How To Scale Enterprise-Grade Connectivity For Remote Workers
How To Scale Enterprise-Grade Connectivity For Remote Workers Originally posted on Forbes.com
While the latest pandemic outbreak has slowed the return of remote workers to the office, corporate acceptance of WFH (work from home) and hybrid work is here to stay. The only question is how to scale seamless, crystal-clear, enterprise-grade connectivity for this geographically dispersed group.
Organizations have made tremendous progress creating digital-first channels to conduct business, collaborating over video teleconferencing such as Zoom or Microsoft Teams, expanding cloud-based deployment of key applications and offering consumers new digital entry points via web browsers and mobile devices to replace a wide range of in-person services. The key to making these innovations work is broadband connectivity.
The fast, clear and secure exchange of information is essential to conducting work or providing services. It is the pillar supporting productivity, innovation, competitive advantage and reputational standing for companies and office-based or remote workers. We can all take pride in the resilient response of IT leaders who acted quickly when workers across the country were abruptly sent home, enabling two-thirds of American GDP to be produced from people’s home offices. Now, it’s time to solve the problems caused by this quick workaround. Here’s how to scale lasting connectivity solutions for an ongoing remote workforce.
Understand The Gaps In Service Quality
Here’s a little-known fact: Broadband networks serving residential users are engineered differently than enterprise networks. Telecom, cable or ISP wired connections do not serve individual homes directly. All data transfers are routed through a neighborhood or subdivision node. Residential remote workers must share their daily processing power and data needs with their local community. The carrier aggregates all data traffic through the node without the ability to prioritize individual needs or speeds.
People find this surprising when I speak with business executives. They think the problem comes from inside the home when family members are using multiple devices. Parents are trying to conduct Zoom meetings while one child is uploading a homework assignment and another is streaming a YouTube video or playing Call of Duty. Indeed that is an issue, compounded by multiple families in the neighborhood. Carriers will pull back the throttle on your individual connection in order to keep the entire subdivision running, albeit at a much slower speed. That’s why the Internet seems to slow down at odd times throughout the day. Consumers call this “Netflix o’clock.” The telecom industry calls it “oversubscription.”
Many corporations try to solve these bandwidth issues by offsetting costly, high-speed internet subscriptions with financial subsidies for WFH employees. The problem is, there’s no way to guarantee those speeds for residential plans or mitigate downtime or service outages with minimum time to repair. Service level agreements for residential broadband-only offer “best-effort” internet speed, lacking the standards written into contracts for business connectivity. Nor can remote workers switch to another ISP provider. With few exceptions, communities in the U.S. are currently served by single carriers.
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Finally, there is a significant quality issue. By now, every remote worker has experienced a dropped or frozen Zoom call, tried to decipher jittery or “clipped” business conversations with missing words or phrases and struggled with lengthy downloads or cumbersome file transfers. And IT professionals are growing more concerned about potential security breaches over home networks and the subsequent rise in corporate ransomware demands.
Replicating The Enterprise Experience At Home
The first step for corporate leaders is to budget and plan for the connectivity needs of remote workers similar to configuring the Internet connections for a new branch office. Just as IT departments will allocate laptops, cell phones and other hardware to branch offices, remote workers should receive enterprise-grade routers and connectivity options that adhere to company standards.
Remember, this approach does not require installing fiber optic cable to potentially thousands of geographically disparate workers. Technology advancesin cellular-first, cloud-enabled, wide-spread virtual networks (also called cellular SD-WANs) are fueling the rapid growth of pop-up retail stores, healthcare clinics, financial services providers, construction projects and hospitality locations, all of which are subject to data security regulations and compliance. At the same time, choosing best-of-breed cellular SD-WAN networks eases future incorporation of 5G connectivity. Home-based employees can take advantage of these developments, too.
WFH Hardware Checklist
To support remote workers with seamless, crystal-clear connectivity with appropriate security safeguards that meet compliance regulations, IT leaders should consider the following criteria:
• Enterprise-Grade Routers: In addition to managing the flow of data from multiple devices to the internet, this equipment should have additional functionality, such as switching and firewalls, to prioritize and protect work-related data from potential security threats on the home network. These capabilities can be integrated into a single box and remotely managed, lessening the need for IT troubleshooting and support.
• Wireless (Wi-Fi) Transmitters: These devices can operate on as many as 14 radio frequencies, including 4G LTE and 5G channels to ensure internet speed and access, regardless of location, eliminating broadband dead zones. In contrast, consumer-grade equipment is often limited to two transmission frequencies at most.
• Service Level Agreements: Home-based connectivity equipment used by WFH employees should be folded into enterprise broadband subscriptions, with multi-carrier options for internet failover. If their neighborhood telecom provider has a service outage, the router should switch over to another ISP or cell tower without any interruption in service.
Last year, businesses saw an unusual increase in WFH numbers, including numerous remote workers who fled their homes for less crowded (and therefore, safer) locations. However, the workforce’s youngest members — Generation Z or digital nomads — already popularized this trend. Remote work is only going to grow.
Strategic and thoughtful planning for these workers will transform isolated WFH connectivity solutions into a private enterprise channel, one that is cloud-enabled and offers a single pane for trouble-shooting by IT specialists.
By doing so, enterprises can easily assume full responsibility for providing seamless, reliable connectivity with appropriate security safeguards for their remote workforce, gaining a competitive advantage with customers, end-users and the workforce of the future.
