BECHTLE AG by Dennis Trescher, Benjamin Schnizler
One man's joy is another man's pain. While New Work concepts can bring with them plenty of benefits such as more flexible working and a better work-life balance for employees, for IT departments, they mean having to manage environments that are becoming ever-more complex. It's a job made even more difficult by the increasing number of cyberattacks, but modern IT deployment and management can help relieve your IT staff of tedious and time-consuming routine tasks.
written by
E-Mail: dennis.trescher@bechtle.com
E-Mail: benjamin.schnizler@bechtle.com
The days of new employees going to the IT department to get the password for their office computers are long gone. Today, the majority of our work is done online with cloud services, conferencing tools and remote accesses ensuring that everything runs smoothly. And while this flexibility is ideal for most employees, IT departments are left with a mammoth task of ensuring data protection and security at all times without negatively impacting the user experience. On top of all this is the fact that there are a wide-range of devices being used and IT don't generally have physical access to staff notebooks, tablets and smartphones, not to mention that setting up, provisioning and managing accounts requires extensive communication.
Automation saves time and resources.Wherever there are recurring, routine tasks to be done, automation can help. In this case, when the computer or smartphone is turned on for the first time, they automatically receive the configurations assigned to them by IT. And it doesn't stop at automated set up. Devices can be managed in this way through out their entire lifecycle. All it takes is for the tools to be connected via an effective device management solutions, which is available from various manufacturers. Those looking to outsource some tasks won't go far wrong with Bechtle's SMART Workplace.
The one aspect these solutions have in common is that they allow all end devices and also individual applications to be managed from one single console, facilitating rollouts of security patches and updates with minimal effort. Another advantage is that monitoring of and compliance with company policies and data protection regulations is child's play, even when employees use their own personal devices.
The Modern Workplace concerns everyone.By no means should the Modern Workplace be seen as purely something the IT department has to handle. Rather, it demands a cultural shift towards flat hierarchies and agile working and a complete rethink of communication and sharing data. For this reason, it's essential that the Modern Workplace is considered from a strategic point of view and with the IT department, management, departments and users working closely together. At first glance, it seems an impossible task to balance easy access to resources with security, but, with the right solutions, it's no problem at all.
As ever, the greatest risks to the IT infrastructure are posed, not by hackers, but by careless employees. For convenience, many still use the same easy-to-remember password for several accounts and if hackers get their hands on them, the world is their oyster. Unfortunately, calls to use secure passwords and only use those passwords once tend to fall on deaf ears.
Keeping passwords secure.Against this backdrop, responsible IT management today has to take different steps to ensure security. One example is multi-factor authentication (MFA), which we all know from online banking, and which authenticates users using at least two different methods. This could be a password plus biometric data or using another app for authentication.
In this instance, modern smartphones play into the hands of administrators as, for the most part, the devices can be used as a second method of authentication. Another option is to set up one single access point for all shared resources. Or in other words, single sign-on. This is beneficial as the more passwords a person has to remember, the greater the risk that they will be used multiple times. A zero trust concept is also a possibility. Until now, in many companies, all it takes is an employee to log in once before they have access to parts or even the entire network. A zero trust concept, on the other hand, only gives employees access to exactly the resources they need to do their work.
The cloud is here to stay.Employees working from home or on the road are one thing, and corporate IT is another. There aren't many companies today that can do without cloud-based resources such as Software as a Service (SaaS) and for good reason as they mean maintenance and support are much simpler, or you don't have to worry about these things at all. Plus, it's incredibly easy to scale capacities up and down as required. The situation is quite different and much more expensive for physical workstations in an office.
IT admins can enjoy the best of both worlds. VPN is still seen as the best way to secure external access, but while they are useful, they create a lot of work and are prone to errors. However, when combined with modern device management, access to most cloud apps can be secured using MFA, too.
Want to find out more? Bechtle can help you design, set up and use these solutions.
Share article
Blog
"Can I work from home tomorrow? Someone'll have to let the heating person in." This is not a sentence you'll hear very often anymore, because in a lot of companies, people connecting to the office within their own four walls is nothing worth talking about. Flexibility is the magic word. Yet the amenities of a modern workplace are not without their challenges, as the realities of existing structures often defy the hybrid workplace. Empowering a modern work style is not just a matter of giving people the right tools; it also takes a much more radical cultural shift.
Thorsten Krüger is Business Manager Consulting Services at Bechtle AG. He looks back on over 30 years as a lecturer, consultant and project manager as well as managing director in IT.
Magazine
Staying agile at the workplace is nothing new in successful companies. But recent times have seen an unprecedented degree of agility, reactions and mental flexibility demanded from employees. Digitalisation has hit the turbo button. And change is coming fast. We have learnt that unexpected surprises can always be waiting around the corner, and that we have to prepare for them. That aside, agility can really give your workforce a competitive edge. Working out feels good. But which exercises are good for you, yet don't make you look unprofessional?
Blog
For many years, a lot of German companies have rejected the idea of integrating home office and location-agnostic working into their corporate culture, but events of the past year have left them little choice as the world of work has undergone fundamental changes. Experts predict that some of these changes will be permanent and we have witnessed the birth of new world of work with digital leadership, less office-based working, fewer trips and more online-first conferences, and the use of digital collaborations tools characterising our working days.
Modern workplace
Modern Workplace ✓ The digital workplace of the future ➥ We make sure that your digital workplaces work perfectly. ✓ Learn more
Florian Vees is a junior consultant at Bechtle in Stuttgart, working on Office 365, Modern Workplace and Collaboration. He is certain: "Solutions from Microsoft and its partners are the ideal way to implement the future of collaboration.
We make sure that your digital workplaces work for you. Find out more about the digital workplace of the future.
After four years of learning about virtual and augmented reality (VR/AR) technologies from a scientific perspective as part of my doctorate, one thing was clear to me: now I want to promote the use of AR/VR in practice. At the Bechtle IT System House in Karlsruhe, my focus in the Modern Workplace division is therefore on these two technologies. In joint discussions, I help companies to use the technologies efficiently and profitably so that they offer added value for their processes and employees.
When the Handelsblatt Media Group sought to empower its employees with the workplace of the future, it reached out to Bechtle.
A seamless meeting experience relies on so much more than the use of modern devices. Alongside video and audio devices that integrate with each other, it's crucial to select the perfect collaboration platform. The decision should be based on whether it can be efficiently and easily used as at the end of the day, it's your employees who are going to have to work with it.
Blog
Too often, there are recurring or persistent challenges at the company, project and task level: be it the company still struggling with increasing competition and decreasing demand, the project once again not completed on time and on budget and not meeting all requirements in terms of quality either, or the unsatisfactory collaboration with colleagues. A reflection room can be an open, communicative solution to these challenges.
Promotion
Jabra's New Ways of Working philosophy - the idea of organising work in a way that employees can use their full potential.
Promotion
Digitalisation is changing the way people live and work. Experience the digital standard of tomorrow with Cisco. Find out more!
Promotion
Innovative workplaces for demanding employees. Your new workplace is already waiting for you: modern, high-quality, functional.
Successfully introducing new technologies requires users to change their behavior. And change can be hard. It's more than just learning how to use it. It's a fundamentally different way of working. This change is about people. We help you manage the people factor in your IT project.
Business applications
Companies and employees alike are seeking new and efficient ways to interact. Discover how you can take collaboration to the next level.
Promotion
Discover the whole Bechtle workplace world. Invest in the future and work better with a client environment that really fits.
Magazine
Customer story
As part of the country's critical infrastructure, rhenag chose Bechtle to connect employees to the cloud through Microsoft Azure. Microsoft Teams now allows employees to collaborate remotely.
Plantronics has a noise cancelling headset to suit all working environments - the right tools for the right people in the right job.
Blog
Digitalisation is changing the way people live and work. This has also changed the expectations that end users have towards applications, especially in terms of usability, as badly designed apps can now easily frustrate customers. Something we can all relate to from experience. On the other hand, you also have many examples of how a positive user experience can really bind your customer to a software or even a brand as a whole. Expectations towards digital services have changed-customer satisfaction is now key. In this blog, we'll outline the opportunities digital transformation can bring to the finance and insurance sector and how you can make them work for you.
Promotion
Blog
For the past decades, it was a given to drive to the office every day and have all your colleagues working on premise at the same time, but this changed drastically throughout the course of the last year, when companies were forced to send their employees home. To keep businesses afloat, ways had to be found to collaborate virtually, even in places where it previously wasn't possible. Topics such as the compatibility of different technologies or the needs of employees often fell by the wayside. More and more people are returning to the office, but for many, working from at home has proven to be a good alternative that they would like to sustain for the future. The new normal of working will most likely be a hybrid of the two.
Attachments
- Original document
- Permalink
Disclaimer
Bechtle AG published this content on 21 October 2021 and is solely responsible for the information contained therein. Distributed by Public, unedited and unaltered, on 21 October 2021 10:23:02 UTC.
