The virtual workforce is looming

The South African business environment is becoming increasingly instrumented and employees are being encouraged to engage in work that is production based rather than measured in terms of hours.

This is according to James E. Stevenson, Citrix Area Vice President for the United Kingdom, Ireland and South Africa, who spoke today (2 August 2011) at a Citrix Solutions Seminar held in Sandton, Johannesburg.

According to Stevenson, companies are moving away from traditional HR methods by encouraging employees to complete projects, rather than spend hours at the office, and work from locations other than the office.

The ‘virtual workforce’ is also being powered by the significant availability of a multitude of platforms from which employees can work such as smartphones and tablet PCs. Stevenson believes that this trend was initiated by the emergence of Apple’s iPhone into the world market several years ago and has been solidified by the widespread adoption of tablet devices such as the Apple iPad within the business world.

Driving Factor

According to Stevenson, the driving factor behind this phenomenon is consumer capability. “Consumer capability has overtaken IT. User experiences are often better at home than they are at work – it is for this reason that consumerisation will become the next major trend within Information Technology in the next decade. It’s changing the way that we operate,” said Stevenson.

To prove this, Stevenson quoted a Citrix survey that was conducted in South Africa which showed that roughly 45% of respondents were working and accessing information on three or more devices. Roughly 6% accessed information on five or more devices – indicating the level of sophistication and instrumentation that has become prevalent within the South African business space.

To add to this, Sean Wainer, Country Manager for Citrix Systems in South Africa added that 71% of the company’s respondents indicated that they worked primarily outside the office while 92% of companies questioned approved of their employees working from home.

Citrix Receiver

Stevenson added that Citrix has made sure to keep abreast of these changes within the global business environment. The company has deployed Citrix Receiver, a freely available application which allows users to access mobile, web based and Windows applications and desktops remotely regardless of the platform.

Citrix Receiver also plugs in to business enterprise architectures and private cloud based applications. This allows users at a number of levels to gain access to remote desktop and virtualisation technology for free.