Yesterday’s pre-COVID IT infrastructure was optimized for a more predictable world, with a mostly fixed set of endpoints and operational models. This has changed dramatically as the pandemic has altered global behavior, workforce locations, device mixes, and endpoint distribution.
Now the endpoint landscape is far more variable, fluid, and fungible, and this will likely remain so for the foreseeable future. Tomorrow’s IT infrastructure must assume that IT borders, network connections, and endpoints will continue to change much more rapidly and require faster turnaround cycles to cope with fast-shifting operational conditions, cybersecurity threats, and employee support issues.
A changing workforce compounds the changing IT landscape
As well as the IT infrastructure landscape changing, so has the workforce. Today’s workforce now being more multi-generational with differing degrees of digital skills, inclinations, and capabilities. This has especially had an impact during remote work, where all workers must be digitally versatile in order to work effectively and participate within the organization.
Meeting the demands of this diverse worker audience requires a high degree of empathy with their needs and a rigorously maintained view of their ongoing issues and challenges.
The future enterprise IT infrastructure
Balancing all of this to deliver a better digital employee experience may sound difficult, but successfully delivering on it doesn’t have to be daunting. However, it does require targeted improvements to IT infrastructure and how it functions today. This means the future of IT infrastructure is one that is designed and operated very differently, where rapid change, far flung endpoint estates, and frequent disruption are not only norm, but routinely addressed. This means fostering a newer, more nimble technology landscape along with new agile operating models to match.
The important new aspects of this IT infrastructure are:
- Support for frequent, rapid changes in endpoint locations
- Low impact, small footprint management agents that don’t affect oft-fragile remote work endpoints
- The ability to scale and deliver real-time endpoint management to hundreds of thousands of highly diverse devices without vast new investments in infrastructure or network capacity
- Real-time digital experience monitoring and management
- Automation of IT service management to the 90% level of incidents, emphasizing end-to-end self-service and automation
- Predictive and prescriptive infrastructure management that allows incidents and important new endpoint trends to be identified and quickly addressed before workers even notice
Remote work was forced upon many organizations by the pandemic, and capabilities around it must be continually improved. A rapid and effective shift to a better IT model can deliver a better digital employee experience to most organizations today. What’s more, this new future of work is readily accessible and possible for most organizations who have the desire and will to improve.
WFA Enterprise Conference 2020
If this blog has intrigued you, Dion’s presenting at the first-ever Work From Anywhere Enterprise Conference 2020 on July 29-30. He’ll be continuing to discuss this topic, presenting a detailed blueprint for the future IT infrastructure in a WFA world. Want to get involved? Sign up here: wfaconf.com/day2-keynote/
