In the digital era, users can now have faster access to business and productivity tools and services to carry-out their functional roles and responsibilities, states Satish Yadavalli , General Manager & Practice Head, Global Infrastructure Services, Wipro Limited, in a conversation with Ankush Kumar
Some edited excerpts:
How do you see the demand for digital workspace among the customers? Why do they want to move towards digital platforms?
The sector is slowly moving away from the early fad of glossy devices to a more realistic way of work demands. The increase in the appetite and ability to consume data, has shifted the focus to visual informatics, aggregation and abstraction. The allure of multiple device form factors is giving way to a simple, unified device for most of the generic work (which is mostly about consumption and analysis rather than data or information production) and having specialized devices at work for creative or production workloads. What it means is that the focus is shifting to secure information access, cross-organizational collaboration and ability to use a single, light weight screen for most of it .
Customers are also looking for newer offerings which can bundle the end point hardware, accessories and workplace services, all together in a subscription model similar to the SaaS models, to reduce their overheads of asset and contract management, and sunk-in costs. Workplace outsourcing contracts are truly becoming technology agnostic and outcome defined opportunities.
How do you think security is a concern when it comes to adopting Digital Workspace?
As organizations adopt digital, and the world gets flatter, information becomes the biggest asset and in many cases, the competitive differentiators for organizations. Additionally, the ever changing, and demanding workstyle, is leading the way to more sophisticated ways of data theft. Hence security is of importance and a focus of investment for companies. While cloud adoption has increased the centralization of data ( and to a great extent ease of loss protection), the data footprint is also distributed in local devices all over the planet, without people realizing the value of data they carry with themselves, and are prone to be victims of easy theft. Authenticated access, digital rights management, data leak protection, apart from the threats posed by malware and ransomwares to the users and end point devices, are all vying for robust, prevailing solutions. There is an enhanced urgency now within the Compliance and Information Security (CISO) office of companies to realign the policies, procedures and technology to meet the new requirements.
What are the latest IT tools used for Digital Workspace Management in Wipro?
Wipro offers seamless workspace access. The focus shifts from device and software management, to application and resource authentication and access management, in a hybrid IT mode. Wipro also brings along user experience management and advanced analytics to move from reactive support to a predictive and preventive management model, and prides itself on being able to prevent incidents and carry out faster root cause analysis of problems. VirtuaDesk solutions can enable legacy applications to be available over the Internet to users, and help in quickly adopting the new way of work, while applications are still getting modernized.
The company embraces a ‘Cloud First’ approach in transforming customer data centers, from traditional infrastructure solutions to business applications. The focus is on moving everything apart from core IT to the cloud. One of the exciting tools or solutions that is currently being deployed to manage the digital workspace data backup requirements of users is via CASB (Cloud Access Security Broker) solution. This enables end users to have secure data backup on public cloud storage solutions.
How do you think adoption of Digital Workspace has transformed the lives of the employees?
New digital workspace solutions focus on user empowerment and freedom from IT. Users can now have faster access to business and productivity tools and services to carry-out their functional roles and responsibilities. This also helps them collaborate and share information seamlessly within their own organization and across the partner eco-system.
With robust digital rights management and data leak prevention systems in place, users and organizations can operate more safely and confidently. The changes are driven with the right “Management of Change” approaches, to increase the adoption and get over the initial inertia.
With consumerization and simplicity, there is an increased appetite and ability to process information, and identify patterns leading to increased productivity and higher self-actualization of the employee. An agile joiner and leaver process means the employees are able to contribute value sooner, and the organizational assets (which are now mostly digital) are protected when employee leaves.
Employees no longer need to wait weeks for their company provided laptops to be delivered to them. And when they leave they no longer need to worry if a personal piece of data has been left behind on the organizational device. The enterprise can shift out that information ahead of time, and provide a guarantee to employees that personal data will remain personal. This leads to better trust between the enterprise and the employee.
What could be the core benefits that can be derived by the enterprises?
One of the core benefits will be, seamless and simplified productivity across the enterprise value chain. Supply chain management is an easily identifiable structured process that has seen tremendous improvements due to IT. Next generation workspace suppliers can provide the same benefits to an enterprise that SCM provided to the manufacturing industry and in far more unstructured processes like R&D, marketing, etc.
How is technologies like Mobility, Cloud, and IoT being used within this space?
Mobility and Cloud have become the de-facto options for any service provider hoping to enter or operate in this space. The initial reaction of every CTO is to look at a cloud based offering of services, as that drastically shifts the focus from technical management to service governance. However the lack of standards, from a common framework for automation, to a common framework for incident classification across ISVs (Independent Software Vendors) means that making sense of the noise is very difficult. The lack of standards combined with the IoT explosion will provide a huge opportunity in developing the next generation of standards for the workspace.