How Sustainability and Diversity Prove Foundational to the Evolving Modern Data Center

A discussion on how data center challenges and advancements will hinge around the next generation of diverse talent supporting data centers and how sustainability will advance as a top design requirement.

Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes. Download the transcript. Sponsor: Vertiv.

Dana Gardner: Hello, and welcome to the next edition of the BriefingsDirect podcast series. I’m Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions, your host and moderator for this ongoing discussion on the latest insights into data center strategies.

Gardner

International Data Center Day, this spring in 2020, provides an opportunity to both look at where things have been in the evolution of the modern data center -- and more importantly -- where they are going.

And those trends involve a lot more than just technology. Data center challenges, and advancements alike, will hinge around the next generation of talent supporting those data centers and how diversity and equal opportunity best support that.

We also forecast that sustainability improvements -- rather than just optimizing the speeds and feeds -- will help determine the true long-term efficiency of IT facilities and systems.

Stay with us now as we observe International Data Center Day with a look at how to make the data centers of the future the best operated and the greenest ever. To learn how, please join me now in welcoming our panel.

We are here with Jaime Leverton, Senior Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer at eStruxture Data Centers in Montreal. Welcome, Jaime.

Jaime Leverton: Thank you so much for having me. It's great to be here.

Gardner: We are also here with Angie McMillin, Vice President and General Manager of IT Systems at Vertiv^TM. Welcome, Angie.

Angie McMillin: Thank you. Hi, Dana, glad to be here.

Gardner: And we are also joined by Erin Dowd, Vice President of Global Human Resources at Vertiv. Welcome, Erin.

Erin Dowd: Thank you, very much. I am very proud to be a part of it.

Gardner: Erin, why -- based on where we have come from -- is there now a need to think differently about the next generation of data center talent?

Dowd

Dowd: What's important to us is that we have a diverse population of employees. We think about diversity from the perspective traditionally around ethnicity and gender. But when we consider diversity, we think about diversity of thought, diversity of behavior, and diverse backgrounds.

That all makes us a much stronger company; a much stronger industry. It's representative of our customer base, frankly, and it's representative of the globe. We are ensuring that we have people working within our company from around the world and contributing all of those diverse thoughts and perspectives that make us a much stronger company and much stronger industry.

Gardner: We have often seen that creative and innovative thought comes when you have a group of individuals that come from a variety of backgrounds, and so it's often a big benefit. Why has it been slow-going? What's been holding back the diversity of the support talent for data centers?

Diversity for future data centers 

Dowd: It's a competitive environment, so it's a struggle to find diverse candidates. It goes beyond our tech type of roles and into sales and marketing. We look at our talent early in their careers, and we are working on growing talent, in terms of nurturing them, helping them to develop, and helping them to grow into leadership roles. It takes a proactive approach, and it’s more than just letting the talent pool evolve naturally. It is about taking proactive and definitive actions around attracting people and growing people.

Gardner: I don’t think I am going out on a limb by observing that over the past 30 years, it's been a fairly male-dominated category of worker. Tell us why women in science, technology, engineering, and math, or the so-called STEM occupations, are going to be a big part of making that diversity a strength.

Dowd: That is a huge pipeline for us as we benefit from all the initiatives to increase STEM education for women and men. The results help expand the pool, frankly, and it allows candidates across the board, that are interested at an early age, to best prepare for this type of industry. We know historically that girls have been less likely to pursue STEM types of interest at early ages.

So ensuring that we have people across the continuum, that we have women in these roles, to model and mentor -- that's really important in expanding the pool. There are a lot of things that we can be doing around STEM, and we are looking at all those opportunities.

Gardner: Statistically there are more women in universities than men, so that should translate into a larger share in the IT business. We will be talking about that more.

But we would also like to focus on International Data Center Day issues around sustainability. Jaime, why is sustainability the gift that keeps giving when it comes to improving our modern data centers?

Leverton

Leverton: International Data Center Day is about the next generation of data center professionals. And we know that for the next generation, they are committed to preserving the environment, which is good news for all of us as citizens. And as one of the world's biggest consumers of energy, I believe the data center industry has a fundamental duty to elevate its environmental stewardship with energy efficient infrastructure and renewable power resources. I think the conversation really does go well together with diversity.

Gardner: Alright, let's dive in a little bit more to the issues around talent and finding the best future pool. First, Erin please tell us about your role at Vertiv.

Dowd: I am the Global Business HR Partner at Vertiv. So my focus is to help us design, build, and deliver the right people strategy for our teams that have a global presence. We focus on having super-engaged and productive people in the right places with the right skills, and in developing career opportunities across the continuum -- from early level to senior level of contributors.

Gardner: We have heard a lot about the skills shortage in IT in general terms, but in your experience at Vertiv, what are your observations about the skills shortage? What challenges do you face?

Dowd: We have challenges in terms of a shortage of diverse candidates across the board. This is present in all positions. Increasing the diversity of candidates that we can attract and grow will help us address the shortage first-hand.

Gardner: And in addition to doing this on a purely pragmatic basis, there are other larger benefits. Tell us why diversity is so important to Vertiv over the long term?

We have challenges in terms of a shortage of diverse candidates across the board. This is present in all positions. The diversity of candidates that we can attract will help us.

Dowd: Diversity is the right thing to do. Just hands down, it has business benefits, and it has cultural benefits. As I mentioned earlier, it reflects not only on our global presence but also on our customer base. And research shows that companies that have more diverse workforces outperform and out-innovate those that don’t.

For example, companies in the top quartile of the workforce on diversity are 33 percent more likely to financially outperform their less diverse counterparts, according to a 2018 study from McKinsey. We have been embracing diversity, which aligns with our core values. It’s the right competitive strategy. It's going to allow us to compete in the marketplace and relate to our customers best.

Gardner: Is Vertiv an outlier in this? Or is this the way the whole industry is going?

Dive into competitive talent pool 

Dowd: This is the way whole industry is going. I come from a line of IT companies prior to my tenure with Vertiv. Even the biggest, the most established companies are still wrestling with the competitiveness affiliated with the tracking of candidates that have diversity of thought, diverse backgrounds, diverse behaviors, and diversity on ethnicity and gender as well.

The trend is toward engineering and services, and everywhere we are experiencing turnover because it's so competitive. It’s a very competitive environment. We are competing with brother and sister companies for the same types of talent.

As I mentioned previously, if we attract people who are diverse in terms of thought, ethnicity, and gender we can expand our candidate pool and enhance our competitiveness. When our talent acquisition team looks at talent, they are expanding and enhancing diversity in our university relations and in our recruiting efforts. They are targeting diverse candidates as we hire interns and then folks that are later in their careers as well.

Gardner: We have been looking at this through the demand side, but on the supply-side, what are the incentives? Why should people from a variety of backgrounds consider and pursue these IT careers? What are the benefits to them?

Dowd: The career opportunities are amazing. This is a field that’s growing and that is not going to go away. We depend on IT infrastructure and data centers across our world, and we're doing that more and more over time. There's opportunity in the workplace and there are a lot of things that we are specifically doing at Vertiv to keep people engaged and excited. We think a lot about attracting talent.

But there is another piece, which is about retaining talent. Some of the things we are doing at Vertiv are specifically launching programs aligned with diversity.

So recently, and Angie has been involved in this, we have a women at Vertiv resource group called Women at Vertiv Excel (WAVE). And that group is nurturing women, encouraging more women to pursue leadership positions within Vertiv. Really it looks at diversity in leadership positions, but it also provides important training that women can apply in their current positions.

Together we are building one Vertiv culture, which is a really important framework for our company. We are creating solutions and resources that make us more competitive and reflect the global market. We find that diversity breeds new and different ideas, more innovation, and a deeper understanding of our customers, partners, employees, and our stakeholders all around the globe. We are a global company, so this is very important to us. It's going to make us more successful as we grow into the future.

Another thing that we are doing is creating end-to-end management of Vertiv programs. This is new. We continue to improve this. It integrates behavioral skills and training designed to look at the work that we do through the eyes of others. We utilize experiences and talent effectively to grow stronger and stronger teams. Part of this is about recruiting and hiring. It has an emphasis on finding potential employees who possess a diverse experience of thought and perspectives. And diversity of thought comes from field experiences, from different backgrounds, and all of this contributes to our values as an employee in our organization.

Together we are building one Vertiv culture, which is a really important framework for our company. We are creating solutions and resources that make us more competitive and reflect the global market. We find that diversity breeds new and different ideas, more innovation, and a deeper understanding of our customers, partners, and employees.

We also are launching the Vertiv Operating System. Now this is being created, launched, and built with an emphasis on better understanding of our differences, in bridging gaps where there are differences, and in ways that bring out the best in everybody. It's designed to encourage thought leadership, and to help all of us work through change management together.

Finally, another program that we've been implementing across the globe is called Intrinsic. And Intrinsic supplies a foundational assessment designed to improve our understanding of ourselves and also of our colleagues. It's a formal experiential program that's going to help us all learn more about ourselves, what makes our individual values and styles unique, but then also it allows us to think about the people that we are working with. We can learn more about our colleagues, potentially our customers, and it allows us to grow in terms of our team dynamics and the techniques that we are using to manage conflict, stress, and change.

Collectively, as we look at the full continuum of how we behave at Vertiv in the future we are building for ourselves, all of these efforts work together toward changing the way we think as individuals, how we behave in groups, and ultimately evolving our organizational culture to be more diverse, more inclusive, and more innovative.

Gardner: Jaime at eStruxture, when we look at sustainability, it aligns quite well with these issues around talent and diversity because all the polling shows that the younger generation is much more focused on energy efficiency and consciousness around their impact on the natural world -- so sustainability. Tell us why the need for sustainability is key and aligns so well with talent and retaining the best people to work for your organization.

Sustainability inspires next generation 

Leverton: What we know to be true about the next generation is when they look to choose a career path, or take on an assignment, they want to make sure that it aligns with their values. They want to do work that they believe in. So, our industry offers them that opportunity to be value-aligned and to make an impact where it counts.

As you can see all around us, people are working and learning remotely now more than ever, and data centers are what make all of that possible. They are crucial to our society and to our everyday lives. The data center industry is only going to continue to grow, and with our dependence on energy we have to have a focus on sustainability.

It represents a substantial opportunity to make a difference. It's a fast-paced environment where we truly believe there is a career path for the next generation that will matter to them.

Gardner: Jaime, tell us about eStruxture Data Centers and your role there.

Leverton: eStruxture is relatively new data center company. It was established just over three years ago and we have grown rapidly from our original acquisition of our first data center in Montreal. We now have three data centers in Montreal, two in Vancouver, and one in Calgary. We are a Canadian pure-play -- Canadian-owned, -operated, and -financed. We really believe in the Canadian landscape, the Canadian story, and we are going to continue to focus on growth in this nation.

Gardner: When it comes to efficiency and sustainability, we often look at power usage effectiveness (PUE). Where are we in terms of getting to complete sustainability? Is it that so farfetched?

Leverton: I don’t think it is. Huge strides have been made in reducing PUE, especially by us in our most recent construction, which has a PUE load of sub 1.2. Organizations in our industry continue to innovate every day, trying to get as close to that 1.0 as humanly possible.

We are very lucky that we partner with Vertiv. Vertiv solutions are key in driving our efficiency in our data centers, and we know that progress can be made continually by addressing the IP load deficiency and that is a savings that is incremental to PUE as well. PUE is specifically about the ratio of IP power usage and the power usage of the equipment that supports it. But we look at our data center and our business holistically to drive sustainability even outside of what the PUE covers.

Gardner: It sounds like sustainability is essentially your middle name. Tell me more about that. How did you focus the construction and placement of your data centers to be focused so much on sustainability?

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Leverton: All of our facilities have been designed with a focus on sustainability. When we have purchased facilities, we have immediately gone to upgrade them and make them more efficient. We take advantage of free cooling wherever possible. As I mentioned, three of our data centers are in Montreal, so we get to take advantage of about eight months of the year of free cooling where the majority of our data centers are using 99.5 percent hydro-power energy, which is the cleanest possible energy that we can use.

We virtualize our environments as much as possible. We carefully select eco-responsible technologies and suppliers, and we are committed to continuing to increase our power usage effectiveness without ever sacrificing the performance, scalability, or uptime of our data centers, of course.

Gardner: And more specifically, when you look at that holistic approach to sustainability, how does working with a supplier like Vertiv augment and support that? How does that become a tag-team when it comes to the power source and the underlying infrastructure?

Leverton: Vertiv has just been such a great partner. They were there with us from the very beginning. We work together as a team, trying to make sure that we're designing the best possible environment for our customers and for our community. One of our favorite solutions from Vertiv is around their thermal management, which is a water-free solution.

Our commitment is to operate as sustainably as possible. Being able to partner with Vertiv and build their solutions into our design right from the beginning has had a huge impact. 

That is absolutely ideal in keeping with our commitment to operate as sustainably as possible. In addition to being water-free, it's 75 percent more efficient because it has advanced controls and economization. Being able to partner with Vertiv and build their solutions into our design right from the beginning has made a huge, huge impact.

Gardner: And, like I mentioned, sustainability is the gift that keeps giving. This is not just a nice to have. This is a bottom-line benefit. Tell us about the costs and how that reinforces sustainability initiatives.

Leverton: Yes, while there is an occasional higher cost in the short term, we firmly believe that the long-term total cost of ownership is lower -- and the benefits far outweigh any initial incremental costs.

Obviously, it's about our values. It's critical that we do the right thing for the environment, for the community, for our staff, and for our customers. But, as I say, over the long-term, we believe the total cost is less. So far and above, sustainability is the right thing to do.

Gardner: Jaime, when it comes to that sustainability formula, what really works? It's not just benefiting the organization that's supplying, it’s also benefiting the consumer. Tell us how sustainability is also a big plus when it comes to those people receiving the fruits of what the data centers produce.

Leverton: Sustainability is huge for our customers, and it’s increasingly a key component of their decision-making criteria. In fact, many hyperscale cloud providers and corporations -- large corporate enterprises -- have declared very ambitious environmental responsibility objectives and are shifting to green energy.

Microsoft, as an example, is targeting over 70 percent renewable energy for its data centers by 2023. Amazon reached a 50 percent renewable energy target in 2018 and is now aiming for 100 percent.

Women and STEM step IT up 

Gardner: Let's look at the sustainability issue again through the lens of talent and the people who are going to be supporting these great initiatives. Angie, when it comes to bringing more women into the STEM professions, how does the IT industry present itself as an attractive career path, say for someone just graduating from high school?

McMillin

McMillin: When I look at children today, they're growing up with IT as part of their lives. That's a huge advantage for them. They see firsthand the value and impact it has on everything they do. I look at my nieces and nephews, and even grandkids, and they can flip through phones, tablets, they are using XBoxes, you name it, all faster than adults.

They're the next generation of IT. And now, with the COVID-19 situation, children are learning how to do schooling collaboratively -- but also remotely. I believe we can engage children early with the devices they already know and use. And with the tools that they're now learning for schoolwork, those are a bridge to learning about what makes that work. It’s the data center industry. All of our data centers can be a part of that as they complete their schooling and go into higher education. They will remember this experience that we're all living through right now forever -- and so why not build upon that?

Gardner: Jaime, does that align with your personal experience in terms of technology being part of the very fabric of life?

Leverton: Oh, absolutely. I'm really proud of what I've seen happening in Canada. I have two young daughters and they have been able to take part in STEM camps, coding clubs, and technology is part of their regular curriculum in elementary school. The best thing we can do for our children is to teach them about technology, teach them how to be responsible with tech, and to keep them engaged with it so that over time they can be comfortable looking toward STEM careers later on.

Gardner: Angie, to get people focused on being part of the next generation of data centers, are there certain degrees, paths, or educational strategies that they should be pursuing?

Education paths lead to STEM careers 

McMillin: Yes. It's a really interesting time in education. There are countless degrees specifically geared toward the IT industry. So those are good bets, but specifically in networking and computers, there's coding, there is cyber security, which is becoming even more important, and the list goes on.

We currently see a very large skill set gap specifically around the science and technology functions. So these offer huge opportunities for a young person’s future. But I also want to highlight that the industry still needs the skill sets, the traditional engineering skills, such as power management, thermal management, services and equally important are the trade skills in this industry. There's a current gap in the workforce and the training for that may be different, but it still has a really vital role to play.

And then finally, we'd be remiss if we didn't recognize the fact that there are support functions, finance, HR, and marketing. People often think that you must only be in the science or engineering part of the business to work in a particular given market, and that really isn't true. We need skill sets across a broad range to really help make us successful.

Leverton: I am an IT leader and have been in this business for 20 years, and my undergraduate degrees are in political science and psychology. So I really think that it's all about how you think, and the other skills that you can bring to bear. More and more, we see emotional intelligence (EQ) and communication skills as the difference-maker to somebody's career success or career trajectory. We just need to make sure that people aren't afraid of coming out of more generalized degrees.

Gardner: We have heard a lot about the T structure, where we need to have the vertical technology background but also we want those with cultural leadership, liberal arts, and collaboration skills.

Angie, you are involved with mentoring young women specifically. What's your take on the potential? What do you see now as the diversity is welling up and the available pool of talent is shifting?

McMillin: I am, and I absolutely love it. One of the things I do is support a women's engineering summer camp probably much like Jaime's daughters attend, and other events around my alma mater, with the University of Dayton. I support mentoring interns and other early career individuals, be they male or female. There is just so much potential in young people. They are absolutely eager to learn and play their part. They want to have relevance in the growing data center market, and the IT and sustainability that we talked about earlier. It's really fun and enjoyable to help them along that journey.

There are two key themes I repeat. One is that success doesn't happen overnight. So enjoy those small steps on the journey, learn as much as you can, and don't give up. The second is keep an open mind about your career, try new things, and doors you never imagined will open up.

I get asked for advice, and there are two key themes that I repeat. One is that success doesn’t happen overnight. So enjoy those small steps on the journey that we take to much greater things, and the important part of that, is really just keep taking the steps, learn as much as you can, and don’t give up. The second thing is to keep an open mind in your career, being willing to try new things and opportunities and sometimes doors are going to open that you didn’t even imagine, which is absolutely okay.

As a prime example, I started my education in the aerospace industry. When that industry was hurting, I switched to mechanical. There is a broader range of that field of study, and I spent a large part of my career in automotive. I then moved to consumer and now I am in data center and IT. I am essentially a space geek and car junkie engineer with experience in engineering, strategy, sales, portfolio transformation, and operations. And now I am a general manager for an IT management portfolio.

If I hadn't been open to new opportunities and doors along my career path, I wouldn’t be here today. So it's an example for the younger generation. There are broad possibilities. You don’t have to have it all figured out now, but keep taking those steps and keep trying and keep learning -- and the world awaits you, essentially.

Gardner: Angie what sort of challenges have you faced over the years in your career? And how is that changing?

Women rise, challenges continue 

McMillin: It’s a great question. My experience at Vertiv has been wonderful with a support structure of diversity for women and leadership. We talked about the new WAVE program that Erin mentioned earlier. You can feel that across your organization. It starts at the top. I also had the benefit, as many of us I think had on this podcast, of having good sponsors along the way in our career journeys to help us get to where we are.

But that doesn’t mean we haven’t faced challenges throughout our careers. And there are challenges that still arise for many in the industry. In all the industries I have worked, which have all been male-dominated industries, there is this necessity to have to prove yourself as a woman -- like 10 times over -- for your right to be at the table with a voice regardless of the credentials you have coming in. It gets exhausting, and it's not consistent with male counterparts. It’s a “show me first” and then “I might believe,” it's also BS. That’s something that a lot of women in this industry, as well as in other industries, continue to have to surpass.

The other common challenge is that you need to over-prove yourself, so that people know that the position was earned. I always want people to know I got my position because I earned it, and I have something to offer not because of a diversity quota. And that’s a lot better today than it's been in years passed. But I can tell you, I can still hear those words, of accusations made of female colleagues that I knew throughout my career. When one female gets elevated in a position and fails, it makes it a lot harder for other females to get the chance of an opportunity or promotion.

Now, again, it's getting better. But to give you a real-world example, if you think about the number of industries where there are women CEOs. If they don't succeed, boards get very nervous about putting another woman in a CEO position. If a male CEO doesn't succeed, he is often just not the right fit. So we still have a long way to go.

Gardner: Jaime at eStruxture, what's been your experience as a woman in the technology field?

Leverton: Well, eStruxture has been an incredible experience for me. We have diversity throughout the organization. Actually we are almost at 50 percent of our population identifying as non-white heterosexual male, which is quite different from what I've experienced over the rest of my career in technology. From a female perspective, our senior leadership team is 35 percent women; our director population is almost 50 percent women.

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So it's been a real breath of fresh air for me. In fact, I would say it really speaks to the values of our founder when he started this company three years ago and did it with the intention of having a diverse organization. Not only does it better mirror our customers but it absolutely reflects the values of our organization, the culture we wanted to create, and ultimately to drive better returns.

Gardner: Angie, why is the data center industry a particularly attractive career choice right now? What will the future look like in say five years? Why should people be thinking about this as a no-brainer when it comes to their futures?

Wanted: Skilled data center pros 

McMillin: We are in a fascinating time for data center trends. The future is very, very strong. We know now -- and the kids of today certainly know -- that data isn't going away. It's part of our everyday lives and it's only going to expand -- it's going to get faster with more compute power and capability. Let’s face it, nobody has patience for slow anymore. There are trends in artificial intelligence (AI), 5G, and others that haven't even been thought of yet that are going to offer enormous potential for careers for those looking to get into the IT space.

We are in a fascinating time for data center trends. The future is very strong. Data isn't going away. And nobody has patience for slow anymore. There are trends in AI, 5G, and others that haven't even been thought of yet.

And when we think about that new trend -- with the increase of working or schooling remotely as many of us are doing currently -- that may permanently alter how people work and learn going forward. There will be a need for different tools, capabilities, and data management. And how this all remains secure and efficient is also very important.

Likewise, more data centers will need to operate independently and be managed remotely. They will need to be more efficient. Sustainability is going to remain very prevalent, especially edge-of-the-network data centers and enabling the connectivity and productivity wherever they are.

Gardner: Now that we are observing International Data Center Day 2020, where do you see this state of the data center in just the next few years? Angie, what's going to be changing that makes this even more important to almost every aspect of our lives and businesses?

McMillin: We know now the data center as an ecosystem that is changing dramatically. The hybrid model is a product that's enabling a diversification of data workloads where customers get the best of all options available: cloud, data center, and edge, as our regional global survey of data center professionals are experiencing phenomenal growth. And we also see a lot more remote management to operate and maintain these disparate locations securely.

We need more people with all the skill sets capable of supporting these advancements on the horizon like 5G, the industrial internet of things (IIoT), and AI.

Gardner: Erin, where do you see the trends of technology and human resources going that will together shape the future of the data center?

Dowd: I will piggyback on the technology trends that Angie just referenced and say the future requires more skilled professionals. It will be more competitive in the industry to hire those professionals, and so it's really a great situation for candidates.

It makes it important for companies like Vertiv to continue creating environments that favor diversity. Diversity should manifest in many different ways and in an environment where we welcome and nurture a broad variety of people. That's the direction of the future, and, naturally, the secret for success.

Gardner: I’m afraid we’ll have to leave it there. We have been exploring how future data center advancements will hinge around the next generation of talent and sustainability. And we have observed at International Data Center Day 2020 that we are seeing new ways to make the data center of the future the best operated and the greenest ever.

So please join me in thanking our guests, Jaime Leverton, Senior Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer at eStruxture Data Centers. Thank you so much, Jaime.

Leverton: Thank you again for having me. It was a lot of fun.

Gardner: And also thank you to Angie McMillin, Vice President and General Manager of IT Systems at Vertiv. Thank you, Angie.

McMillin: Thank you. I enjoyed this today.

Gardner: And lastly, thank you to Erin Dowd, Vice President of Global Human Resources at Vertiv. Thank you so much.

Dowd: Thank you. This is a very important topic to all of us.

Gardner: And a big thank you to our audience as well for joining this sponsored BriefingsDirect data center strategies panel. I’m Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions, your host for this ongoing series of Vertiv-sponsored discussions.

Thanks again for listening. Please pass this along to your community, and do come back next time.

Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes. Download the transcript. Sponsor: Vertiv.

A discussion on how data center challenges and advancements alike will hinge around the next generation of diverse talent supporting data centers and how sustainability will advance as a top design requirement. Copyright Interarbor Solutions, LLC, 2005-2020. All rights reserved.

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Business Readiness—The Key to Surviving and Thriving in Uncertain Times

Transcript of a discussion on how companies and communities alike are adjusting to a variety of workplace threats using new ways of enabling enterprise-class access and distribution of vital data resources and applications.

Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes. Download the transcript. Sponsor: Citrix.

Dana Gardner: Hi, this is Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions, and you’re listening to BriefingsDirect.

Gardner

Just as the nature of risk has been a whirling dervish of late, the counter-forces of business continuity measures have had to turn on a dime as well. What used to mean better batteries for servers and mirrored, distributed datacenters has recently evolved into anywhere, any-circumstance solutions that keep workers working -- no matter what.

Out-of-the-blue workplace disruptions -- whether natural disasters, political unrest, or the current coronavirus pandemic -- have shown how true business continuity means enabling all employees to continue to work in a safe and secure manner.

Stay with us now as we explore how companies and communities alike are adjusting to a variety of workplace threats using new ways of enabling enterprise-class access and distribution of vital data resources and applications.

And in doing so, these public and private sector innovators are setting themselves up to be more agile, intelligent, and responsive to their workers, customers, and citizens once the disaster inevitably passes.

Here to share stories on making IT systems and people evolve together to overcome workplace disruptions is Chris McMasters, Chief Information Officer (CIO) at the City of Corona, California. Welcome, Chris.

Chris McMasters: Thank you, Dana.

Gardner: We’re also here with Jordan Catling, Associate Director of Client Technology at The University of Sydney in Australia. Welcome, Jordan.

Jordan Catling: Thank you very much, Dana. I appreciate the invite.

Gardner: And we’re here with Tim Minahan, Executive Vice President of Strategy and Chief Marketing Officer at Citrix. Welcome, Tim.

Tim Minahan: Thank you for including me, Dana.

Gardner: Tim, how has business readiness changed over the past few years? It seems to be a moving target.

Stay prepared for everything

Minahan: The very nature of business readiness is not about preparing for what’s happening today -- or responding to a specific incident. It’s a signal for having a plan to ensure that your work environment is ready for any situation.

Minahan

That certainly means having in place the right policies and contingency plans, but it also -- with today’s knowledge workforce -- goes to enabling a very flexible and dynamic workspace infrastructure that allows you to scale up, scale down, and move your entire workforce on a moment’s notice.

You need to ensure that your employees can continue to work safely and remotely while giving your company the confidence that they’re doing that all in a very secure way, so the company’s information and infrastructure remains secure.

Gardner: Chris McMasters, as a CIO, you surely remember the days when IT systems were brittle, not easily adjusted, and hard to change. Has the nature of work and these business continuity challenges forced IT to be more agile?

McMasters: Yes, absolutely. There’s no better example than in government. Government IT is known for being on-premises and very resistant to change. In the current environment everything has been flipped on its head. We’re having to be flexible, more dynamic in how we deploy services, and in how users get those services.

Gardner: Jordan, higher education hasn’t necessarily been the place where we’d expect business continuity challenges to be overcome. But you’ve been dealing with an aggressive outbreak of the coronavirus in China.

Catling: It’s been a very interesting six months for us, particularly in higher education, with the Australian fires, floods, and now the coronavirus. But generally, as an institution that operates over 22 locations, with teaching hospitals and campuses -- our largest campus has its own zip code -- this is part of our day, enabling people to work from wherever they are.

The really interesting thing about this situation is we’re having to enable teaching from places that we wouldn’t ordinarily. We’re having to make better use of the tools that we have available to come up with innovative solutions to keep delivering a distinctive education that The University of Sydney is known for.

Gardner: And when you’re trying to anticipate challenges, something like COVID-19, the disease that emanates from the coronavirus, did you ever think that you’d have to virtually overnight provide students stuck in one location with the opportunity to continue to learn from a distance?

Catling

Catling: We need to always be preparing for a number of scenarios. We need to be able to rapidly deploy solutions to enable people to work from wherever they are. The flexibility and dynamic toolsets are really important for us to be able to scale up safely and securely.

Gardner: Tim, the idea of business continuity including workers not only working at home but perhaps in far-flung countries where they’ve been stuck because of a quarantine, for example -- these haven’t always been what we consider IT business continuity. Why is worker continuity more important than ever?

Minahan: Globally we’re recognizing the importance of the overall employee experience and how it’s becoming a key differentiator for companies and organizations. We have a global shortage of medium- to high-skilled talent. We’re short about 85 million workers.

Companies are battling for the high ground on providing preferred ways to work. One way they do that is ensuring that they can provide flexible work environments that rely on effective workplace technologies that enable employees to do their very best work.

So companies are battling for the high ground on providing preferred ways to work. One way they do that is ensuring that they can provide flexible work environments, ones that rely on effective workplace technologies that enable employees to do their very best work wherever that might be. That might be in an office building. It might be in a remote location, or in certain situations they may need to turn on a dime and move from their office to the home force to keep operations going. Companies are planning to be flexible not just for business readiness but also for competitive advantage.

Gardner: Making this happen with enterprise-caliber, mission-critical reliability isn’t just a matter of renting some new end-devices and throwing up a few hotspots. Why is this about an end-to-end solution, and not just point solutions?

Be proactive not reactive

Minahan: One of the most important things to recognize is companies often first react to a crisis environment. Currently, you’re hearing a lot of, “Hey, we just,” like the school system in Miami, for example, “purchased 250,000 laptops to distribute to students and teachers to maintain their education.”

However, that may enable and empower students and employees, but it may be less associated with proper security measures and put both the companies’, workers’, and customers’ personal information at risk.

You need to plan from the get-go for having a very flexible, remote workplace infrastructure -- one that embeds security. That way -- no matter where the work needs to get done, no matter on what device, or even on whatever unfamiliar network -- you can be assured that the appropriate security policies are in place to protect the private information of your employees. The critical information of your business, and certainly any kinds of customer or constituent information, is at stake.

Gardner: Let’s hear what you get when you do this right. Jordan at The University of Sydney, you had more than 14,000 students unexpectedly quarantined in China, yet they still needed to somehow do their coursework. Tell us how this came about, and what you’ve done to accommodate them.

Quality IT during quarantine

Catling: Exactly right. As this situation began to develop in late January, we quite quickly began to scenario plan around the possible eventualities. A significant part of our role, as the technologists within the university, is making sure that we’re providing a toolset that can adapt to the needs of the community.

So we looked at various platforms that we were already using -- and some that we hadn’t -- to work out what do. Within the academic community, we needed the best set of tools for our staff to use in different and innovative ways. We quickly had to develop solutions and had to lean on our partners to help us out with developing those.

Gardner: Did you know where your students were going to be housed? Was this a case where you knew that they were going to be in a certain type of facility with certain types of resources or are they scattered around? How did you deal with that last mile issue, so to speak?

Catling: The last mile issue is a real tricky one. We knew that people were going to be in various locations throughout mainland China, and elsewhere. We needed to quickly build a solution capable of supporting our students -- no matter where they were, no matter what device that they were using, and no matter what their local Internet connection was like.

We have had variability in the quality of our connections even within Australia. But now we needed a solution that would cater to as many people as possible and be considerate of quite a number of different scenarios that our students and staff would be facing.

Gardner: How were you are able to provide that quality of service across so many applications given that level of variability?

Catling: The biggest focus for us, of course, is the safety and security of our staff and students. It’s paramount. We very quickly tried to work out where our people would be connecting from and tried to make sure that the resources we were providing, the connection to the resources, would be as close to them as possible to minimize the impact of that last mile.

We worked with Citrix to put together a set of application delivery controllers into Hong Kong to make sure that the access to the solutons was nice and fast. We then worked to optimize the connection from Hong Kong to Sydney to maximize the user experience.

We worked with Citrix to put together a set of application delivery controllers into Hong Kong to make sure that the access to the solution was nice and fast. Then we worked to optimize the connection back from Hong Kong to Sydney to maximize the user experience for our staff and students.

Gardner: So this has very much been a cloud-enabled solution. You couldn’t have really done this eight or 10 years ago.

Catling: Certainly not this quickly. Literally from putting a call into Citrix, we worked from design to a production environment within seven days. For me, that’s unheard of, really. Regardless of whether it’s 10 years ago or 10 weeks ago, it was quite a monumental effort. It’s highlighted the importance of having partners that both seek to understand the business problems you’re facing and coming up with innovative solutions rapidly and are able to deploy those at scale. And cloud is obviously a really important part of that.

We are still delivering on this solution. We have the capabilities now that we didn’t have a couple of months ago. We’re able to provide applications to students no matter where they are. They’re able to continue their studies.

Obviously, the solution needs to remain flexible to the evolving needs. The situation is changing frequently and we are discovering new needs and new requirements. As our academics start to use the technology in different ways, we’re evolving the solution based on their feedback to try and maximize the experience for both our staff and students.

Gardner: Tim, when you hear Jordan describe this solution, does it strike you as a harbinger of more business continuity things to come? How has the coronavirus issue -- and not just China but in Europe and in North America -- reinforced your idea of what a workplace-enhanced business continuity solution should be?

Business continuity in crisis

Minahan: We continue to field a rising a number of inquiries from customers and other companies. They are trying to assess the best ways to ensure continuity of their business operations and switch to a remote workforce in a very short period of time.

Situations like this remind us that we need to be planning today for any kind of business-ready situation. Using these technologies ensures that you can quickly adapt your work models, moving entire employee groups from an office to a remote environment, if needed, whether it’s because of virus, flood, or any other unplanned event.

What’s exciting for me is being able to use such agile work models and digital workspace technology to arm companies with new sources for growth and competitive advantage.

One good example is we recently partnered with the Center for Economics and Business Research to examine the impact remote work models and technologies have on business and economic growth. We found that 69 percent of people who are currently unemployed or economically inactive would be willing to start working if given the opportunity to work flexibly by having the right technology.

They further estimate that activating these, if you will, untapped pools of talent by enabling these flexible work-from-home models -- especially for parents, workers in rural areas, retirees, part-time, and gig workers, folks that are normally outside of the traditional work pool and reactivating them through digital workspace technologies -- could drive upward of an initial $2 trillion in economic gains across the US economy. So, the investment in readiness that folks are making is now being applied to drive ongoing business results even in non-crisis times.

Gardner: The coronavirus has certainly been leading the headlines recently, but it wasn’t that long ago that we had other striking headlines.

In California last fall, Chris McMasters, the wildfires proved a recurring problem. Tell us about Corona and why adjusting to a very dangerous environment -- but requiring your key employees to continue to work – allowed you to adjust to a major business continuity challenge.

Fighting fire with cloud

McMasters: Corona is like a lot of local governments within the United States. I came from the private sector and have been in the city IT for about four years now. When I first got there, everything was on-premises. Our back-up with literally three miles away on the other side of the freeway.

If there was a disaster and something totaled the city, literally all of our technology assets would be down, which concerned me. I used to work for a national company and we had offices all over and we backed up across the country. So this was a much different environment. Yet we were dealing with public safety, which with police and fire service, 911 service, and they can never go down. Citizens depend on all of that.

That was a wake-up call for me. At that time, we didn’t really have any virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) going on. We did have server virtualization, but nothing in the cloud. In the government sector, we have a lot of regulation that revolves around the cloud and its security, especially when we are dealing with police and fire types of information. We have to be very careful. There are requirements both from the State of California and the federal government that we have to comply with.

At first, we used a government cloud, which was a little bit slower in terms of innovation because of all the regulations. But that was a first step to understanding what was ahead for us. We started this process about two years ago. At the time, we felt like we needed to push more of our assets to the cloud to give us more continuity.

At the end of the day, we realized we also needed to get the desktops up there, too: Using VDI and the cloud. And at the time, no one was doing that. We went and talked to Citrix on how that would extend to support our environment for public safety. Citrix has been there since day-one.

At the end of the day, we realized we also needed to get the desktops up there, too: Using VDI and the cloud. And at the time, no one was doing that. But we went and talked to Citrix. We flew out to their headquarters, sat with their people, and discussed our initiative, what we are trying to accomplish, and how that would extend out to support our environment for public safety. And that means all of the people out at the edge who actually touch citizens and provide emergency support services.

That was the beginning of the journey and Citrix has been there since day-one. They develop the products around that particular idea for us right up to today.

In the last two years, we’ve had quite a few fires in the State of California. Corona butts right up against the forest line and so we have had a lot of damage done by fires, both in our city and in the surrounding county. And there have been the impacts that occur after fires, too, which include mudslides. We get the whole gamut of that stuff.

But now we find that those first responders have the data to take action. We get the data into their hands quickly, make sure it’s secure on the way there, and we make that continuative so that it never fails. Those are the last people that we want to have fail.

McMasters

We’ve been able to utilize this type of a platform where our data currently resides in two different datacenters in two different states. It’s on encrypted arrays at rest.

We are operating on a software-defined network so we can look at security from a completely different perspective. The old way was, “Let’s build a moat around it and a big wall, and hopefully no one gets in.” Now, instead we look at it quite differently. Our assets are protected outside of our facilities.

Those personnel riding in fire engines, in police cars, right up at the edge -- they have to be secure right up to that edge. We have to maintain and understand the identity of that person. We need to know what applications they are accessing, or should not be accessing, and be secure all along that path.

This has all changed our outlook on how we deal with things and what a modern-day work environment looks like. The money we use comes from taxes, the people pay, and we provide services for our citizens. The interesting thing about that is we’re now driving toward the idea of government on-demand.

Before, when you would come home, right after a hard day’s work, city hall would be closed. Government was open 8 to 5, when people are normally working. So, when you want to conduct business at city hall, you have to take some time off of work. You try to find one day of the week, or a time when you might sneak in there to get your permits for something and proceed with your business.

But our new idea is different. Most of our services can be provided online for people. If we can do that, that’s fantastic, right? So, you can come home and say, “Hey, you know what? I was thinking about building an addition to my house.” So you go online, file your permits, and submit all of your documents electronically to us.

The difference that VDI provides for our employees is that I can now tap into a workforce of let’s say, a single mother who has a special needs child who can’t work normal hours, but she can work at night. So that person can take that permit, look at that permit at 6 or 7 pm, process the permit, and then at 5 am the next day, that process is done. You wake up in the morning, your permit has been processed by the city and completed. That type of flexibility is integral for us to make government more effective for people.

It’s not the necessarily the public safety support, which we are concerned about. But it’s about also generally providing flexible services for people and making sure government continues to operate.

Gardner:  Tim, it’s interesting that by addressing business continuity issues and disasters we are able to move very rapidly to a government on-demand or higher education on-demand. So, what are some of the larger goals when it comes to workforce agility?

Flexibility extends the business

Minahan: The examples that Chris and Jordan just gave are what excites me about flexible work models, empowered by digital workplace technologies, and the ability to embrace entirely new business models.

I used the example from the Center of Economic Business Research and how to tap into untapped talent pools. Another example of a company using similar technology is eBay. So eBay, like many of their competitors, would build a big call center and hire a bunch of people, train them up, and then one of the competitors will build a call center down the street and steal them away. They would have rapid turnover. They finally said, “Enough is enough, we have to think of a different model.”

eBay used the same approach of providing a secure digital workspace to reach into new talent pools outside of big cities. They could now hire gig workers and re-engage them in the workforce by using a workplace platform to arm them at the edge.

Well, they used the same approach of providing a secure digital workspace to reach into new talent pools outside of big cities. They could now hire gig workers, stay-at-home parents, etc., and re-engage them in the workforce by using the workplace platform to arm them at the edge and provide a service that was formally only provided in a big work hub, a big call center.

They went from having zero home force workers to 600 by the end of last year, and they are on a path to 4,000 by the end of this year. eBay solved a big problem, which is providing support for customers. How do I have a call center in a very competitive market? Well, I turn the tables and create new pools of talent, using technology in an entirely different way.

Gardner: Jordan, now that you’ve had help from organizations like Citrix to deal with your tough issue of students stuck in China, or other areas where there’s a quarantine, are you going to take that innovation and use it in other ways? Is this a gift that keeps giving?

Catling: It’s a really interesting question. What it’s demonstrated to me is that, as technologists, we need to be working with all of our people across the organization to understand their needs and to provide the right tools, but not necessarily to be prescriptive in how they are used. This current coronavirus situation has demonstrated to us that a combination of just a few tools -- for example, the Citrix platform, Zoom, Echo, and Canvas -- means a very different thing to one person than to another person.

There’s such large variability in the way that education is delivered across the university, across so many disciplines, that it becomes about providing a flexible set of tools that all of our people can use in different and exciting ways. That extends not only to the current situation but to more normal times.

If we can provide the right toolset that’s flexible and meets the users where they are, and also make sure that the solutions provide a natural experience, that’s when you are really geared up well for success. The technology kind of fades into the background and becomes a true enabler of the bright minds across the institution.

Gardner: Chris, now that you’re able to do more with virtual desktops and delivering data regardless of the circumstances to your critical workers as well as to your citizens, what’s the next step?

Can you add a layer of intelligence rather than just being about better feeds and speeds? What comes next, and how would Citrix help you with that?

Intelligence improves government

McMasters: We’re neck deep in data analytics and in trying to understand how we can make impacts correctly by analyzing data. So adding artificial intelligence (AI) on top of those layers, understanding utilization of our resources, is the amazing part of where we’re going.

There’s so much unused hardware and processing power tied up in our normal desktop machines. Being able to disrupt that and flip it up on its end is a fundamental change in how government operates. This is literally turning it on-end. I mean, AI can impact all the way down to how we do helpdesk, how it minimizes our response times and turnaround times, to increased productivity, and in how we service 160,000 people in my city. All of that changes.

Already I’m saving hundreds of thousands of dollars by using the cloud and VDI models and at the same time increasing all my service levels across the board. And now we can add this layer of business continuity to it, and that’s before we start benefitting from predictive AI and using data to determine asset utilization.

Moving from a CAPEX model to this OPEX model for government is something very new, it’s something that public sector or a private sector has definitely capitalized on and I think public sector is ripe for doing that. So for us, it’s changing everything, including our budget, how we deliver services, how we do helpdesk support, and on to the ways that we’re assessing our assets and leveraging citizens’ tax dollars correctly.

Gardner: Tim, organizations, both public and private sector, get involved with these intelligent workspaces in a variety of ways. Sometimes it might be a critical issue such as business continuity or a pandemic.

But ultimately, as Chris just mentioned, this is about digital business transformation. How are you able to take whatever on-ramp organizations are getting into an intelligent workspace and then give them more reasons to see ongoing productivity? How is this something that has a snowball effect on productivity?

AI, ML works with you

Minahan: Chris hit the nail on the head. Certainly, the initial on-ramps to digital workspace provides employees with unified and secure access to everything they need to be productive and in one experience. That means all of their apps, all of their content, regardless of where that’s stored, regardless of what device they’re accessing it from and regardless of where they’re accessing it from.

However, it gets really exciting when you go beyond that foundation of unified experience in a secure environment toward infusing things like machine learning (ML), digital assistants, and bots to change the way that people work. They can newly extract out some of the key insights and tasks that they need to do and offer them up to employees in real-time in a very personalized way. Then they can quickly take care of those tasks and the things they need to remove that noise from their day, and even guide them toward the right next steps to take to be even more productive, more engaged, and do much more innovative and creative work.

So, absolutely, AI and ML and the rise of bots are the next phase of all of this, where it’s not just a place you go to launch apps and work securely, but a place where you go to get your very best work done.

Gardner: Jordan, you were very impressively able to get more than 14,000 students to continue their education regardless of what Mother Nature threw at them. And you were able to do it in seven days. For those organizations that don’t want to be caught under such circumstances, that want to become proactive and prepared, what lessons have you have learned in your most recent journey that you can share with them? How can they be better positioned to combat any unfortunate circumstances they might face?

Prioritize when and how you work

Catling: It’s almost becoming cliché to say, but work is something that you do -- it’s not a place anymore. So when we’re looking at and assessing tools for how we support the university, we’re focusing on taking a cloud-first approach where it doesn’t matter where a student or staff member is. They have access to all the resources they need on-demand. That’s one of the real guiding principles we should be using in our decision-making process.

Scalability is also a very important thing to us. The nature of the way that education is delivered today with an on-campus model is that demand is very peaky. We need to be mindful of how scalable and rapidly scalable a solution can be. That’s important to consider, particularly in the higher education context. How quickly can you scale up and down your environments to meet varying demands?

We can use the Citrix platform in many different ways. It's not only for us to provide applications out to students to complete coursework. It can also be used for providing secure access to data and workspaces.

Also, it’s important to consider the number of flexible ways that each of the technology products you choose can be used. For example, with the Citrix platform we can use it in many different ways. It’s not only for us to provide applications out to students to complete their coursework. It can also be used for providing secure access to data and to workspaces. There are so many different ways it can be extended, and that’s a real important thing when deciding which platform to use.

The final really important takeaway for us has been the establishment of true partnerships. We’ve had extremely good support from our partners, such as Citrix and Zoom, where they very rapidly sought to understand and work with us to solve the unique business problems that we’re facing. The real, true partnership is not one of just providing products, but of really sitting down shoulder-to-shoulder, trying to understand, but also suggesting ways to use a technology we may not be thinking of -- or maybe it’s never been done before.

As Chris mentioned earlier, virtual desktops in the cloud weren’t a big thing that many years ago. About a decade ago, we began working with Citrix to provide streams of desktops to physical devices across campus.

That was something -- that was a very unusual use of technology. So I think that the partnership is very important and something that organizations should develop and be ready to use. It goes in both directions at all times.

Gardner: Chris, now that you have, unfortunately, dealt with these last few harsh wildfire seasons in Southern California, what lessons have you learned? How do you make yourselves more like local government on demand?

Public-private partnerships

McMasters: That’s a big question. For us, we looked at breaking some of the paradigms that exist in government. They don’t have the same impetus to change as in the private sector. They are less willing to take risks. However, there are ways to work with vendors and partners to mitigate a lot of that risk, ways to pilot and test cutting-edge technologies that don’t put you at risk as you push these things out.

There are very few vendors that I would consider such partners. I probably can count them on one hand in total, and the interesting thing is that when we were selecting a vendor for this particular project, we were looking for a true partner. In our case, it was Citrix and Microsoft who came to the table. And when I look back at what’s happened in our relationship with those two in particular, I couldn’t ask for anything better.

We have literally had technicians, engineers, everyone on-site, on the phone every step of the way as we have been developing this. They took a lot of the risk out for us, because we are dealing with public dollars and we need to make sure these projects work. To have that level of comfort and stability in the background and knowing that I can rely on these people was huge. It’s what allowed us to develop to where we are today, which is far advanced in the government world.

That’s where things have to change. This kind of public-private partnership is what the public sector needs to start maturing. It’s bidirectional; it goes both ways. There is a lot of information that we offer to them; there is a lot of things they do for us. And so it goes back and forth as we develop this through this product cycle. It’s advantageous for both of us to be in it.

That’s where sometimes, especially in the public sector, we lose focus. They don’t understand what the private sector wants and what they are moving toward. It’s about being aligned on both sides of that equation -- and it benefits both parties.

Technology is going to change, and it just keeps driving faster. There’s always another thing around the corner, but building these types of partnerships with vendors and understanding what they want helps them understand what you want, and then be able to deliver.

Gardner: Tim, how should businesses better work with vendor organizations to prepare themselves and their workers for a flexible future?

Minahan: First off, I would echo Chris’s comments. We all want government on-demand. You need a solution like that. But how they should work together? There are two great examples here in The University of Sydney and the City of Corona.

It really starts by listening. What are the problems we are trying to solve in planning for the future? How do we create a digitally agile organization and infrastructure that allows us to pursue new business opportunities, and just as easily ensure business continuity? So start by listening, map out a joint roadmap together and innovate toward that.

We are collectively as an industry constantly looking to innovate, constantly looking to leverage new technologies to drive business outcomes -- whether those are for our citizens, students, or clientele. Start by listening, doing joint and co-development work, and constantly sharing that innovation with the rest of the market. It raises all boats.

Gardner: I’m afraid we’ll have to leave it there. You have been listening to a sponsored BriefingsDirect discussion on how business continuity measures have evolved on a dime to meet serious new challenges. And we have learned how true business continuity means enabling all employees to always work in a safe secure manner no matter where they find themselves or why. When you do this right, it is the gift that keeps giving and allows for many more digital transformation benefits to unfold.

So a big thank you to our guests, Chris McMasters, CIO at City of Corona, California. Thank you so much, Chris.

McMasters: Thank you.

Gardner: We have also been here with Jordan Catling, Associate Director of Client Technology at The University of Sydney in Australia. Thank you so much, Jordan.

Catling: Thank you.

Gardner: And thank you so much, Tim Minahan, Executive Vice President of Strategy and Chief Marketing Officer at Citrix.

Minahan: Thanks, Dana! Always a pleasure.

Gardner: And a big thank you lastly to our audience for joining this BriefingsDirect Business Continuity Innovation discussion. I’m Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions, your host throughout this series of Citrix-sponsored BriefingsDirect discussions.

Thanks again for listening, please pass this along to your business associates, and do come back next time.

Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes. Download the transcript. Sponsor: Citrix.

Transcript of a discussion on how companies and communities alike are adjusting to a variety of workplace threats using new ways of enabling enterprise-class access and distribution of vital data resources and applications. Copyright Interarbor Solutions, LLC, 2005-2020. All rights reserved.

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