In response to the mounting novel coronavirus threat, the recent move by many companies to encourage, and in some cases mandate, employees to stay at home to work is sure to create problems for corporate IT managers. Although telecommuting has been growing in the US, just 20% of workers worked from home at least once per week as of January 2020, according to the 2020 US Home Worker Study published by Independence Research LLC. This number is now growing dramatically.
IT managers facing the emergency scenario of 20% of employees working from home potentially surging to 90%+, with perhaps just a few days to prepare, will have a number of potential challenges to deal with.
- These potential challenges include:
- Overloaded network capacity
- Help-desk volume increase
- Cybersecurity concerns
- Home worker training and on-boarding
- Remote access to critical productivity applications
- Sharp increase in the need for better collaboration and conferencing tools
While these challenges are all addressable, the extraordinarily short window to create an efficient process means that IT leaders are facing an enormous test. Among all these challenges, the most critical will be creating and maintaining reliable and secure connectivity between the telecommuter location and the company network.
According to Independence Research's 2020 US Home Worker Connectivity Survey, reliable Internet connectivity is one.
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