Almost literally overnight, working from home morphed from an option to an outright necessity as organizations around the world closed their offices. Although this event intensified the pressure on IT teams and executives to ramp up new or expanded support for remote workers, the work-from-home movement had already been accelerating steadily since the start of the new millennium. Many organizations are now using the experience gained from COVID-19 to shape their plans for addressing longer-term remote workforce needs and opportunities.

Organizations that invested in cloud-based workplace and remote access capabilities prior to the COVID-19 crisis are adapting more readily than those with systems that were designed mainly for corporate network usage. Both now and in the long term, the advantages of enabling employees to work productively, securely, and happily—from anywhere and at any time they choose—have never been clearer.