Communications of the ACM
Remote Work is the New Normal, but the Tech Problems Won't Go Away
Some serious fine-tuning is needed if working from home is to become permanent, according to a new study.
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When COVID-19 hit, little thought was given by business leaders to fine-tuning the work-from-home experience of their employees. If things worked slowly, it didn't matter: at least, they worked. The first few weeks of worldwide remote working were about getting the basics up and running 'at any level'.
But as staff got more used to working from home, IT teams started seeing a huge surge in tickets filed for various work-from-home issues. And there is one complaint that IT teams hear time and time again: 'This is really slow'.
Digital transformation
"What does an IT worker do when someone is sitting at home, trying to access an application, and tells them: 'This is really slow?'" asks Joe Bombagi, director of solutions engineering at IT company Riverbed. "Most end users just want to access their applications and get the best performance. Behind the scenes, making that work requires a lot of technology, a lot of potential infrastructure, software and toolkits that make it seamless."
In fact, a report newly released by Riverbed shows that almost three-quarters of business decision makers in the UK were not prepared to support extensive remote work at the beginning of the outbreak. In the healthcare industry, the number jumps to 92%.
But now, a few months into the so-called 'new normal', business leaders are thinking about the longer-term implications of COVID-19 – and the evidence that remote working is not going anywhere, even once the crisis passes.
From ZDNet
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