siliconindia | | July 20209sustainable competitive advantage will have to resolve a set of challenges across both technologies and people, and piece together talent attraction and retention, employee engagement and partner engagement effectiveness in a cohesive manner. Underlying this wave will be the emerging deployment across key industries of a set of new technologies now taking shape, such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML),and spatial sensing and mapping.For example, remote workers will need access to experts, call center operators will need an environment where security and data privacy issues are well addressed, and teachers will need a way to monitor tests and exams. It's critical to start with the user's needs and create a user experience that threads back through the supporting technologies to create a user-friendly and highly functional working environment.The challenge for CIOsThe unique set of challenges presented by a remote workforce requires all senior leaders of an organization--CIOs, CHROs, CISOs--to work together to resolve them. The CIO needs to bea proactive participant in leading and driving change, describing the competitive advantage and clearly demonstrating the link between the technology agenda and the employee value proposition. Opening up the possibility of remote working to more employees demonstrates that it can work (and in days rather than months), so it can be a part of the new operational plan. But that means throwing away the old plan. They may have been working toward a PC refresh, a global software deployment or a new software-defined wide area network.Are those still the right priorities for the business?Of course, it's not that CIOs don't plan for unprecedented events. It's that most business continuity plans contemplate regional pandemics, and focus on how other regions of the globe can pick up the workplace slack. The global nature of the COVID-19 pandemic is unprecedented and has caught many CIOs unaware.Within this new wave, the CIO's role in managing the table- stake agenda from the previous three waves remains the same.From the broadest goal of on-the-ground operations (such as ensuring that technological systems and procedures are aligned with business goals) to planning ahead for the future (like understanding digital technologies and how to cost- effectively utilize them),the CIOs till plays an integral role. But now an additional focus needs to be put on the forward-looking "next wave" of technical building, beyond the table-stakes priorities. And early preparation is key.ACIO's Guide to Driving Remote Flexibility: Challenges and resolutionsWhen most people talk about remote working today, they are really talking about working from home. And of course, that is what many people are currently doing. What's interesting is that, even before we entered the pandemic situation, Gartner research suggested that "By 2030, the demand for remote work will increase by 30% due to Generation Z fully entering the workforce."However, the model needs to be flexible--the ability to "work from wherever," rather than just home, is key. The challenge for CIOs is that most current workplace constructs cannot be fully scaled to support a flexible remote- working model.We have already mentioned that buy-in from senior leadership is critical to ensuring that an effective remote-working model is created. For the CIO specifically, six factors are required for an employee to be able to effectively work remotely.1. A scalable network enabled by automation, such as software-defined networking (SDN) and virtualized network services (VNS), that can flex to support new usage patterns with work shifting outside of offices and enable application availability prioritization2. Cloud-ready applications for collaboration, core operations and support3. Strong and secure mobile connectivity to access those applications, as well as the corporate WAN (for those that are not cloud - enabled)4. End-to-end monitoring of network performance to maintain control, usability and security5. Zero-trust security implementation that strengthens the protection of sensitive information outside of physical offices6. A resilient end-user support model and supply chain that can deal with spikes in teleworker demand, both in terms of calls for help and the need for lap tops, tablets or other mobile devices Sowmyanarayan Sampath
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