There is no denying that post-pandemic the typical office setup has changed. The number of employees working from home and demanding work from home capabilities to stay at their current employer has required that employers offer some form of work from home solution. That solution could be full time or part time for employees, but the one thing that has to happen is that employees have to be able to access the resources they need, collaborate with co-workers and work from anywhere all doing so in a secure manner.
There are a lot of work from home or remote access solutions on the market and more showing up every day. Some are great, some are ok, and some are just bad or don’t really work. Recent studies show that employees who are not allowed to continue to work from home at least some of the time will be looking for employment at companies that do allow work from home. Not offering work from home solutions for your employees could be detrimental to your business going forward, the next worse thing is offering a work from home solution that is difficult to use or doesn’t allow employees to be productive.
The goal of any work remote solution is to give users access to the resources they need, allow them to collaborate with co-works and keep the organization’s data secure, not require them to spend half their day fighting with the solution you provided.
VPNs
The VPN used to be the remote access solution of choice for many business and is still the industry buzz word that often comes to mind when organizations are looking at remote access solutions. However, VPNs require hardware and software that can only be used for remote access and open up your organization’s network to security risks. The traffic between your organization and your remote employees may be secure but once connected any malicious software your employees home computer has access to your organizations network. But what if they only connect to the VPN from their company provided laptop? Although that helps but can you guarantee that employees really are only using their company provided laptops and this solution also requires your organization to purchase and maintain the VPN hardware and laptops for each user as well as still worrying about security risks.
Remote Access Applications / Flash Drives
Another solution that many organizations are looking at are the remote access application or hardware usb drive based access solutions. These solutions often times allow users to connect to their workstation located back in the office from any external workstation by visiting a website or plugging in a “remote access” thumb drive. However these solutions still have many downsides, they require the user’s to have a workstation back in the office, that it be turned on, and that that users connect through a third party organizations website that may or may not be secure, and may or may not be available when your employees need it. The other issue is that often times these solutions are blocked by locations where your employees may be working for security reasons and many organizations block these solutions to prevent employees that should not have access remotely from going rogue and installing the service on their own and gaining access remotely. As these solutions rush to get into the market the features they support are often lagging, from not supporting dual monitor, having username and password stored on the device, requiring an additional username and password for users to remember, or even requiring users to access their work computer from an identical computer at home.
Many of these solutions have severe security issues and still require your organization to invest in a solution that is only used for remote access and requires the organization to buy laptops or desktops for users, sometimes multiple workstations if the organization picks one of the solutions that require identical hardware in the office and at home.
Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops
Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops (CVAD) on the other hand offers organizations a remote access solution that allows users to work from any device, any where, at any time in a secure manner. In addition CVAD is a turn key solution that provides access to desktop and application that can be used by users inside the organization as well as remotely from any device securely. Implementing CVAD within an organization allows organization to extend hardware lifecycle by not requiring laptops and desktops to be refreshed as often or allowing organizations to not provide laptops and desktops at all, rather offering employees thin client devices or allowing employees to bring their own device. This makes the remote access no longer a single use solution that employees use when working remotely but rather employees use the same solution when working at the office or remotely. Users can access their virtual workstation from phones, tables, laptops, or desktops from anywhere with an internet connection so long as that device meets the security rules that the organization has put in place. These rules can be based on physical location, presence of anti-virus software, within certain hours, etc. The use of CVAD also ensures that the organization’s data stays within the organization all the while providing the exact same user experience to the employee regardless of where they are.
A secure, flexible remote work solution that can grow easily with an organization that isn’t a single use solution is a much more cost efficient way for businesses to provide the remote work capabilities that employees are demanding. It has been shown that organizations that regularly worked remotely or already had Citrix solutions inside their organization transitioned to the work from home model much easier during the pandemic than employees who had to scramble to find a way for employees to work remotely. In addition to Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops, Cirtrix offers a complete suite of products to increase network performance, secure endpoint devices, allow employees to work from anywhere and collaborate easily.
Regardless of your organization’s size, with the changing workforce your organization owes it to yourself and your employees to look into Citrix solutions to ensure that your business stay productive, your data stays secure, and able to retain your employees regardless of whether its business as usual or in the midst of an unprecedented global event.
Reach out to Xenwerx Initiatives or another Citrix partner to see how the innovative solutions provided by Citrix can prepare your business for the changing workforce.