Mobility driving enterprises to rethink workspaces
Organisations are being driven to rethink the roles of their employees, how they collaborate and their relationships to applications and devices, according Dimension Data.
The rising cost of energy, real estate and office space, coupled with growing pressure to implement sustainable and environmentally-friendly workspaces, is seeing massive transition in the workplace that's aimed at attracting and retaining the next generation of workers, as well as raising the productivity of employees.
Nadeem Ahmad, Dimension Data's global technology director, says, "During the course of any day, people complete many different work activities. Some require high levels of concentration; others more collaboration.
In response, Dimension Data is launching a 'workspaces for tomorrow' strategy, in a move to help organisations stay ahead of the changes in workforce patterns.
"Workspaces for tomorrow is a workplace strategy that captures these varied work styles, and empowers individuals with the freedom to choose different types of work settings to suit their various work activities, Ahmad says.
Ahmad says the goal is to provide modern, collaborative environments with innovative workspaces, as well as the technology to support a flexible work style.
"Workspaces for tomorrow focuses the organisation's employees on the activities they need to do to achieve goals in a more productive, collaborative, flexible, and open manner," he says. "At its heart is organisation-wide collaboration and team enablement.
Ahmad points out that mobility and cloud, which are driving the strategy around workspaces for tomorrow, are impacting the patterns and culture of the workplace today. In other words, they are impacting where and how employees do their work.
Dimension Data says that in terms of mobility, mobile devices are overtaking PCs. There's also the digitisation of work processes as well as the proliferation of mobile apps, both of which are being used to accomplish tasks and activities whilst away from the office, or within the office but away from the desk.
"In terms of cloud, there's a shift to user centric computing, which is all about the fast, secure delivery of application services and data to any end-point in any location," the company says. "As a part of that the location of the service is transparent to the end user.
"As an end user myself, I'm concerned with getting the service or my data on my device easily," says Brian Walshe, general manager of end-user computing for Dimension Data Australia.
"I don't care where the service comes from, or where my data is stored when I'm not using it. As long as it's available to me – regardless of my device or location – it's a new service consumptive model," he says.
Workspaces for tomorrow offers employees the choice of where and how they work by investing in modern collaborative office spaces and also the technology that enables employees to work in their office, elsewhere on campus or remotely.
"It's all about putting users at the centre and allowing access to applications and data from any device and any location. This is in turn will deliver better utilisation of the work environment, lower real estate costs, and ultimately cut energy costs," says Walshe.
