#GoToGetsIT: This article is part of an ongoing series from GoTo’s thought leaders on the frontlines: Our Solutions Consultants deeply understand our customers’ unique challenges and connect the right solutions to meet their goals using GoTo technology. Here, they share their industry knowledge on what it takes to help businesses everywhere thrive in a remote or hybrid world.
Three years ago, everything was simple. Employees worked on machines provided by their IT team, controlled by a firewall within their office network. Enter COVID-19. The pandemic revolutionized the way we work, and now the future of work across the world rides strongly on the concept of flexible or hybrid work. While a few companies adjusted quickly, for most, this was a foreign concept that leadership often dissuaded. Today, these work styles have not only impacted where we work, but also how we work. Users are now able to access work profiles from multiple devices, opening the door to the BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) concept and setting off potential headaches for all IT teams.
IT teams are now tasked with the added responsibility of not just supporting employees remotely but also enforcing security across this now dynamic ecosystem of devices used in their daily work. This justifies the need for the various IT trends we are now witnessing – IT consolidation, migration to the cloud, and transition to more modern and advanced remote support solutions and platforms.
Let’s first look deeper at the problems with the BYOD concept and how GoTo, the only all-in-one solution for business communications and IT support, fits in.
Problems solved
Whether a large company or small, allowing employees to bring their own devices to work is tantamount to loosening all of the control IT teams worked so hard to set in place. While security is a key concern, there are also business challenges with the concept, such as impact on business continuity and productivity when end users are faced with issues on these devices.
The following offer a glimpse at these challenges and potential solutions.
Get the buy-in from users
To include these devices in the managed environment, the first thing IT teams seek to do is set up policies on these devices. This is often met with friction due to closed Operating Systems, user hesitation, and lack of adequate tools to seamlessly connect to these devices without having to have the device physically present.
No more being in the blind
“It’s been so long since users have connected to the VPN, I have no idea about the status of their machines,” is a common IT manager’s concern. In these cases, GoTo recommends its cloud-based remote monitoring and management (RMM) tool, GoTo Resolve, which not only allows connections to end user devices from anywhere, but also enables IT to manage them without needing to open ports or spending hours on each individual device and getting it set up. This remote access functionality is protected by zero trust security, requiring authentication before granting access to the endpoint to lock out hackers.
Standardize the IT environment
User hesitation is common when it comes to the employee allowing IT access to their personal device, for fear that IT teams will have access to their personal content, history, and be able to monitor them or remotely control their devices without their knowledge. For the BYOD concept to be truly accepted, IT teams need to be transparent in their IT policies, use remote support tools that are permission-based and that record and log all activities performed on these devices.
Supporting everything, even hardware
Employees working from home look to their IT teams as the first point of contact for any device support, whether company-provided or their own, including software and hardware. IT therefore needs to have the right solutions in place to not just remotely support software, but also to assist with hardware-related requests such as configuring users’ home printers or, at times, helping them find the “any” key on their keyboards. (True story.) This is where IT agents use GoTo Resolve’s visual engagement functionality to connect with users and remotely fix or configure hardware.
Being future-ready
Given the growing popularity of mobile device usage, the question is not whether the BYOD policy should be accepted or not, it's whether you, as a company, are ready for it. Investing in a cloud-based tool that offers a Platform as a Service (PaaS) or Swiss-army-knife approach – like GoTo Resolve, which is compatible with all commonly used devices and Operating Systems (iOS, Android, MAC, Windows) and arms IT teams with tools for both secure software and hardware support – is the way forward in the race towards becoming truly future-ready.
