With hybrid work here to stay, what technology trends should hybrid businesses be looking out for?
There are many fascinating trends in the technology industry nowadays, and businesses tend to be key observers of the changes in the industry. This is because technology drives innovation in businesses. This can be seen plainly with the way that remote working was adopted so enthusiastically after the onset of COVID-19; though it started off as a necessity, many businesses found a great deal of value in the practice – and it was all achieved through the leveraging of technology. We discussed this with TechQuarters, a provider of IT support Croydon and London based organisations have been using to access new technology and better support for more than 10 years. According to them, the latest business trend that is being driven by technology trends is hybrid work. So, what are some of the top tech trends that are driving hybrid work?
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Zero Trust Network Models
Hybrid working continues the trend of remote workers accessing company data outside of the company’s premises. This essentially means that they are widening the company’s network perimeter – and a wider perimeters has more potential points of access for malicious actors to exploit. A cybersecurity trend that can help with this problem is the zero trust approach to network access. It works by requiring users to verify their identity every single time they want to access any data or resources associated with a company’s network. According to TechQuarters, who provides IT support for Healthcare, this approach makes it easier for organisations that require strict data protection measures to safely manage access and permissions for remote users, because it never assumes that the person attempting to access data is who they say they are (this is the only way to avoid slipups that can result in major data breaches).
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Everything as a Service (XaaS)
The ‘Everything as a Service’ (also known as ‘XaaS’) trend in technology is based around the widespread usage of public cloud services – i.e. resources that are rented by businesses from a vendor (like Microsoft Azure). Examples of ‘as a service’ solutions include:
- Software as a Service – apps and services that are hosted in the cloud, and can be accessed across all platforms (such as iOS, Android, Windows, Mac, etc.) Examples of SaaS used by businesses includes Microsoft 365.
- Desktop as a Service – a complete desktop experience (usually complete with apps) that is hosted in the cloud, and accessed by users over the internet (typically by using a virtual desktop client). Examples of DaaS includes Azure Virtual Desktop and Windows 365.
The reason that XaaS solutions are associated with the upwards trend of hybrid working, is because delivering services in this way can be done remotely. It means that IT admins do not need access to user’s PCs to be able to manage updates, and it is more secure than having users keep data and software on personal devices.
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Unified Cloud Communications
Hybrid working (and remote working) is reliant on strong communication practices within a business. TechQuarters told us that the outsourced IT support London businesses were requesting of them during the pandemic was largely to do with the use of video conferencing software, and they also pointed out that for many years before the pandemic, the use of instant messaging in business was growing.
Unified communications is based on the principle of having all channels of communication (such as video calling, instant messaging, emails, and telephony) hosted within a single platform and interface. UC as a concept has been around for quite a while, but the integration of cloud computing has accelerated it. Unified Cloud Communications enables the integration of solutions like cloud telephony (which, unlike traditional PSTN, requires no hardware or physical connectivity), and thus enabling unified communications solutions that can be deployed remotely.
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