Remote work. Businesses and employees worldwide are fully embracing the “new normal” of remote work brought on by the COVID pandemic of 2020, but is the internet up to the task? Ninety-four percent of remote workers say that it isn’t.
The majority of companies and workers see remote work as a win-win that will stick around for the foreseeable future. Still, new challenges must quickly be resolved, such as network security and network reliability.
In a survey of remote employees, 69% reported having VPN issues, 35% report that slow internet caused decreased productivity and unfinished work, and 43% report using phones and hotspots for work during the apex of the pandemic. Virtually all remote employees are being affected and their effectiveness dampened by network issues.
Another, and perhaps more concerning, challenge brought on by remote work is the issue of network security. Before COVID and before the sudden jump to remote work, 71% of companies reported that their network security was working well for their businesses. Today, that number has dropped to 44% as employees access work applications and connect to their company networks via less reliable sources.
For businesses and employees to bring productivity back up to pre-COVID levels, some basic obstacles must be removed. IT departments must find ways to deliver stronger security with zero-trust network access and full visibility; they must enable faster networking with increased reliability and optimization; and they must simplify connectivity by removing unnecessary hardware, which would also lower administrative costs.
Ananda Networks solves all of these problems and more with its cloud-based SASE model and private networks, which take only minutes to create. It allows companies to lower costs and improve network performance by up to 25x.
By 2025, we’re expected to see 87% more employees working remotely than there were before COVID. With 78% of executives saying that remote work is a permanent change and 96% of employees seeing this as a move in the right direction, it is time for the internet to get on board. The only choice is to keep improving. Check out this infographic on remote work.
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