The Razors Edge: Recent Episodes
HP Inc.
Welcome to The Razor’s Edge, a podcast series that examines “IT Services for the New Way to Work,” by HP, Inc. In this series, technology experts will provide you with unique insights into the challenges associated with digital transformation and how innovative, cloud-based services, solutions, and software can help you plan and prepare for what lies ahead.
Join Leif and the team as they discuss the “New way to work”. This episode walks through questions like, “What’s the new normal in a world where employees can be working from anywhere” and “What are the new expectations of both the employees and their management.” The team looks at why defining levels of service are critical to improving the end-user experience in any organization, and why it’s critical that managers understand that just because they can’t see someone working, doesn’t mean that they aren’t. This is a “must listen” episode for IT Decision Makers as well as those that provide funding to make the most of the IT budget while providing the highest level of service, experience, and lifecycle management.
Wow, talk about buzz-word bingo… Zero Trust is often thrown out as the must-have building block for a security organization, but what does it mean? Leif and the crew walk through the Zero-Trust framework and the need to balance security and usability for end-users. After all, while the most secure system is one that is isolated, in a locked room, and not connected to any other network, how productive is an isolated user who never gets on the LAN or WAN? Not very… This episode should be on the must listen list for anyone tasked with implementing a security model that includes a Zero-Trust framework from SMB to large Enterprises.
Could modern management mean that we can actually save money and improve the experience? Finally, something that a CFO and CIO can agree on… Leif and the team discuss how the modern IT experience can’t just be driven by IT tools, but needs a strong management team behind it to track goals, solicit feedback, and act on that feedback to refine the process and keep the improvement happening. Learn how IT has evolved from “tool provider” to a key piece of the experience business, and hear why that translates to keeping employees, making them more productive, and making sure that systems are refreshed at intervals defined by telemetry instead of time and warranty alone.
The group discusses the great resignation phenomenon, which has impacted various industries since the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic. They discuss how the pandemic exacerbated the work/life balance and trust issues, particularly in sectors like hospitality and restaurants. The discussion highlights the emergence of entrepreneurial opportunities as a result of this trend and the increased importance of transparency from employers. The episode also delves into the changing priorities of employees, including the desire for remote work and the need for effective IT tools and a supportive work culture.
The group concludes with a conversation about the evolving job market, the gig economy, and the shift towards valuing total compensation over pay alone. They stress the importance of authenticity and respecting employees to navigate the challenges posed by the Great Resignation.
In this episode, the group tackles Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) in the workplace. They dispel common myths associated with BYOD, emphasizing that it often doesn't cost less than corporate-owned PCs and doesn't necessarily improve end-user satisfaction or reduce help-desk calls. The conversation highlights the influence of changing demographics, particularly the rise of millennials and Gen Z, as well as the complexities of managing software, security, and data in BYOD environments. The group unanimously expresses reservations about BYOD due to security and management concerns.
The discussion emphasizes that BYOD's true cost extends beyond the raw PC price and lies in areas like software, support, and mobility infrastructure. Security isa recurring theme, with the group highlighting the challenges of protecting corporate data on personal devices. They conclude that every IT decision is fundamentally a security decision, making it essential to protect and manage devices effectively.
The group discusses the process of simplifying IT by developing user personas, which are representations of groups of people with similar requirements, even if they don't have the same job roles. They highlight the importance of striking a balance in creating personas to avoid ending up with an unmanageable number. Jeff emphasizes the need to divide people into between five and seven groups, each comprising at least 10% of the population to maintain relevance. Bruce explains the significance of understanding the impact of generational differences in the workforce, particularly as younger, technology-savvy generations like millennials, Gen Z, and Alphas become the majority.
The group concludes that around 80% of the total workforce should fit within personas, as these roles help aggregate and simplify the many job codes and descriptions present in organizations. They emphasize the importance of aligning entitlements with personas to provide the right solutions to the right users and deliver an optimal IT experience.
The group delves into the challenges of adapting corporate environments to contemporary management approaches. They highlight the transition from traditional endpoint management methods, such as creating monolithic images and manual deployment, to a more user-centric, cloud-based approach. This shift empowers users to self-deploy, allowing IT to streamline their role. The discussion revolves around the adoption of cloud-based tools, like Microsoft Autopilot and Intune, to automate and enhance efficiency.
Additionally, the group explores the application of modern management principles in the Windows ecosystem and the mobile sphere. They emphasize how modern management resembles the consumer experience of effortlessly setting up new devices. The conversation also touches upon virtualization's evolution and its relevance to modern management, with a spotlight on VMware Workspace ONE. The episode concludes with a discussion of challenges in implementing modern management, particularly the resistance to change and the accelerated pace of technology updates driven by shifting workforce demographics. The importance of considering lifecycle decisions, including when to replace PCs, is also addressed.
The group walks us down the path to simplify IT by dealing with groups of people who have similar requirements but may not necessarily do the same job. Often, this is called the development of “personas.” Jeff Malec points out that we now have five distinct generations in the workforce. They are different and have their own attitudes. Bruce Michelson, who has done considerable work around demographics and how it's impacting organizations, then dives into the concept of "Planet Me," a planet that is shifting.
The group tackles the concept of Bring Your Own Device, which has been defined as “an approach to end-user computing that involves the support—and encouragement—of an organization’s end users accessing key managed IT resources on their own personal devices.” Cody Gerhardt speaks for many in the group when he observes, "I go back to a very simple statement we often make: Every IT decision is a security decision. So when you look at a device that’s BYOD, and it likely doesn't have some of the security rigor that a commercial device has, there’s a higher chance of that system being attacked and data being lost. And if you can’t protect it, control it, manage it, and update it, it's not a wise decision.”
The group discusses the widespread trend of employees changing work, shifting works, and leaving jobs early primarily during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, as Bruce Michelson observes, "it’s important to understand that the seeds for this transition were planted far in advance of the pandemic, and many folks believe that basically the pandemic accelerated this particular trend in the marketplace. It’s also important to note that historians are going to be discussing this for years after the pandemic is over. It accentuated what used to be called the work/life balance.”
The group addresses the challenges of managing a corporate environment with the shift to modern management. Some companies have already started down this path, but others have yet to begin the journey. The old way of managing endpoints dealt with creating a large monolithic image, integrating hardware drivers, and deploying it across the network using OSD or some other imaging tool. This was a cumbersome process and required IT to do quite a bit of heavy lifting, which meant they weren’t using their skills to advance the business, but only to maintain it day to day. The new management methodology should allow users to do their own deployment, allowing IT to “stay in the shadows” and just set everything up. Evolving from that legacy method to a “cloud first” environment does require some planning, however. Jeff Malec then explained how modern management lets you take advantage of cloud-based tools, whether from Microsoft or VMware, to automate and scale much of the process that used to be pretty redundant. The group then moved on to discuss modern management in the Windows world and how a modern management philosophy applies to the mobile experience as well. The reality is that it is very much like the consumer experience of buying a new phone, Jeff said: Everything is pre-provisioned, and you sign in with your credentials and join the network. That’s a lot like what Microsoft Autopilot and Intune do. “It’s really just an automation of provisioning and then automatically joining the domain, and it's all set up through a cloud infrastructure that’s meant to drive out cost and drive out time in the setup portion of the lifecycle management for the device,” said Jeff. After discussing modern management for physical systems, the group moved on to address virtualization, with Cody Gerhardt describing how it’s evolving and modern management’s impact there. He also highlighted key features found in the VMware Workspace ONE unified endpoint management tool (formerly AirWatch), and suggested that users ask themselves what tools they need today and tomorrow.