The number of people infected with coronavirus at the time of writing was more than 244,000 . Panic in societies is growing at about the s...
The number of people infected with coronavirus at the time of writing was more than 244,000. Panic in societies is growing at about the same pace as the spread of COVID-19. In such circumstances, companies are forced to think about how to ensure the security of their main resource - employees.
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In early March, many IT companies, from Google to Facebook, began to limit business trips, cancel conferences and seminars, and transfer employees to remote work. Perhaps the most difficult thing in this situation is just the organization of the remote, or rather, its technical support. However, if companies from the IT sector usually have no problems with this - the algorithm has long been debugged, then for organizations whose business is not directly related to information technology, the transfer of employees to the homework format threatens with both technical and financial difficulties.
If ordinary desktop PCs are installed at workplaces of employees — for example, in a call center or at an industrial enterprise, it is required to purchase new equipment to organize a remote workplace — the same laptops. And here, in addition to costs, another problem arises logistics. Wholesale purchases of computer equipment and accessories are tied to suppliers from Asian countries, in particular from China. A pandemic is clearly not conducive to speeding up delivery times, which can take several weeks.
In addition, employees need to organize a connection to the corporate network via VPN, and this implies the need to configure each device (laptop, tablet, smartphone). Some employees need time to learn how to do their job on new devices, also from home. But what if these employees are 90%? In short, there are many reasons for unplanned business downtime.
However, technical, time and financial restrictions can be significantly reduced, or even eliminated altogether. It is enough to rent the required number of remote jobs.
REMOTE JOBS ON REQUEST
Even if to ensure remote work it is required to purchase only 10 laptops of 50 thousand rubles each. each is a substantial cost. Do not forget about the need to purchase licenses for office applications for each device. Delivery times may also affect deployment time, as discussed above. The question arises: how to deploy jobs quickly and without high capital costs? The best solution is renting remote jobs from a cloud provider.
Sometimes the "remote workplace" service is called Desktop as a Service (DaaS), in other cases - Virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI). Nevertheless, the principle of the service organization in general. The customer receives at his disposal a dedicated pool of computing resources in the form of a virtual server. To access such a server, thin clients are used — for example, simple, low-power home computers or employee laptops. The advantage is that to run any corporate applications, from MS Office to application accounting programs like 1C, you do not need to install their distributions on thin clients - all this is launched from the cloud. Hence the minimum system requirements for user devices.
The same applies to platforms: you can work with a remote workstation from both stationary and mobile devices. The main thing is that the employee has a high-quality channel for accessing the Internet. In order to deploy and prepare the workplace for use, no more than 10 minutes are required.
FOR SMALL AND LARGE COMPANIES
Another plus of the service is that you can rent from 5 to 500 or more remote jobs. That is, the service is suitable for small companies, and for large businesses, and for project teams. Depending on the number of remote employees, the cloud provider allocates the optimal number of terminal servers and the number of resources: CPU, RAM, and space on SSD disks. Connection to the servers is via the RDP protocol. All virtual infrastructure is reserved; In addition, the customer can set up daily data backup.
Renting remote jobs eliminates the need for expensive equipment; instead, monthly payments. The service also includes RDP licenses for each user. You do not need to buy licenses for office software either: employees can immediately use the Microsoft Office 2019 package, a browser (Chrome, Opera or Mozilla), a PDF editor, antivirus and archiver.
CORONAVIRUS IS NOT THE ONLY REASON
Technology that allows you to organize remote jobs has been around for more than a year. However, only now, when the pandemic drove everyone home, its benefits became apparent to everyone. Virtualization of desktops and applications is the best ally for companies that need to quickly adapt to new conditions. Using remote workstations, employees can perform their professional duties using the same software and applications as in their physical workstations - only in a safe place and without compromising efficiency.
Coronavirus is not the only reason why job virtualization may be relevant. The technology is useful at any time - for example, as a way to reduce the cost of organizing physical jobs. Or to launch projects with temporary teams, when the cost of purchasing equipment and programs becomes even less justified. All that is needed is just to know the specific needs of the company and each group of employees, as well as to imagine what resources should be allocated for their remote work, and it is better with a margin.
The ITGLOBAL.COM company is ready to advise on all issues related to the organization of remote workplaces. You can contact our specialists here.
