For the past 30 years or more, IT departments supported knowledge workers who sat at a desk, with access to a finite amount of information to do their work. But the nature of business is changing. Digital disruption is having an impact on every sector. For today’s organisations to succeed, they need to give workers IT solutions that support mobile and team working, with fast access to a much broader range of relevant information. 
To create this new digital workplace, you must tackle the top three challenges that hold many businesses back from delivering business transformation:
- Legacy technology: Ageing IT infrastructure, both in front of users and in the data centre, was never designed to provide the kind of connectivity and easy access to data needed to build collaborative and mobile solutions. Many companies find themselves saddled with an IT foundation that makes it hard to deploy the innovative technologies that support team working and increase productivity, from anywhere at any time. Employee engagement is also being put at risk by frustration with work systems that don’t match their experience of mobile, collaborative and intuitive apps in their personal lives.
- Budgets: IT budgets are under strain as IT teams balance “keeping the lights on” with investing in modernising their infrastructure for the new digital business world. Businesses embarking on digital transformation need to be able to deploy innovative technologies incrementally and without breaking the bank.
- Security: Company and customer data is more vulnerable than ever in a digital workplace focused on letting users share and access data while on the move. Hacking and malware such as ransomware are on the rise. The penalties for failure are also higher, whether we’re talking about fines under the EU’s new General Data Protection Regulation or the damage to brands caused by high-profile incidents reported in the press. According to a survey by CCS Insight, security is now seen as the biggest barrier to investment in digital workplace technology and the most important factor — above connectivity and value for money — when purchasing mobile devices.
The answer to all these challenges is to embrace the idea of the cloud worker. Cloud workers — already 1 in 4 of the workforce — spend more than half their working day in the browser, using cloud-based apps like G Suite. They also benefit from easy access to data stored in the cloud and devices designed to work seamlessly with the cloud.
To find out more about why you should be supporting cloud working in your business and how to turn your employees into cloud workers, come and talk to the cloud worker experts in our G Suite team.