Workspot Research Identifies Security as the Top Challenge as a Result of Accelerated Cloud Strategies During Remote Work

The 2022 State of End-User Computing and Remote Work  reveals 83% of IT leaders accelerated cloud strategies during remote work, and 71% identify security as their top challenge

CAMPBELL, Calif., May 17, 2022 — Workspot, the Enterprise Desktop Cloud company, announced today its 2022 “State of Remote Work. A Survey of End-User Computing Decision Makers” report conducted by Dimensional Research®. The results reveal that in the past year, due to remote work, the majority of IT leaders (83%) expanded or accelerated their cloud strategies, while still facing increasing challenges with security (71%), and concerns about employee compliance to new controls (60%). With that in mind, budgets are expected to increase throughout the year to improve remote work technologies.

Hybrid work has impacted technology, solutions, and strategies IT leaders relied on. From conferencing to remote access, new iterations of technologies have been adopted, but with that, new challenges have come up. In this context, Workspot’s report looks at how experiences, strategies, and technology used for supporting remote workers are delivering value today, including challenges IT decision-makers are still facing and expectations on what to invest in for adapting computing, security, and new collaboration capabilities.

“IT leaders continue to face many challenges in the midst of the new workplace paradigm, but through this process they have realized the power of the cloud,” said Amitabh Sinha, Co-Founder and CEO at Workspot. “Our report sheds light on some major pain points and also where leaders have excelled in the past year. To continue supporting the ‘anywhere’ workforce, more established strategies around cloud migration, VDI modernization, and implementation of SaaS applications become mainstream to help future-looking organizations evolve for years to come.”

As remote work and hybrid environments continue to accelerate digital transformation, Workspot’s report provides insights into three key areas that have challenged IT leaders and the steps they have taken to mitigate risk and future-proof their business.

• Support of remote workers creates increasing challenges for IT

• 1. It comes as no surprise that almost all respondents (99%) agreed. Among the main challenges, they highlighted maintaining security across environments (71%), ensuring employee compliance to new controls (60%), and ensuring device performance (59%).
  2. IT budgets have also changed in the past year, in fact, leaders expect to see an increase in allocations to control the impact of remote work with security at the top, closely followed by SaaS and collaboration tools. Despite this increase, only 30% report they have all the resources they need to enable remote work.
• Shifts in cloud adoption, security, and productivity 
  1. Remote work drove increased cloud adoption and strategies with 35% expanding the scope of their strategy and 47% accelerating timelines in their established strategy.
  2. Among the benefits of SaaS and cloud, 65% of respondents highlighted scalability while 59% and 56% mentioned reduced requirements for on-prem investments and improved business continuity and reliability respectively.
  3. Across all industries, the report found security was more difficult. Although security became a priority, challenges continue to daunt leaders – especially around new tools and strategies for the expanded security perimeter (67%) and securing user devices outside the corporate firewall (54%).
• Contribution of virtual desktop technology to remote work 
  1. Specific technologies adopted or expanded during the pandemic had an impact on the business bottom line. In fact, 61% agree that DaaS or Cloud PCs would be beneficial in increasing remote worker productivity moving forward.
  2. Over half of the respondents said they relied on VDI to support remote work and 33% leveraged DaaS, Cloud VDI, and Cloud PC.
  3. The fewer the desktops managed, the more likely the organization adopted or expanded on-prem VDI. Larger organizations (with more than 5,000 desktops), however, opted for DaaS, Cloud VDI and Cloud PC.

Beyond technology adoption and the challenges noted, leaders are seeing budgets shift positively, with security and cloud services leading the investments. They are also seeing the increasing benefits from the flexibility remote work brings to employees in terms of talent recruitment and retention, 76% of executives confirm it has helped significantly.

To learn more about the results and dive into the future of end-user computing and how cloud strategies can support remote work, download the full report here: State of Remote Work. A Survey of End-User Computing Decision Makers.

About the Report

The online survey targeted independent sources of IT professionals with responsibility for user computing in March 2022. A total of 304 qualified individuals completed the survey. All participants had decision-making responsibility for end-user computing at a company with at least 200 desktops and remote workers. Participants included a mix of company sizes, number of desktops, industries, decision-making responsibilities, and workforce environments.

About Workspot

The Workspot Enterprise Desktop Cloud™ platform is the only 100% cloud-native SaaS solution that delivers enterprise-class Cloud PCs. This innovative service lets IT provision cloud desktops and workstations in minutes – not months – and securely deliver the right compute capabilities for each user, on any device, anywhere they want to work. Unlike do-it-yourself style virtual desktop offerings, Workspot’s innovative Desktop Control Fabric™ taps the reach and power of every hyper-scale, public cloud region globally, all from a central console. IT can expect fast time-to-value and on-demand, global scalability. Business leaders can respond faster to changing market dynamics, pursue new opportunities globally and hire the best talent anywhere, while fulfilling cloud-first mandates that position their companies for accelerated growth. For more information on Workspot Enterprise Desktop Cloud solutions please visit www.workspot.com.

About Dimensional Research

Dimensional Research® provides practical market research to help technology companies make their customers more successful. Our researchers are experts in the people, processes, and technology of corporate IT. We partner with our clients to deliver actionable information that reduces risks, increases customer satisfaction, and grows the business. For more information, visit dimensionalresearch.com.

Media Contacts: 

Allison Saavedra

10Fold

workspot@10fold.com