infoTECH Feature

September 04, 2015

BYOD and Remote Work Trends Burden IT Departments During Summer Vacation Months

Trends in mobility, BYOD and a remote workforce that is increasing in size are all putting pressure on IT professionals. A new survey from IT solutions provider Ipswitch (News - Alert) shows that IT workers need to step up their games to support remote workers, particularly during the summer months.

The new “Summertime Blues Survey” reveals that a majority of organizations experience an increased number of remote workers during the summer months, as folks travel and spend time away on vacation. And that means system administrators and network managers become busy trying to support and manage the needs of those workers.

"The summer months are a busy time for IT pros as employees expect continuous unfettered access to company networks while working from home or on vacation,” said Jeff Loeb, chief marketing officer at Ipswitch. “A single organization can find itself with a significant bump in remote workers, all of whom may need support and assistance.”

The survey showed that remote workers whose laptops malfunctioned were the largest summer problem for IT professionals, followed by network connectivity problems and poor performance of applications. A larger number of wireless devices accessing networks in support of BYOD also causes issues, and a majority of IT professionals would like to see less tablets on their networks, along with smartphones.

For IT admins, the fallout from BYOD and remote workers comes not only in the form of management headaches but also in restricted vacation time for themselves. In fact, 25 percent of those queried said their departments were more restricted than others when it came to taking vacation during the summer. And for those lucky enough to get away, 28 percent said work stress over the state of their networks would carry over throughout their vacations.

"A unified network and server performance monitoring solution will help IT pros to solve network issues before they affect employees, wherever they are working," said Loeb. Unified monitoring solutions provide clear views of traffic, trends and potential issues on a company network before they become problems.

Unified monitoring is just one of several suggestions Ipswitch has for companies when it comes to combatting the problems inherent in remote work and BYOD. The company advises employees to ease the burden on their IT departments by not downloading apps without informing them first and seeking permission. Employees would also do well to try rebooting their computers to combat issues, before contacting IT departments for help.




Edited by Dominick Sorrentino
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