COVID-19 Coronavirus v Technology Path

It's surprising what can instill business remodeling and push for changes in technology or an increase in an uptake.

COVID-19 has had an extreme impact in our daily routines and has pushed towards a working from home in ways that would have taken years to become the norm. 

Don't get me wrong we've been on our way there in the past few years with the developments onto cloud and SAAS solutions; on-line tools, integrations and deliveries; ICQ to Skype to a plethora of communication solutions.

In the company I work for/with I've had to roll out a solution we've has available in a SAAS group but never pushed on as it was a convenience solution in place of face-to-face meetings primarily used for FIFO (fly-in-fly-out) clients that might have a limited schedule to communicate and not be in a convenient location.

However now that COVID-19 had reared its head into the workplace it obviously creates a risk factor for a traditional face-to-face meeting which is quite likely to scare away a potential client.

Change management is usually a large roadblock in relation to uptake in a new solution within a company and requires carefully selected stakeholders to get things moving along as smoothly as possible but an unforeseen urgency that can threaten the core business can make people see things differently.

Forced Changes

More than a new communication service needed to be rolled out to cater to the new evolution of a work from home entertainment.

Traditionally you try to mitigate risks in relation to security keep a tight hold on your local network and set up segmented security fenses.

Obviously in today's workplace BYOD has been a security consideration for employee and external consultant mobile devices but they are traditionally set up in a separate perimeter with reduced access. However when moving/restructuring the majority of the office to be able to work from home (remotely) it's a completely different story.

If you're a completely Microsoft based network you can set up a dedicated VPN to the office and potentially a new server to handle 50+ virtual workstations by upgrading your licenses but this is obviously an expense you might not want in a time of uncertainty.

If you're Linux based something similar I presume would only require more hardware resources in this case as well as a VPN?

You might be lucky enough to only require office 365 and a Win 10 login (presuming employees have upgraded to Win 10 at home).

You could allow your employees to pick up their PC and take it home and share files through OneDrive, Dropbox or something similar...

Consideration & Implementation

What I had to roll out thankfully could be managed with less resources and additional costs thankfully.

I was concerned about:

• Network security

• Local network licences for role related software

• Communication processes

         ° Telephony processes (call-centers/forwarding/huntgroups etc.)

         ° Meeting/Conference calls & presentations

          ° Instant Messaging

• Network file and print management

• DLP

Obviously not a small undertaking and yes a lot of structure is/was already implemented but needed tweaking for the changes.