Today, we live in a world where we expect connectivity—from the moment we wake up to the sound of our mobile phone alarm to when we crawl into bed with our eBooks. We look to our fitness apps to keep us on a healthy track and our online calendars to flag important events.
The millennial generation has the reputation for being always online, but members of my generation X and even those before us spend plenty of time looking at our digital devices. We expect constant connectivity via mobile technology to make our lives easier, make us more productive, our work more flexible and our leisure more accessible. Travel agents are even going so far as to become “mobile only” now.
Employees want the anytime, anywhere access they enjoy in their personal lives to extend to the workplace. Businesses are increasingly embracing this technology, hoping for increased productivity, efficiency and collaboration and to stay ahead of competitors. Gartner has predicted that by 2017, half of employers will require employees to supply their own device for work purposes.
But this puts added pressure on IT departments who are challenged with providing those employees with the computing experience they expect while also meeting business requirements. I hear it from my own brother who manages systems availability for a major telecom company across the U.S., and teams all around Dell hear it from our customers. It’s more than just handing out mobile phones and laptops; it’s about defining the right combination of device, application delivery, security, and infrastructure to deliver the best computing solution for every workgroup. And it’s about ensuring each solution is easy to manage and secure so IT can be a valuable contributor to the success of the enterprise.
At Dell we help our customers overcome the barriers to mobility by matching the best mobility strategy to each organization’s unique IT requirements, business goals and user needs. We take a holistic approach to deliver an integrated, end-to-end solution that shifts mobility from simply being a necessary evil to being an engine for business growth, and we have successfully deployed these solutions in organizations of various sizes and across all industries.
For instance, when Pflugerville Independent School District set out to modernize its learning environment to prepare students for next-generation challenges in the workforce, it needed unique mobility solutions that could support digital learning across its district’s 30 campuses. Dell helped deploy mobile workstations to give students who needed to complete graphics-intensive assignments the performance they required, while Dell Latitude laptops enabled a mobile and flexible “anytime, anywhere” learning culture for others and multi-touchscreen PCs helped teachers facilitate a collaborative and interactive environment.
“Dell’s portfolio of computing solutions provides our students and teachers with tools they need to explore STEM subjects and also give our IT department the high-performance, reliability and infrastructure compatibility we need to easily deploy and maintain the devices,” says Victor Valdez, Executive Director of Technology, Pflugerville ISD.
Green Clinic Health System also decided on a mobility strategy when it set out to transform patient care delivery. The organization started off by deploying an electronic medical record system, which not only increased nurse and doctor productivity through instant, secure access to vital information, but also allowed them to focus more on patience services.
“With the Dell VDI, clinical staff are no longer tied to fixed workstations,” says Jason Thomas, CIO and IT director at Green Clinic. “They can now work productively anywhere and provide a better service experience for our patients.”
The Clinic adopted not only virtual desktop solutions, but end-to-end Dell solutions and services, including devices, security software and storage, which provided greater freedom for nurses and doctors to embrace BYOD without compromising security or compliance. It also afforded Green Clinic the ability to automate most of the routine systems management tasks, allowing it to save about 20 hours each week in administration and travel processes.
When the Tokushima Prefectural Government in Japan needed to increase the long-term value of the personal networks and business connections of its increasingly mobile employees, the firm implemented a cloud-based business card management service and Dell data protection and encryption software on Dell tablets.This allows them to capture the content on each business card and quickly and securely store, share and access that customer information from their device.
The mobile strategy has helped existing employees tap current relationships and grow long term relationships no matter what office they are in, but Tokushima is looking at an even bigger picture.
“As part of our social policy we want to help elderly residents get online, and we hope one day to put a tablet into the hands of every one of our residents. As one of the vendors that responded to this initiative, Dell is developing products that contribute to society and we look forward to their future proposals,” says Tetsuya Nii, deputy director, Tokyo Office, Tokushima Prefecture.
They recognize that connectivity is not just about millennials, and at Dell, we recognize that there is no such thing as a one size fits all approach to mobile solutions. We welcome the opportunity to work with Tokushima Prefecture and all of our customers, no matter the size, industry or location, to design a mobile solution that fits their needs.
