What do flexible working practices mean for your network infrastructure?

Adobe, Dropbox and Ford are just a few of the big names making a long-term commitment to flexible working practices.

With its many benefits, such as improved work-life balance for employees and reduced costs for employers, it’s no surprise.

But flexible working does come with its challenges. If you want to make a permanent shift to this new way of work, you'll need to ensure your network infrastructure is fit for purpose to accommodate flexible working practices.

So, let’s explore how remote working affects your network infrastructure and what you can do to optimise your IT to support it.

The necessity of SSL VPN

The average data breach comes in at a whopping £2.8 million. And, with remote working posing a series of IT security issues, you'll want to do what you can to protect your business.

When you use SSL VPN, your staff will get secure access to your network so you get total peace of mind. Thankfully, integration with your MPLS network is straightforward. In addition to this, you'll get the flexibility to create access roles for varying user types.

The power of SD-WAN

SD-WAN is also worth considering. Indeed, if you're currently using MPLS, you may want to move to modern software-defined networks to enjoy flexibility, insight and rapid changes.

With SD-WAN, it's easy to view traffic and trends through intuitive dashboard interfaces. You can monitor the demands, fluctuation and trends over time, and take rapid action based upon the data, pushing out changes to branches quickly to prioritise traffic for critical applications.

What's more, you can schedule and automate changes as you notice trends in your hybrid working practice. As an example, you might prioritise voice and video on a Monday when users are working from the office.

Impact on bandwidth

As your company makes the shift to remote work, you'll have to consider changes in bandwidth for your network as well.

Although hybrid working does not necessarily drive the need for more or less bandwidth. As hybrid working beds in, you will start to see pain points or areas of reduction.

What hybrid working does highlight though is the need to stay close to the network, having the data and insights to make changes (however subtle), as well as seeing the trends over time.

Adapt your network for flexible working practices

Most C-suite executives report a boost in productivity and employee engagement thanks to remote working, according to McKinsey.

With this kind of confidence, we can expect organisations to continue adopting hybrid working going forward. The question is: will your network infrastructure pull its weight?

If you implement the advice in this article, you'll be well on your way. Although, it can be hard to deploy these changes whilst managing the rest of your IT environment.

Find out more about Networks and Connectivity solutions today.