Three Dimensions of the New Normal

Citrix isn't just about virtualizing apps and desktops anymore. While virtualization is our DNA, the company has evolved far beyond that. In a recent series of online events, Citrix demonstrated that the digital workspace, when combined with a cloud environment and the latest security technology, is no less than the productivity platform of the future.  

The pandemic has tipped many businesses off balance: it has, at high velocity, introduced them to the new normal of distributed remote work. Today, after several months of crisis, and with workforce health and safety taken care of, organizations are increasingly refocusing on other business targets, such as productivity. They are moving from the tactical approach of trying to keep operations up and running to a strategic search for ways to adapt to this new normal. In doing so, they quickly realize that the new workspace environment cannot simply be a tool that provides access to the company network: it has to be a flexible, user-friendly, and secure environment that allows employees to work from anywhere, with any device, while supporting them in maintaining their productivity, health, and work/life balance. At the same time, it must meet business demands for agility, scalability, and security. 

This is why Citrix recently held a series of online events – the Cloud, Workspace, and Security Summits – that focused on the three main challenges facing businesses today: first, organizations need a flexible, and scalable digital environment – a challenge that is most efficiently addressed by leveraging the cloud. Second, they need to ensure employees’ productivity and well-being by providing them with modern digital workspaces. And third, they need to guarantee a high level of security across the distributed environments. Let’s take a closer look at these three dimensions of the new normal of work: 

1. Cloud Summit:

Recently, many companies – even those that had not previously included the cloud in their IT strategies – have come to realize that cloud services can provide them with an easy, flexible way to switch to remote work and allowing employees to work, communicate, and collaborate from their homes – or, in less stressful times, any other location. In this distributed, cloud-based architecture, employees can experience the same IT performance that they know from the office. To achieve this, Citrix leverages several optimization technologies: a remote access protocol stack specifically designed for fast access to remote resources; artificial intelligence-based continuous end-to-end-monitoring of the user experience; and dynamic, scalable application optimization via application delivery control (ADC) technologies. 

Of course, these optimizations are included when using Citrix Workspace on Microsoft Azure, but they are also available for the other leading public cloud environments. When migrating to the new normal of distributed remote work, it is important for comoanies to be able to use the cloud provider of their choice. At the Citrix Cloud Summit we announced expansions to our broad portfolio of public cloud partnerships, most notably with Microsoft Azure, AWS, and Google, enabling businesses to accelerate their move to the cloud, to scale their cloud environments, and to optimize the performance of all their cloud-based resources. 

2. Workspace Summit:

This event made it very clear that the digital workspace is much more than just a tool to give employees remote access to company resources. Rather, it is a platform that integrates all the apps, services, and data employees need with tools aimed at improving productivity as well as maintaining employee’s physical and mental well-being. 

Citrix has achieved this by extending Citrix Workspace from a pure workspace service to a versatile workspace platform that allows employees to adjust the work environment to their individual needs. This is done via standard or custom-made microapps aimed at improving the employee experience. For example, a team leader might approve a team member’s PTO request by a simple click on "Approve" directly in the workspace activity feed, without having to open the respective application and click through various screens. This is a great time-saver. By supporting a multitude of these microapps, and by allowing businesses to create their own, Citrix Workspace not only speeds up the daily routine for employees, but makes work more user-friendly and more productive: it takes away numerous distractions that keep employees from doing their best work while surfacing the most relevant information to the top with the help of artificial intelligence. 

While some businesses were worried that employees would be less focused on their tasks while in the home office, the opposite turned out to be true: many employees actually work more, up to the point of putting their work/life balance at risk. This is why the digital workspace is also designed to empower employees to maintain, or even improve, their work/life balance: they can, for example, let an app remind them when it's time to take a break, or they can activate an app that automatically summarizes fulfilled tasks in the evening to give them that satisfying feeling of achievement at the end of the day. This way, a modern digital workspace platform empowers employees to be even more productive than they once were at the office, with less distractions. At the same time, it enables them to take better care of their physical and mental well-being – be it at the office, in the home office, or while traveling. 

3. Security Summit:

The new distributed work environment needs to be scalable, productive, and user-friendly, but it also needs to be secure. In this regard, businesses are facing one fundamental challenge: the security solutions they are using – such as VPNs – were designed to occasionally give some employees access to the company network with company-owned devices. They were, however, not designed for today's new normal of many employees – at times, even all of them – accessing resources located in the company data center as well as in various clouds using any device, be it company-owned or BYOD. 

This is why the new normal of work requires a new security architecture – such as the ‘zero-trust’ approach for example, where security software in the cloud, powered by machine learning-based security analytics, constantly monitors endpoint and user behavior, continuously comparing it with the employee's user role and the usual behavior pattern. This security approach treats every endpoint like an unknown, untrusted one, and reacts automatically whenever suspicious behavior is detected. That makes the new normal more secure while also improving the user experience: access to cloud resources doesn't have to be routed to the company data center via VPN anymore, which speeds up access to web, cloud, and SaaS applications. 

Citrix has already implemented a zero-trust approach for accessing Workspace. At the Security Summit, we complemented this with a new zero-trust access service and a range of new partnerships with zero-trust specialists. These innovations and partnerships make Citrix Workspace the central hub for securely accessing all kinds of resources – on-premise, web, cloud, or SaaS applications – with a common zero-trust architecture. 

My personal conclusion from these three Citrix Summits: the digital workspace is capable of so much more than people generally think. It provides the highly agile, scalable infrastructure and user-friendly work environment that allows organizations and their employees to do their best work. It empowers employees to focus on relevant tasks – work-related as well as health-related – and it provides all the automation, security, and agility businesses need to be able to quickly adapt to new situations. The digital workspace isn't just ‘one more IT tool’ – it is the foundation for productivity, scalability, security, and employees' demand for a user-friendly, effortless employee experience. 

I highly recommend everyone interested in future of work technologies to have a look at the Summit presentations and customer success videos. They are available on demand here.