What Is a Digital Workspace?
A digital workspace—also called a virtual workspace—is a set of evolving technologies that centralize the management and delivery of applications and desktops. It allows employees to access corporate resources and work securely from any geographical location by leveraging any device. This is regardless of whether applications and desktops reside in an on-premises data center or the cloud.
But a digital workspace is not just about facilitating remote access. It is a culmination of the enterprise mobility trend that has evolved over time to provide IT, administrators, with a streamlined and secure experience with corporate resources. In this regard, it allows IT, administrators, to simplify and centralize the management of applications and devices via tools such as
• Application and desktop virtualization.
• Mobile application management (MAM) and mobile device management (MDM).
• Enterprise mobility management (EMM).
• File sharing and content collaboration.
• Secure access to the software as a service (SaaS) applications.
• Identity and access management (IAM) features such as single sign-on (SSO).
What Are Some Use Cases for a Digital Workspace?
A digital workspace flips the traditional workplace model, allowing organizations to derive numerous benefits. Here are a few cases demonstrating how a digital workspace can help businesses.
What Are Some Use Cases for a Digital Workspace?
A digital workspace flips the traditional workplace model, allowing organizations to derive numerous benefits. Here are a few cases demonstrating how a digital workspace can help businesses.
Mobile and remote employees
Remote and mobile employees come in many forms, including
• Employees who work at sites other than the head office.
• Workers who often travel across the country or the world.
• Employees who want to work from home or co-working spaces part-time.
• Employees or freelancers who are fully remote workers.
A digital workspace allows these employees to access corporate resources—including legacy applications—and get the job done. A digital workspace can also help enforce compliance requirements such as the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) for regulated industries such as banks.
If employees often travel, for example, a digital workspace can allow them to work securely from any location, but only with applications and desktops that are risk-appropriate for each situation. Home healthcare workers, such as doctors and clinicians who often roam visiting patients, can also leverage digital workspaces to have immediate and secure access to sensitive data.
Knowledge workers
Usually, knowledge workers such as designers, architects, and researchers work on top-secret projects containing sensitive information and intellectual property. Sometimes, they may want to access these resources from endpoints in other locations outside the head office. A digital workspace can encrypt sensitive information and make it accessible only to the team.
Contractors:
Many companies rely on contractors, but managing their unique challenges can be problematic. For example, organizations must provide contract employees with company-owned devices and applications or deal with multiple contractors’ software environments when outsourcing for projects.
IT administrators can control access to applications and desktops while delivering the connection point for contractors by using a digital workspace such as a virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) solution. Temporary workers can then perform tasks via corporate resources without accessing applications that are not related to the contract.
They enhance flexibility
Digital workspace platforms allow employees to work at any time, from anywhere, via their preferred devices.
They foster productivity
Research shows that the more engaged workers are in their workplaces, the more likely they are to be self-driven, innovative and productive.
They enhance collaboration
A digital workspace facilitates easy and efficient interactions between supervisors and coworkers.
They can enhance high employee retention rates
Because of digital workspaces’ flexible working styles, employees feel appreciated in the organization.