ISG Provider Lens™ Digital Workplace of the Future - Global 2018 - Cloud-Based VDI Services

Digital Workplace of the Future

Personal digital secretaries for everyone: The enterprise workplace environment has seen significant changes and technology evolution in the most recent few years. Adopting digital technologies and corporate cultural change management have become key elements for developing a digital workplace of the future. Enterprises aspire to upgrade and transform the workplace environment to not only equip existing employees, but also to attract new talent.

The rapid growth in disruptive technologies, like cognitive automation, robotics, machine learning, artificial intelligence and virtual reality, has increased their applicability in workplace ecosystems. These technologies have the potential to elevate the digital dexterity of employees by taking over mundane and regular tasks. Employees now often have these newer technologies at their disposal to improve their abilities to work and their overall workplace experience. Newer and innovative technical approaches can provide a personal digital secretary to every employee. Digital secretaries can help employees by automating repetitive tasks and providing data and analytics at the right moment to support decisions and perform more efficiently.

Digital Workplace Consulting

Consulting is an integral part of digital workplace transformation: The majority of workplace transformation initiatives are increasingly beginning with a consultative approach. Digital workplace consulting covers current workplace environment assessment and understanding digital technology gaps. Enterprises prefer vendor-agnostic, independent consulting services. Dedicated consulting should assess the current enterprise environment and advise on the viability of implementing different technologies.

Analytics and automation are used in persona segmentation: A key element in digital workplace consulting and assessment is segregating end users into user personas and defining the requirements specific to each persona. Automation technology is increasingly being used in persona and workplace definition. Automated agents deployed on the end user’s system can collect usage information that can be difficult to obtain through traditional methods like focus group discussions and interviews.

Design thinking is becoming a key approach for consulting: Consulting services with a design-thinking approach define the parameters affecting the end-user experience. Digital workplace transformation initiatives can measure their effectiveness and return on investment based on these parameters.

The CIO is no longer the primary audience for consulting: The digital workplace consulting services aim not just at cost reduction but also to help align the business vision with end users’ needs. Digital workplace consulting requires interaction with business functions other than enterprise IT. Enterprises are increasingly involving business functions like human resources (HR) in their workplace transformation initiatives.

Technology migrations need consulting expertise: Major transformation initiatives like migration to Windows 10, Office 365 or G-Suite or the adoption of new social collaboration solutions require dedicated consulting and planning. Migration-specific consulting provides assessment, prepares the migration and adoption blueprint and provides a roadmap to implementation.

Managed Digital Workplace Services

Automation and analytics drive “shift-left” initiatives: Managed workplace services are adopting shift-left strategies that are intended to reduce overall incident tickets and associated service desk costs. Proactively monitoring systems, devices and applications enables predictive analytics that can prevent incidents from occurring. Automation also provides self-help and self-service features that let end users resolve their own issues without raising a service desk ticket. Tickets that are routed to the service desk agents now are typically of higher complexity, and agents are better equipped with the information and analysis to handle them. ISG’s experience with enterprise clients indicate that IT spending for end user computing, service desk and collaboration functions is approximately 19 percent of the IT budget. Increasing use of automation and analytics can lead not only to improved cost savings but also significant productivity gains. An automation-enabled service desk can manage 46 percent more end-users than traditional one.

Usage of AI-enabled virtual agents is increasing: AI-based virtual agents are becoming an integral part of managed workplace services. These chatbots aim to provide human-like support to end users. An intelligent chatbot can understand end users’ problems with devices or applications and either self-heal or send an automated request to the help desk on the user’s behalf. Chatbot agents can include sentiment analysis to help them gauge end users’ feelings by their text entry. Sometimes these automated agents are integrated with other business processes and applications to trigger application output or a function based on a user’s suggestion. It is like conversational commerce, where the system directs end users to relevant applications based on the content of the conversation.

AR/VR is being used for onsite and field support: Onsite and field support services have started using augmented reality and virtual reality technologies to enhance end-user experience. AR and VR can produce savings by reducing the need to deploy people for onsite support. Enterprises are also adopting digital lockers and IT vending machines to enhance end-user self-service and the digital experience.

Device-as-a-service model usage is increasing: More enterprises are opting for the device-as-a-service model, where, unlike traditional engagements, hardware is not leased but is paid for as part of a monthly service fee. Service providers can handle the entire procure-to-dispose-and-refresh device lifecycle while also offering associated managed services.

Measurable experience level drives new agreements: Digital workplace engagements are increasingly driven by end-user experience level agreements (XLAs) rather than by traditional service level agreements (SLA)s. Continuously monitoring systems, networks, devices and application performance can generate measurable information that can be used to provide overall end-user experience level.

Managed Mobile Enterprise Services

Workflow automation enables mobility: Enterprises are introducing mobility deeply within their workplace ecosystem and are focusing on integrating workflows and backend systems. Mobile enterprise programs continue to be a major contributor to business productivity beyond devices and communication. Enterprise clients are increasingly looking to service providers as partners for workflow automation.

Secured and managed access to devices: Different non-traditional mobile devices like wearable smart IoT devices are permeating the end-user space. Enterprise are looking for ways to securely manage diverse devices through technologies like mobile device management (MDM), enterprise mobility management (EMM) and user experience management (UEM). Device management services include business policy implementation, device configuration and secured application access.

Device- and application-level protection are necessary for security: Managing mobile enterprise services requires device- and application-level protection. Technologies like application refactoring and containerization secure availability and deployment across mobile devices. Service providers are also offering enterprise app stores that provide policy-enabled, secured access to approved applications for mobile devices.

Mobility solutions are increasingly industry-specific: There is an increasing focus on verticalizing mobility solutions. Many service providers are offering managed mobile services for industries and environments with unique requirements like manufacturing shop floors, secured areas and construction sites. Service providers also offer reusable dedicated managed mobility solutions for specific user needs in industries like retail, healthcare and banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI).

Analytics, AI-virtual agents: Analytics for telecom expense management and mobile strategy effectiveness measurement are becoming important aspects of managed services. Service providers are offering virtual agents that can be accessed via any device. Managed mobile enterprise services now also extend to smart IoT devices for predictive analytics, proactive monitoring and secured access.

Unified Communication and Collaboration

UCaaS is preferred model as companies migrate to cloud: The movement towards cloud is inevitable and many enterprises are now in transitioning phase of migrating existing unified communication infrastructure. Employees are demanding similar experience in their unified communications and collaboration (UCC) technologies as with their personal devices and platforms.

Skype for Business and productivity suite usage has increased: Traditional telephony is increasingly being replaced by office productivity applications like Skype for Business and Google Hangouts. Modern communication and collaboration tools provide VoIP, video and chat mediums with consistent experience across channels and devices.

Social collaboration is taking center stage: Enterprises are overwhelmed by growth in the enterprise social collaboration market, where many team and content-centric collaboration tools continue to be introduced. Many social collaboration offerings can provide complete solution packages that would otherwise require disparate UCC elements.

Smart offices and meeting rooms improve productivity: Services oriented to smart offices and meeting rooms can enhance productivity and collaboration among employees. Service providers are investing, and enterprises are increasingly looking for digitalizing their office environment to promote a consistent collaborative experience.

Change management is key to success: A key element for deploying and managing unified communication and collaboration services is enabling change management within enterprise culture. Methodologies like gamification and crowdsourcing aim to promote and enhance new technology adoption.

Cloud-Based VDI Services

Cloud-based VDI demand is increasing: Demand has consistently increased for cloud-based desktop virtualization services. Banking and healthcare organizations are increasingly looking for cloud-based VDI services to enable secured access on devices of employees’ own choice.

Thin client use is growing: Enterprises are also considering using cost-effective thin clients like Google Chrome to enable anytime, anywhere access with virtual desktops.

Hyperconverged infrastructure eases out VDI hurdles: Growth in hyperconverged infrastructure has also led to increased desktop-as-a-service (DaaS) adoption. Hyperconverged infrastructure attempts to counter the storage cost hurdle in virtual desktop infrastructures. With the growth in hyperconverged infrastructure vendors, cloud VDI is also gaining popularity.

End user analytics measures and monitor end user performance: Service providers are offering real-time analytics around end users’ usage for virtual desktops and can provision and deploy emergency and transient workloads in case of device failure. Device and app monitoring services can extend to cloud-based virtual desktop infrastructures and can predict downtime situations.

DIY trial versions bring in users: Some service providers are offering trials of their cloud-based desktop virtualization solutions from their websites. These offerings are aimed at increasing adoption and providing do-it-yourself (DIY) functionality for potential users to experience the provider’s service quality.

Cloud Workspaces – WAAS

WaaS is the next wave in cloud workspaces: Cloud-based desktops are gaining traction. However, more comprehensive resources are available in workplace-as-a-service (WaaS) cloud offerings. WaaS provides a complete workspace with associated applications, security provisions and device and application controls with managed services. WaaS implementation can significantly reduce enterprise capital spending because complete desktops, including applications and operating systems, can be managed and upgraded from the cloud.

Productized offerings are more common: Many service providers are moving toward a productized offering in digital workplace services. These cloud-based offerings are offered in a pay-as-you-go or pay-per-user model. Users get cloud-based “workspaces,” which can be a single interface for the end user to access all their workplace data and applications. Other managed services for the workplace form the back-end support system. Many services providers are already offering a mobile version, most of which include a virtual assistant and service desk function at the minimum.

Unified Endpoint Management

Culmination of many technologies necessitates management: With the proliferation of different devices and applications, device management has evolved from being device-centric to encompassing enterprise mobility management. UEM offers a culmination of PC device management, MDM and EMM. Many EMM and MDM solution vendors are focusing on offering a holistic, unified endpoint management solution. Many security service providers are also providing unified solutions to manage the different endpoints used to access the workplace environment.

Unified Device management is now in demand: A unified approach to manage different devices and endpoints is in demand. It requires centralized solutions for all devices, including smartphones, tablets, PCs, MACs and smart IoT devices.

A one-stop shop for enterprise IT, end users and mobility is expected: Because of enterprise IT’s requirement to manage all devices from one solution and end users’ expectations for self-service, UEM solutions are expected to provide end-user self-service, desktop and PC lifecycle management and endpoint mobility management.

Machine learning and AI usage has increased: Technologies like artificial intelligence and machine learning can monitor traffic at each endpoint and recognize threats in the device ecosystem. Only issues that are not being automatically resolved will be escalated to human agents.