In Part 1 of this blog series, we provided a high-level view of the challenges and opportunities available to companies related to collaboration. Especially as workforces become more and more distributed due to globalization and other forces, effective tools, processes, and cultures of collaboration become extremely important to the livelihood of modern companies. VMware tools and services can help promote the type of collaboration so crucial to companies today.
In Part 2, we focused on how to build a collaborative culture. Culture trumps strategy every day, as Nilofer Merchant famously said, and for good reason. Having a set of norms and expectations that help drive change is extremely important when the expectation is an organizational transformation.
In this entry, we will discuss how to determine the tools necessary to promote a collaborative culture. We purposefully didn’t tackle this area first for a simple reason: In so many of the firms I’ve worked with, it was clear to see that many collaboration-focused or other tools had been put into place without any idea of how they’d be operated, consumed, or promoted. For this reason, it was important to talk about building a culture, first and foremost, where the implementation of such tools had a chance to be successful. To simplify, implementing a new tool won’t fix culture on its own, but a toxic culture will sink a new, possibly expensive, piece of software immediately.
What Collaboration Tools Do I Need?
The modern workforce has changed dramatically, especially in this past year. Workers today expect to be enabled to do their jobs from anywhere, from any device, with no loss in productivity.
A few months ago, my wife woke up with severe shoulder and neck pain and needed to see her chiropractor that day. She didn’t feel that she could drive herself the twenty minutes to the chiropractic office. I started doing the mental math. It was a twenty-minute drive each way, and the appointment would last a little over an hour. Had VMware not implemented Workspace ONE and Horizon, I would have lost hours of work just to make sure my wife was OK. As it turned out, I was able to drive my wife to her appointment and work directly from the front seat of my car. Other than being a little cramped, I had no loss in my ability to access the tools and resources I needed.
Workspace ONE, specifically Workspace ONE Access, is the centerpiece to the magic. It acts as both a unified application catalog and unified authentication engine to simplify access to all the resources you need. More importantly, you as the administrator can create access rules to determine which apps will be presented, and HOW they will be authenticated, based on the device type the user is logging in from, the network location of the device, and more. Later in the day, I also needed access to an application, but I had already shut down my computer. Using Workspace ONE on my phone, I enabled work mode, accessed the data I needed, sent a few emails, and then shut off work mode for the night. In the old world, that forgetfulness would have led to a drive into the office.
VMware Horizon is equally powerful, especially now when workforces are distributed like never before. Horizon allows firms to deliver desktops and applications through a single platform. Have a heavy application that you want to make available virtually? Do your users sometimes need access to multiple machines, potentially with different operating systems? Horizon can do that. The tool is also extremely flexible thanks to the Horizon Cloud Control Plane. This feature allows you to host desktops and apps both on-premises and through multiple clouds, but still manage them through a single, holistic pane of glass.
These tools, working together, provide a powerful digital workspace that can fulfill the bold claims made at the start of this blog entry. Empowering the modern digital workspace is quickly becoming a requirement as the competition for top talent continues to be a major factor in business success today.
With all of these tools, it can be easy to get a little lost. In a future blog post, we’ll cover the Digital Workspace Journey Model, VMware’s approach to developing a roadmap for the modern digital workspace.
Next Steps
Still need help deciding how to drive collaboration in your organization using Workspace ONE? VMware Professional Services offers services to help you get started. Please contact your VMware sales representative for more information.
References
- Collaboration: How Leaders Avoid the Traps, Create Unity, and Reap Big Results by Morten T. Hansen, 2009.
- Yakin, Boaz, director. Remember the Titans. Distributed by Buena Vista Home Entertainment, 2000.
- Merchant, Nilofer. Culture Trumps Strategy, Every Time. https://hbr.org/2011/03/culture-trumps-strategy-every
About the Author
Roy D. McCord is a Staff Architect with VMware’s Professional Services Engineering team. He is responsible for architecting, building, and maintaining VMware’s End User Computing global portfolio of professional services offerings. Roy has previously worked as a team leader within the Workspace ONE consulting team and helped to build the practice from the ground up. He holds BS, MS, and MBA degrees from the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, GA. Roy resides in Alpharetta, Georgia
