web browser as the only interface needed for any application?

Use the device closest to them, whether it’s a laptop or an iPad?

Organisations that are not embracing a new way of working and communicating risk not just impacting productivity but the ability to recruit and retain the next generation of employees.

In an age where the launch of a new tablet PC is headline news, isn’t it time we applied innovative solutions and thinking to make corporate IT as newsworthy to our users?

“The days of deskbound work are waning. Instead, employees, and especially younger employees, are looking for the same technology at work that they have at home. When asked about investment drivers, IT professionals prioritise location flexibility, including mobility and telework.” Frost & Sullivan.

Nobody wants technology for the sake of it – they expect IT to help transform their jobs, their education, their health treatment and their travel problems, because powerful IT is now in the hands of every worker, every school pupil, every patient and every commuter. Users want a truly virtual, immersive experience which is:

PRODUCTIVE – allowing them to do their jobs smarter and faster

PERSONAL – customised for their specific role

MOBILE – access to systems, information and people from any device, anywhere

SECURE – using any device, whether it’s corporate or personal

SOCIAL – connected to colleagues so they’re able to quickly find the required expertise and work together seamlessly

VISUAL – high quality interaction with colleagues and customers, whether they are in the office, at home or travelling.

The goal is to enable business users to access a corporate IT environment that is more in line with the flexibility of our personal technologies, whilst remaining secure and compliant.

What does the future look like?

The nature of work is changing rapidly. The take-up of "tele-working" is accelerating, driven by cost-savings, worker productivity and employee retention.

Dispersed workforces: Up to 90% of employees now work outside corporate headquarters. Nemertes Research (2007) and Insight Research (2007).

Increased mobility: Thirty-four percent of the global workforce will be mobile information workers by 2012. Forrester Research (2009)

Cross-organisational teaming: Seventy percent of employees regularly need to collaborate with people in different time zones and geographical regions Economist Intelligence Uni (2009)

Commuting times are increasing. A survey of 10,000 businesses found Australians spend on average 27min to travel to work. That compares to an average of 24min in the US. (The wage-equivalent time costs of commuting represents over $21Bn per year.)

The world's mobile worker population will pass the one billion mark this year and grow to nearly 1.2 billion by 2013 IDC

Tomorrow’s Workplace is about taking advantage of these dramatic trends and examining more closely how people are working, communicating and collaborating.

Five major IT trends dictate that the way people collaborate will no longer be centred on the PC and email. In combination, these are fundamentally changing how we access information.

Consumerisation

Employees are entering the workspace expecting to use the tools they use in their personal lives. Over 60% of Australian organisations plan to procure tablets in 2011/12, well above the Asia-Pacific average of 31% (IDC APeJ Continuum, 2011) and over 80% of organisations will support personal iPads (Citrix survey, 2010).

Mobility explosion

A surge in the mobile devices and users, which has already dented the growth of PCs, will re-define and expand the market with exponential growth of tablets led by Apple and Google. Mobile phone usage is now about data, not voice and

Morgan Stanley predicts the mobile Internet will be bigger than desktop Internet within four years. The rate of change is rapid: social networking users (and usage) have surpassed email users and within four years there will be more mobile users than desktop internet users. It took Facebook less than three years to surpass 500M users and Cisco predicts that 90% of all Internet traffic will be video by 2013 (from 50% today).

Device proliferation

As a result of new work styles and preferences, there is an increasing proliferation of devices that IT departments are being asked to support in the "Post-PC world". A few years ago, Windows dominated the "desktop" environment; today employees are using a variety of devices to access the Internet. From representing 63% of mobile and desktop platforms in 2010, Windows will decrease to 37% in 2014.

What is your organisation's stance on personal devices:

Strictly prohibit any device not company-purchased (46%)

Ignore it (17%)

Provide basic instructions (14%)

Provide full device config & support (23%)

IDC Continuum survey 2010

The rise of the Enterprise App Store

While mobile apps are still predominantly consumer-focussed, there is an increasing number of business apps being developed to support next-gen enterprise solutions. Application development is also focussed on newer platforms - 91.4% of application development is for the iPhone, with Android at 87.1%... and Windows 7 at 30.6% (IDC 1Q2011 Mobile App Developer

Survey).

Cloud and delivery models

IT is looking for ways to better manage applications, reduce total cost of ownership (TCO), and increase time to market to stay ahead of the competition. Flexible deployment models are becoming increasingly important. IDC's :The Next Generation Desktop (2011) research found that Mobile Business was the most significant technology trend (followed by desktop virtualisation and remote application delivery) over the next 12-24 months.

New technologies are disrupting traditional business models and changing how we communicate and work. They have the potential to extend the reach of your organisation, accelerate the development of new products and services and enable a better work-life balance.

It also makes financial sense. According to McKinsey, deploying Web 2.0 technologies to create networked organisations that foster innovative collaboration with employees, customers and business partners is highly correlated with market share gains. The trends identified by McKinsey demonstrate how technology is playing a critical role in how organisations can create value and compete effectively.

How can you take advantage of this rapidly shifting technology environment and what are some of the key trends:

Distributed co-creation moves into the mainstream: Over 70% of executives surveyed said their companies “regularly created value through Web communities” across product marketing, development and support. A flexible and secure network is the foundation for enabling partners and customers to share information and collaborate on projects.

A survey by Cisco of its own workforce showed that a policy of encouraging its employees to telework generated an estimated annual savings of $277 million in productivity in one year. The average Cisco employee teleworks an average of two days a week. Among those employees, 69% cited higher productivity when working remotely. More than 91% of respondents said telework is important to their overall satisfaction.

The Workplace and Productivity

“Raising the productivity of employees whose jobs can't be automated is the next great performance challenge—and the stakes are high.” McKinsey.

Making the network the organisation: Allowing staff to structure work “around critical tasks rather than moulding it to constraints imposed by corporate structures” means building and managing a network that extends across internal and external borders. A borderless network gives staff the same experience regardless of where they are and what device they are using.

Collaboration at scale: Collaboration is becoming a vital component of what has been termed “organisational capital. Video-conferencing and collaboration lets employees stay connected with colleagues and customers, reducing travel costs while improving productivity.

“Collaboration technology is adding value across a broad array of business functions today. Organisations find the most significant value in technology’s ability to support complex and distributed teams, improve business activities like customer service and product development, and provide greater reuse and manageability of documents and other content artifacts.” Forrester Consulting

Measuring Return on Investment

The productivity impact of collaboration tools can be measured across three areas:

Operational return on investment (ROI): Achieved by reducing and/or avoiding costs

Productivity ROI: Realised through more efficient processes, faster time to market and reduced cycle time

Strategic ROI: Leading to business transformation and strategic advantage.

We have moved from the first generation of collaboration focused on individuals within a single company to more advanced tools that facilitate social sessions across organisations.

Joining a social session may sound intriguing, but what can a business leader expect in terms of practical ROI?

Operational ROI: Start with Savings

Organisations achieve operational ROI by reducing and/or avoiding costs, including reducing infrastructure costs, using video-conferencing to reduce travel costs or deploying collaboration tools to enable virtual meetings and reducing office-space requirements. This type of ROI is easiest to measure because it reflects hard-dollar savings that go right to profits - and the financial savings can profoundly affect the business.

Nearly 80% of organisations see a positive return on their investment in collaboration technologies (and numerous industries showed a 5-year ROI of more than 100% and payback periods of 21 to 40 months). The positive results apply to companies large and small: Those with between 1,000 and 25,000 employees posted returns of more than 170%.

Productivity ROI: Focus on Efficiency

Many companies realise significant productivity gains from implementing collaboration technologies. Effective collaboration can improve the product-development process or take time out of the sales cycle. How can you measure the value of using video to publish a user manual or Instant Messaging to find the person who can respond to an opportunity immediately?

A Frost & Sullivan global study of more than 3,500 business and IT leaders in May 2009 concluded that companies had realised a return of 400% on their collaboration investments. This report also found that the ROI for collaboration follows a continuum: Companies that deploy more advanced tools and foster a stronger collaborative culture enjoy greater benefits than those that concentrate on the basics. That said, even a minimal collaboration effort

“Technical advances in video conferencing have moved the capability to an entirely new level over the last 18 months, so that it now has the potential to fundamentally impact business travel”. Based on the success of telepresence among early adopters, 70% of internal travel and 10% of external travel could be replaced over the next 10 to 15 years, resulting in an aggregate reduction of 21% in corporate travel spending. Berstein Research, 2010

yields modest results. In summary, researchers observed the most profound effect in the areas of the business where the largest numbers of people interact in many-to-many relationships to accelerate productivity and create value.

Strategic ROI: Reinvent the Business

Strategic ROI is often hard to quantify in dollars. But strategy is the area where business transformations occur. Collaboration tools help companies enter new markets; build new business models; accelerate innovation cycles; and make faster, better decisions. These tools enable the major moves that lead to competitive advantage and reinvention of how you do business.

The financial services industry is a prime example of the strategic ROI that collaboration pioneers are achieving, with innovative mobile products reducing costs and increasing customer interaction.

The same type of change is afoot in healthcare. Experts and patients have come together to find the right diagnosis and treatment more quickly and accurately. Doctors and nurses are completely mobile, yet they have access to any information they need - in real time.

St George Bank has revealed it is spending millions on internet banking, saying it expects 50% of online customer transactions to be conducted via smartphones over the next 12-18 months. ITwire, 28 May 2011

"NAB said it had seen a 430 per cent growth in mobile banking over a year. It was the bank's fastest-growing channel. The bank was considering integrating social networks with online banking, for offering customer service" The Australian, 11 July 2011

Australian patients will be able to have Medicare funded consultations with any medical specialist via a video conference for the first time starting 1 July 2011. "Telehealth will transform the way health care is delivered in Australia by removing distance, time and cost as a barrier to accessing care – delivering better health outcomes for patients". Federal Government Press Office,

29 June 2011

Health Minister Nicola Roxon unveiled an iPhone application that will enable doctors to access a patient's medical history through e-health records.... A demonstration of the app at the conference showed that doctors would be able to access a patient's e-health record. ZDnet, 30 November 2010

A new workplace model enables communication and collaboration in ways that were simply not possible in a client-server desktop world. In the process it creates new opportunities for innovation, productivity and cost savings. What is new about the workplace of the future is that it is mobile, social, and visual — and it can be delivered virtually to every end user (even those without a PC).

Make secure anywhere, anytime and anyplace working a reality. Make everywhere a workspace, enabling people to be more productive by accessing the network and business applications from anywhere.

Give people the freedom to use their own devices and transform their productivity, without risking your security posture. It’s now common to have a personal smartphone, or even a tablet, but how many people can use them to access corporate information if they’re not near their work laptop?

Imagine the time saved when everyone is better connected with network presence and collaboration tools.. When social networking is used to keep in touch with friends and takes seconds to find school friends you haven’t seen in 20 years, why not give staff the same tools inside your organisation? This improves organisational efficiency and the speed at which decisions can be made.

So, what is Tomorrow's Workplace...

“Nearly half of those working in IT value telecommuting so highly they would work for less money if they could do their job from home.” Robert Half Technology

survey (2010)

Video is the new Voice. It’s available anywhere, and at a higher quality than anyone has experienced before. Whether it’s immersive Telepresence, which is like sitting in front of a colleague but without actually being there, or using mobile video from your laptop in a coffee shop, video is a must-have collaboration tool. Video is also the best way of avoiding airport queues or the rising costs of sitting in stationary traffic on a motorway.

Expand the talent pool. Tap into expertise across the country or the world by being able to effectively offer tele-working. At the same time, a flexible workplace will enable the hiring of highly skilled, highly desired employees who don’t leave, as they have the tools and environment that suit their lifestyle.

Virtual Desktop isn’t simply about putting low-cost thin clients on office desks. That's typically a good start, but Virtual Desktop is about anywhere, anytime desktop. It could mean putting thin clients onto hot-desks across the organisation to give every employee access to their own environment wherever they are? It also underpins an effective business continuity strategy by allowing every staff member to work from home or an alternate location.

Transform how IT resources are delivered. Logicalis Vblock-powered private cloud solutions change the way business applications are delivered and create a cost-effective and reliable alternative upgrading and maintaining traditional data centre infrastructure.

One set of users that has clearly benefitted from the same technologies of a flexible workplace is the IT staff. The IT work day is notoriously determined by need—and/or crisis—instead of the clock. Being able to work virtually from anywhere at any time provides a welcome amount of flexibility.

“Our grand kids will be unaware of the fact that many, many years ago you had to be in an office to work.” Kevin Bloch, Cisco CTO

Working more collaboratively and creating a new workplace environment affects every aspect of the organisation: work processes, the culture, and of course the technology.

Enabling a collaborative workplace is the easy part. The biggest barrier to successful implementation is not technical. It’s cultural.

Instead of a command-and-control hierarchy, organisations need to embrace collaborative principles in the work environment and think of workers in terms of their ability to communicate with each other and produce results instead of their ability to show up somewhere on time.

Progressive organisations have stopped treating remote workers as an exception to the office-bound workforce and are developing policies that address them as an integral part of the workforce. Successful companies go a step further, adopting a whole virtual-worker ethos. "Management by objective is critical" says Ann Bamesberger, vice-president of Open Work at Sun. "If you have to manage by monitoring, it's not for you."

Behind the scenes

The data centre and network architecture is the technology foundation for a tomorrow's workplace. Effective collaboration begins and ends with the network. A network-centric approach supports increased mobility and the full range of communication devices that allow staff to communicate with one another. In addition, emerging collaboration applications, such as immersive video, fixed mobile convergence, and location-aware services all depend on an intelligent network infrastructure to optimise the experience and improve participation. It's important the network can handle the increased traffic load (especially video) and the changing traffic profile without impacting QoS.

Delivering a consistent user experience across multiple devices, from desktops to tablets or even smart-phones, requires that the "experience" be virtualised .This means taking the unified collaboration tools and delivering them securely and consistently over a 3G, WLAN or wired network to the end device. Logicalis works with Microsoft, VMare and Citrix to provide client virtualisation, which is complemented by Cisco's Virtualization Experience Infrastructure or VXI to deliver rich media user experience.

...and how do I get there?

Work is something you do, and not something you travel to.

Logicalis can help you build a Roadmap to Tomorrow's Workplace

Assess your current "Collaboration Readiness". Using Cisco and third party tools, we benchmark your current IT environment against "best practice". This takes into account technology, culture and governance/processes and provides recommendations.

Engage key stakeholders. Working with your IT organisation, we interview key staff across multiple business unit to identify and document the main business challenges and opportunities.

Infrastructure health check. We use a combination of technical tools and processes to analyse network and data centre performance, and the ability of the current infrastructure to support future collaboration demands (including client virtualization and video).

Build a Strategic Plan. This final deliverable brings the previous three steps together, using the data collected and a workshop approach to define a 3-5 year plan. A Roadmap is produced that incorporates tactical actions (like network remediation) with strategic deployment of new technologies.

Tools of the Knowledge Worker

High-bandwidth Internet connectivity. (Available today to most workers, the NBN will accelerate the adoption of tele-working.)

Collaboration features. Voice and video calling, single number reach, voicemail, IM, presence, Web conferencing and email are all important. Enterprise instant messaging with presence, makes it possible to instantly see the availability of colleagues or customers and how best to contact them.

Social software. Allow staff to build communities, post information, create and maintain profiles and search for information across the organisation

Video. Incorporate high-quality person-to person video on a mobile device screen as well as fully immersive room-based video-conferencing experiences.

Mobile access. Enable smartphones to place, receive and manage calls over the corporate (or home) Wi-Fi and enable any device (notebook, tablet, home PC) to access the corporate network and collaboration functionality.

Logicalis is changing how organisations design, build, pay for and manage IT solutions. Recently named by Cisco as “Virtualisation of the Year” Partner in ANZ, Logicalis is highly skilled at delivering technology. We work with customers in all major industry sectors and public services to improve the experience of both front-line workers and back-office IT professionals.

www.au.logicalis.com/tomorrow marketing@au.logicalis.com