The IT Melting Pot!

This was an interesting news/announcement from Citrix, and I must agree with it! We’re moving into a new workplace era!

Get ready for redesigned offices that reduce real estate through fewer desks, redesigned space, increased mobility and use of BYO devices

SANTA CLARA, Calif. » By 2020 organizations are set to reduce office space by almost a fifth (17 percent) according to a new study by Citrix, a leader in mobile and cloud technology. The workplace of the future will provide just seven desks for every ten office workers, with each person accessing the corporate IT network from an average of six different computing devices. The figure for 2020 is as low as six desks for every ten workers in Singapore, the Netherlands, the USA and the UK. Some of the highest desk to worker ratios in 2020 will be in Japan (8.77), South Korea (7.95) and Germany (7.90).

Almost every organization says they will redesign office space to be more appealing. The workplace of the future will foster creativity, be inspiring and encourage collaboration by enabling people to work from wherever, whenever and on whatever device so that work becomes something people do, not a place people go.

The Citrix Workplace of the Future report, which polled 1,900 senior IT decision-makers across 19 countries, shows that a third of people (29 percent) will no longer work from their traditional office. Instead employees will base themselves from various semi-permanent locations including the home (64 percent), field and project sites (60 percent), and customer or partner premises (50 percent). People are also expected to access corporate applications, data and services from locations such as hotels, airports, coffee shops and while in transit.

The trend towards fewer office-based employees – who use multiple computing devices to access corporate apps, data and services from a range of locations outside of the traditional office – is part of a global trend called mobile workstyles. Globally, a quarter (24 percent) of organizations have already fully adopted mobile workstyles. By the middle of 2014, 83 percent of organizations will have embraced mobile workstyles.

Mobile workstyles have been adopted widely and rapidly because it offers a number of benefits.

• For organizations, workshifting  – where people move work to more optimal times and locations – creates a more flexible, agile workplace (73 percent), lower employee-related costs (53 percent), reduce real estate costs (48 percent) and help attract (47 percent) and retain (44 percent) top talent.
• Employees benefit from workshifting with more flexibility (65 percent), increased personal productivity (62 percent), less commuting time (61 percent), and abetter work/life balance (55 percent). It also…

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//Richard