In networking management you see the results of the lessons learned over the past two turbulent years. Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), Desktop as a Service (DaaS), Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) solutions for unified endpoint management and zero trust security models have entered the agenda of IT managers to stay. The cloud is the new data center and the Internet is the new Wan: we need to adapt.
What networking management means
Let’s give a perimeter to what we talk about. Networking management means providing everything necessary for the network to meet the performance and quality of service requirements required by the organization, at an obviously sustainable cost. This “necessary” includes hardware, software and even human resources useful for carrying out operations such as network configuration, monitoring, querying, analysis and management.
From the emergency to the next normal
The pandemic was a jolt that quickly turned the tables. Many companies had already embarked on the path of a gradual smart working for some of the employees, but they certainly hadn’t expected to have to do it so quickly. To allow work from home, the attention of IT has focused on strengthening remote connectivity, as indeed has happened, even successfully in most cases, at the expense of monitoring, security and full network management .
Then things took the course we know. If the emergency had lasted a few weeks, as was initially thought, IT would have held up waiting for the workers to return to the office and almost everything would be back as before. Instead the times have lengthened, it has become necessary to evaluate long-term networking management solutions and, finally, to adapt them to a next normal characterized by hybrid working methods: hybrid working .
The era of hybrid working
We now know that over 80% of SMEs expect to see at least a quarter of their employees continue to work remotely most of the time. To say this is a research conducted by IFMA, the International Facility Management Association, which takes into consideration the changes underway also from the point of view of the management of office spaces. Another research, in this case from Pwc, indicates that 69% of corporate executives observed equal productivity , in some cases even greater, than employed workers from home.
Well, what do the workers say? According to a YouGov survey in the UK, there are many people who would like to return to work from their office desks , at least a few days a week, to preserve the human interactions they are used to and also to avoid the distractions that inevitably lead to us. i am working from home. There is also another interesting research, this is by GenGuru, according to which even the workers of the Z generation, those born after 2000, consider personal interactions important , even if for them “in person” means seeing each other on Teams and Zoom.
Networking management in the era of hybrid working
Not just in the office, not just at home. The new and different normal is hybrid work . Because working remotely is possible, it can be even more productive, but there are times when the office is necessary and there are also real estate investments that cannot be disposed of out of the blue. To return to IT, the question is: how does networking management change in the era of hybrid working?
The first step is to embrace a Cloud mindset. There is no doubt that multicloud and hybrid cloud architectures are the best answer to the needs of secure and flexible networking that improve the quality of work, making it simpler, faster, more efficient and functional. Then there are the tools:
- Virtual Desktop Infrastructure.
- Desktop as a service.
- Unified endpoint management solutions.
- Zero trust security.
Platforms that allow remote management of the network, anywhere and at any time, safe and also open to the development of microservices architectures, are the new era of networking management . Companies have the task of adapting them to their own needs.