Post-pandemic the trend for remote working looks likely to remain. Chris Gilmour, CTO Service Provider & Enterprise, explains how the Axians Work-from-Roam solution is supporting workforces to continue working securely, productively and profitably wherever they are.

Calls for employers to offer flexible working, including working from home, have been growing increasingly louder over the last few years. Yet just one in three UK workers had the option to work remotely in 2019.

This changed overnight when the country first went into lockdown in March 2020 and the government advised everyone who could work from home to do so. By April, 46.6% of people in employment were doing at least some work from home, with employers racing to provide their workforce with right tools and equipment.

Our ICT brand Axians had never been busier as we supported customers to implement VPN (Virtual Private Network) access for their staff to securely connect to shared servers and cloud applications as if they were in the office.

We also took this opportunity to rethink how services are delivered to remote users, combining next-generation technology and cloud-based security so we could meet the requirements of organisations to function throughout the pandemic and beyond.

We call this solution Work-from-Roam.

Increased Cybersecurity

One of the main benefits is increased cybersecurity. Users at home who accidentally download malware and spread it to the network are the biggest attack route for cyber criminals. Our Work-from-Roam solution enables remote workers to securely access any public, private or hybrid cloud application and data centre resource.

Fast and reliable network speed

Another benefit is speed. Traditional VPN connections send all users through the same gateway at the office like a jammed motorway. The more users, the slower – and more frustrating – the experience. Our Work-from-Roam solution is designed to scale and expand on demand. Users can speed along their own secure personal highway, quickly accessing information they need for reliable videoconferencing and productive work.

While the security and speed of remote access is crucial for organisations to function during lockdown, we wanted to provide more than a short-term fix. As Freedom Day approaches, attitudes to working from home have shifted and in a CIPD survey 40% of employers said the expect more than half their workforce to work regularly from home post-pandemic. But it’s not just about home working. Even before the pandemic, many employees spent just as much time travelling or at a customer site as they did in a fixed office.

More and more people are going to be splitting their time between home, the office, co-working spaces, customer sites and other locations. That’s why we called our solution Work-from-Roam and modelled our pricing to flexibly meet customer’s future needs.

Flexible Pricing for flexible needs

Traditional pricing models charge a fixed cost per user licence, which can become very expensive and wasteful as the number of licences needed expands and contracts. Work-from-Roam gives our customers the flexibility to scale up or down month-to-month according to their needs and pay only for what they use.

Remote working, along with digital transformation, is a trend that has dramatically accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic and looks set to stay. By reimagining the way services are delivered to remote users, we have created a secure, high-performing and affordable solution for organisations to adapt to the flexible, remote workforce of the future.