While ‘workout boosters’ with impressive names are much talked about in sporting circles, they are mostly ineffective. ‘Workspace boosters’, on the other hand, are real winners. And why would you need such ‘workspace booster’? The answer is simple: to help you master the transformation of the modern workplace into the workspace, cost-efficiently and with quite some productivity gains.
Profile of a future workspace
Obviously, the workplace 4.0 era has already been initiated, and it is characterized by variety and multiplicity:
- Multiple devices – People work with traditional PCs as well as laptops and mobile devices Already today, the average employee uses at least three devices and works in a multi-device environment.
- Multiple applications – People work with any kind of applications, from traditional, physically installed applications to SaaS apps and mobile applications, with web and SaaS applications enjoying particularly high growth rates.
- Multiple data containers – Data are stored locally, on an in-house server or in cloud solutions such as Dropbox.
- Multiple identities – Each application requires an account with respective log-in credentials. Employees must memorize multiple user log-in names as well as related web addresses, a trend that has been labelled “URL madness” by American analysts.
- Multiple work contexts – The relevance of context-based links between apps, data, information, services and identities is increasing.
The analyst view
In short: Workstyles and workplaces are changing rapidly. Analyst firm Gartner uses the term workspace aggregation to describe this development. Managing these new work environments is a rather time-consuming and complex task, unless user organizations leverage a “workspace booster” or workspace aggregation solution. Now, what functionality should such workspace aggregator provide and how can users benefit from such solution?
Gartner has defined five workspace aggregator criteria; core capabilities include the following:
- Application delivery: the ability to orchestrate provisioning and de-provisioning of mobile, PC and web applications;
- Data: the secure delivery of data (both personal and business data);
- Management: management of the application life cycle, metering and monitoring features;
- Security: provision of context-aware security;
- User experience: a superior user experience through the delivery of a unified workspace.
The Workspace Aggregator as Productivity Booster
As of today, most companies use various management infrastructures to manage the individual workplace elements, including traditional, mobile and cloud-based management approaches. In the wake of increasing multiplicity and heterogeneity, companies need to rethink existing concepts accordingly. On the IT side, “one fits all” is the obvious direction to take. The goal is to provide a single tool to be used for organizing and managing employees‘ personal clouds, while ensuring technical security as well as legal compliance and providing seamless integration with business processes.
Why workspace aggregator solutions provide remedy
Workspace aggregator solutions such as MyWorkspace by Matrix42 are addressing these needs. They do not manage individual devices, applications or content, but rather provision users their personal cloud, consisting of multiple devices, multiple application types (e.g., mobile, virtual or physical apps, SaaS apps), multiple data containers (e.g., SharePoint, Google Drive, etc.) as well as multiple digital identities (e.g., AD account, Google ID, Apple ID, etc.) and heterogeneous IT services which can be accessed with one single password. The IT department can manage and support this cloud from within a central platform, providing users easy, compliant and secure access to their personal cloud. MyWorkspace minimizes the IT staff’s workload by providing the following:
- Technology independence and integration with existing infrastructures;
- Compatibility with all modern browsers;
- Easy-to- use interface;
- A high level of security, also under license compliance aspects.
As a result, user organizations benefit from cost savings and, even more importantly, higher employee satisfaction rates. And in any case, pressing the boost button is a child’s play with MyWorkspace, for employees and the IT team alike.
