Commercial Integrator November 2021 - 10

#TECHTRENDING THE BUZZ ON TECHNOLOGY AFFECTING INTEGRATORS
#HybridWork
Cisco's Hybrid Work
Index Highlights
Remote Work
Flexibility, Equity
CISCO'S FIRST EVER Hybrid
Work Index sheds light on
key hybrid work collaboration
trends that should help integrators
make informed decisions
about their unified communication
and collaboration
customers, and it reaffirms the
demand for remote work and
meeting equity.
Specifically, 64% of employees
of Cisco's customers agree
that a remote work option
directly affects whether they
stay or leave a job. However,
only about half (47%) of the employees
surveyed believe their
company will allow working
from anywhere over the office
in the next six months to a year.
The index also found that
flexibility and wellness are key
drives for hybrid work, with a
majority of respondents saying
personal health, wellness and
flexible work arrangements are
a must in the hybrid work era.
Employees are also increasingly
joining meetings from
mobile devices, as 27% of
Cisco customers are using mobile
devices to join meetings.
Before the pandemic, that
figure was at just 9%.
The index also highlighted
the importance of meeting
equity and making sure every
participant gets an equal seat at
the table. According to Cisco,
only 48% of participants are
likely to speak in an environment
that overwhelmingly
includes remote workers.
Other findings include the
explosion in usage of AI capabilities.
According to Cisco, the
use of AI tools like noise reduction,
automatic transcriptions
10
and translations, polling and
gesture recognition increased
over 200% from July through
September 2021.
The Hybrid Work Index
sheds light on key findings for
technology leaders, giving IT
insight into where the challenges
remain and where opportunity
exists.
For example, the index
found that home networks are
now one of the most critical
parts of the enterprise network,
as teleworker devices have
doubled in growth compared
to small and medium business
routers since the start of the
pandemic.
Cisco's Hybrid Work Index
also touched on the cybersecurity
implications of hybrid work,
citing the growth (2.4 times)
of malicious remote access attempts
since the pandemic. Just
last month, the hybrid workforce
was targeted with more
than 100 million email threats
daily, according to Cisco.
However, despite the clear
need for cybersecurity tools
and endpoint protection,
collaboration apps are still the
most critical for hybrid work
success, according to survey
respondents, and are the most
monitored application type
globally. Collaboration apps
now rank above secure access
and productivity application
monitoring, according to Cisco.
The shift to remote work has
necessitated a major investment
in cloud computing for
many organizations, and in
large part, cloud provider networks
have demonstrated more
stability than ISPs, according to
the index, as cloud providers
have accounted for just 5% of
outage incident volume, while
ISP networks have accounted
for the remainder.
Commercial Integrator NOVEMBER 2021
Cisco's Hybrid Work Index highlighted the importance of
meeting equity and making sure every participant gets an
equal seat at the table.
Despite global feelings that
remote work should remain,
data shows that employees
are going back to the office,
as devices connected to
office-based Wi-Fi networks has
increased 61% over the last six
months. According to Cisco,
higher education, professional
services and hospitality are
driving that growth.
" We're truly at a unique time,
with the ability to redefine
work, " said Chuck Robbins,
the company's chair and CEO,
in a statement. " All employees
around the world want a workplace
that enables them to do
their best, and it is our responsibility
as business leaders to
learn how best to support and
enable our employees, however
and wherever they work. "
›› @Cisco #RemoteWork
#Cybersecurity
#AVaaS
NSCA, PSA
Release Study On
Service-Based Models
THE NSCA AND PSA HAVE
released a new study that the
organizations hope will change
the integration industry's
dialogue around service-based
business models.
If you're ever tired of hearing
about why integrators need to
adopt the revenue models of
Netflix, Hello Fresh, Microsoft
365 and other popular technologies
delivered as a service,
then this should be a breath of
fresh air.
However, we don't need to
look at those services to understand
why AV-as-a-Service can
be a successful business model.
Instead, we need only to look
at the success of the managed
service provider (MSP) industry,
the organizations say.
The organizations surveyed
more than 25 integration companies
and found several common
challenges and successes
among companies that are
experiencing growth as a result
of adopting a service-based
business model.
For many, the transition takes
a lot of work, with 96% saying
the researched pricing, structure
and offerings and 85% saying
they undertook extensive
training, including on how to
sell service offerings (61%) and
training on new products of
commercialintegrator.com
SUNDRY PHOTOGRAPHY/STOCK.ADOBE.COM
http://www.commercialintegrator.com
Commercial Integrator November 2021

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Commercial Integrator November 2021
