The way in which people are working is rapidly changing.
We’re seeing this in the flexibility cloud computing and virtualisation are bringing to working practices, but also in the multitude of devices the consumerisation of IT is enabling. Many staff now have more powerful, more exciting IT devices at home than at the office, and there’s a growing desire to fully incorporate these consumer tools into the workplace.
This desire is mirrored by many business leaders; from their perspective these ‘consumer’ devices help drive levels of staff satisfaction, can be less expensive than traditional PCs and come with as much, if not more, processing power and capabilities.
In fact, IDC predicts that the consumerisation of IT will emerge as one of the key drivers for client virtualisation software during the next few years.
Between the injection of many new devices and the widespread adoption of virtualised and on-demand computing systems, we’re seeing a movement away from the situation where the type of IT device and operating system dictates what applications can be used and what functionality can be carried out.
The future lies with operating systems and underlying hardware being irrelevant, with companies able to provide staff with access to whatever business resources they need on whatever device they have.
Ultimately, however, this will bring with it changes to the way businesses work – it’s a movement in the right direction but also one that’ll be seen as breaking away from what companies are used to.
The end objective for businesses may be to encourage flexibility and freedom, but the immediate barriers that must be overcome to achieve this are issues of security and control.
Step one: where we are
In reality, this is a transition that’s already underway.
The huge uptake we’ve seen in cloud computing has seen the IT department’s totalitarian control over applications and IT resources diminish somewhat as, increasingly, cloud vendors are given more responsibility in running and managing these resources.
The question now is how to truly deliver applications to end user devices in a secure and efficient way. How can an employee travelling and away from the office quickly access the crucial resources needed without troubling the IT department with access queries or security questions?
Increasingly some form of mechanism is required that can control each user’s interaction with applications, in line with their specific requirements and levels of access, and with best practise corporate policy.
The technology is now in place to offer this, with staff able to simply and securely access Windows, SaaS and enterprise web applications across different devices anytime, anywhere, based on access rights and company policy.
This capability forms the basis of moving away from the current PC model to the new approach of end user computing: one where, so long as your device can support a browser, you’ve access to all the applications that you need.
Step two: the mobile extension
The natural continuation from here is truly tailoring accessibility and flexibility for the worker on the move. Today’s workforce is an increasingly flexible one, a point highlighted by the recent UK consortium launched to provide companies with the management skills to enhance flexible working practices.
With this focus comes the issue of how staff operate and communicate on the move. An employee, traditionally, has had one business phone and one consumer phone which, while irritating, is understandable – each device has different attributes, from the email functionality of the business phone to the demand for music and high end leisure features on consumer phones.
It’s a real problem for businesses today: with staff increasingly in commute carrying all manner of luggage and equipment, they want one mobile device that caters for all their needs. However, there’s an obvious security issue in a business phone, with access to corporate networks and sensitive data, being used in a personal environment.
Moving forward, we’re seeing technology evolve to cater for this. VMware Horizon Mobile, for example, will provide a way of virtualising your mobile phone. It effectively enables two phones – a virtual and a physical one – to fully operate on one physical device, allowing the user to ‘put’ a business phone on a consumer device and switch between the two.
From a security perspective, the virtual business phone (and access to applications and control of data) is under complete control of the IT department. Confidential data doesn’t even need to be stored on the phone, rather it’s located in the cloud, meaning if you lose the phone you can wipe the virtual image and risk no data being compromised.
In short, this is virtualisation for mobile technology: it’s the first step in bringing these capabilities to the mobile worker and today’s increasingly flexible business model.
Looking to the future
The broader message here is that we are increasingly living in a virtual world. The next step now has to be ensuring that staff have complete freedom to choose the working style that suits them best.
There’s the potential to be free from device, operating system and geographical lockdown, and to drive productivity as traditional barriers to working on the move become a thing of the past. As more businesses look to embark on paths such as this, it will be the role of technology to show them the way and to enable them to do so.
Brian Gammage, chief market technologist, VMware.
