As businesses continue to transition into the new era of hybrid working that blends the office and the home, it’s time to start thinking about the ways we can support and enable this. Of course, technology is the key to ensuring employees can seamlessly and securely switch from one work environment to another, and Comstor’s dedicated hybrid work kits deliver the tools and solutions businesses need in order to thrive in the ‘new normal’.
There are few things businesses should bank on these days, and one is the shift to hybrid working. The way we all work is changing beyond recognition. As restrictions begin to ease in some countries, we’re entering a new period of hybrid work which is a combination of the office environment and the home-working setup.
There is no doubt that some job functions lend themselves to an office environment where there’s no substitute for face-to-face interaction. Other functions can still be delivered equally well remotely. Either way, remote and hybrid work will rise to 300% of pre-COVID levels and, post-pandemic, the number of remote workers is expected to grow six-fold to reach 30% of the global office worker population.
There are many benefits to embracing this hybrid style of working – from cutting operational costs to increased productivity and enhanced collaboration between dispersed teams. The problem is that most organisations are using technology and systems that weren’t designed for hybrid work.
So, what kind of tools and solutions do customers need to build a hybrid working culture that gives them the best of both worlds – without feeling there’s a gap between the two?
New normal, new challenges
As businesses embrace more flexible ways of working – with employees in the office, on the road or at home – they also face new challenges in ensuring all employees have secure and reliable access to the applications they need to work productively.
With more people remotely accessing applications that might sit in different cloud systems, we see the network reaching beyond the enterprise perimeter. This has significant implications for IT teams. They must provide remote support and remote management, the cloud enablement of all software possible, security for distributed work, and equal access to the latest team collaboration tools and technology.
Simplifying complexity
Recognising this, Comstor’s dedicated kits of Cisco solutions have been designed to enable customers to deal with this complexity and support a hybrid workforce. In addition, with the home now a de facto micro-branch, there is a need for a new approach to security.
Through these hybrid work innovations, we can help partners and their customers understand where, when, how and why issues affecting users are occurring and provide the security solutions that make it easier to securely access any application, over any network, from anywhere.
We have an opportunity to address challenges and concerns of a hybrid workforce from end to end. Visibility into the applications and networks that sit beyond IT’s control has become a critical success factor for business leaders as they support a hybrid workforce across a variety of new digital experiences.
No one size fits all, so flexibility is built in
Since businesses have varying needs, Comstor has created two categories of kits to meet the needs of every business. One designed for larger organisations with more than 250 users, and a flexible kit for those with fewer than 250 users, which meets all the needs of small businesses in terms of security, networking and cloud collaboration at an affordable price.
Some may prefer Meraki premium subscription-based features, which include cloud-management, automatic software patches and upgrades for greater resiliency. Others may prefer on-prem solutions from the Cisco Business Portfolio. They are the same technologies offered to Cisco’s enterprise customers, at an attractive price point for small businesses.
What’s in it for you?
You get to choose from a complete package of solutions that seamlessly work together and are easy to position – even to non-technical business buyers. The packages are flexible and can be scaled to suit every customer, even those with existing Cisco products.
Instant access to upfront discounts speeds up your sales cycle and helps you be more profitable, unlocking recurring subscription revenue and services opportunities. You can also up-sell and cross-sell the rest of the small business Cisco Designed portfolio. The cloud packages are pure SaaS-delivered and require no inventory or fulfilment.
Why should your customers care?
Put simply, they enable flexibility for the office to be anywhere and everywhere. Simple but powerful collaboration solutions keep employees productive anywhere. Intuitive security against the threats that matter: email, weak passwords and internet-borne threats.
A choice of cloud-based or on-premises solutions that are easy to buy, deploy, manage and use. A simple and competitive per user, per month price. No more piecemeal technologies from multiple vendors. Flexible kits for today’s flexible work patterns.
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Part of the SCSP blog series
Sourced from: Westcon-Comstor News. View the original article here.