COVID-19 Fuels MSP Cloud Deployments for Remote Work
… funneled resources into remote work likely will continue to support that strategy.
“For those who were new to remote work until the pandemic, we believe there will be a significant upswing in their adoption,” wrote Kate Lister, president of Global Workplace Analytics, in a blog. “My best estimate is that we will see 25-30% of the workforce working at home on a multiple-days-week basis within the next two years.”
Maven Wave’s Foa agreed.
“Once this health threat has passed, we believe that our clients will evaluate how prepared and effective their workforces were during this time,” he said. “And in the end, this situation will accelerate workforce trends like working remotely and flexible work arrangements.”
Eran Gil, CEO at Israel-based AWS premier partner AllCloud, made a similar observation.
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“When we all break through this crisis, we strongly believe that organizations which embrace cloud technology will emerge stronger and ready to lead the recovery,” he said.
Common Deployment Challenges
But given the exponential growth in COVID-19 cases and deaths in the United States alone, the prospect of an economic upturn and a return to corporate buildings appears premature. Therefore, MSPs remain in all-hands-on-deck mode as clients initiate and hone their work-from-home capabilities. And the challenges facing cloud partners look much as one might predict — enterprises’ old technology, including hardware; insufficient connectivity; and the need to ensure interoperability and security.
“In some cases, it’s as simple as making sure our customers have the right equipment in their homes,” SADA’s Safoian said. “In other cases, we see customers who are relying on antiquated technology, such as VPNs. These customers are being blindsided by the reality that VPN infrastructure wasn’t designed to handle massive amounts of traffic simultaneously.”
A similar scenario is cropping up for 2nd Watch, an AWS premier partner and a Microsoft Azure gold partner.
“The vast majority of companies are able to get basic applications like email and document sharing remotely,” said Jeff Aden, executive vice president at 2nd Watch. “Where companies may need support is gaining secure access to data or high-intensity applications that may not be in a hybrid or public cloud environment. These applications require large amounts of GPU and CPU to operate properly.”
In terms of ensuring customer security in the cloud, AllCloud is looking to virtual PCs as the answer.
“Employees can access their data and applications as they would if they were on premises, but instead through a remote connection to instances that are on a company’s active directory domain,” said Eric Crump, senior vice president. “The best part is that an organization’s data remains fully isolated and protected, so organizations can ensure their remote workforce never breaches security policies.”
There’s another point to consider, too, when it comes to infrastructure, said Avant’s Presti.
“If you’re going to drop UCaaS into a client’s environment, will it interoperate with their current desk phones, or will they have to go to a softphone or change devices entirely?”
Next, at Unitas Global, staff are discovering many organizations have inadequate bandwidth for supporting disparate employees. Regardless of the measures MSPs take to address …