News

IT Vendors Tout Resources To Support Rise in Remote Workers

• By Kurt Mackie
• March 16, 2020

As concerns over the coronavirus pandemic urge more organizations to enable teleworking among employees, technical support for remote workers is emerging as a major marketing opportunity for solutions vendors.

That's become apparent from the many product support announcements and offers from tech companies, which have become rampant in the last few weeks. Tech companies such as Google, Microsoft, Twitter and now Intel, among many others, have recently enacted work-from-home recommendations for employees that can do so.

Microsoft offered itself as a case study in how to support remote workers using various Microsoft products. To support its employees, Microsoft used its own Azure Active Directory service with multifactor authentication for credentialing, Microsoft Intune and System Center Configuration Manager (Microsoft Endpoint Manager) for device management, Microsoft Teams for remote meetings, Windows Virtual Desktop for remote access to applications, and Office 365 with OneDrive for cloud storage.

Microsoft announced recently that it expanded VPN partner support in its Microsoft Endpoint Manager solution. It's possible to use Microsoft Endpoint Manager to create a VPN profile of user and device settings within an organization. Partners mentioned in the announcement included NetMotion, Citrix ADC and Blue Cedar.

Microsoft also offered general security tips to support teleworkers using various Microsoft products and licensing.

Hunkered-down Microsoft employees are showing off their home workspace setups (with three screens, mostly) and swapping teleworking tips in this newly created Microsoft Tech Community channel. Home-working productivity tips are also shared in this post by Jared Spataro, corporate vice president for Microsoft 365.

Collaboration solutions vendor Slack announced earlier this month that its San Francisco office had a potential exposure, and it's getting scrubbed. The announcement assured readers that Slack has pandemic plans, and can scale its operations to support business demand. Slack also published tips for remote workers on how to best use the Slack service.

Google offered tips for IT pros managing Chrome Enterprise solutions and devices for remote workforces in this announcement.

Cisco issued an announcement last week to highlight some of the free security solutions that can be used to support remote workers. In particular, Cisco expanded its free Webex Web videoconferencing service offering to include free licensing on three security technologies through July 1, 2020. One addition under the free offer is Cisco Umbrella, which blocks malicious Internet sites. Another is Duo Security, which helps verify user identities. The third under the offer is the AnyConnect Secure Mobility Client, which adds client protections.