Remote work had already achieved mainstream status before the coronavirus drove millions of us into work-from-home arrangements. Research conducted months before the COVID-19 pandemic found that remote work has increased by more than 150 percent over the past decade, with nearly three-quarters of global professionals reporting they telecommute at least one day a week.
Most historians agree that The Old Admiralty Office built in London in 1726 was the first example of a dedicated office building. For nearly three centuries since, most people have thought of work as both something they do and someplace they go.
That concept has been thoroughly upended in the last 12 months.
Providing IT support for telecommuting employees has always been a tricky proposition, but it is particularly challenging now that COVID-19 stay-at-home orders have effectively forced entire companies into work-from-home arrangements.
Even before the current crisis created a surge in telecommuting, remote workers said IT support problems limited their productivity.
Early video conferencing solutions were major timesavers and money savers. Organizations no longer had to spend days or weeks planning face-to-face meetings, or pay for travel and accommodations. But those early solutions did require expensive on-premises equipment.
If there has been one perceived drawback to advances in communication technology, it has been that emailing, texting and instant messaging has replaced face-to-face communication. As a result, relationships aren’t as strong as in the past. Thanks to the emergence of video conferencing as a core collaboration technology, this trend is being reversed.
Did you realize the term “high definition” was first used to describe televisions introduced in 1936? Of course, those TVs were only HD compared to earlier models that had as few as 30 lines of resolution. For the purposes of this article, let’s focus on modern HD technology.
The video conferencing market has long been dominated by powerful and expensive room-based systems that required advanced scheduling and the support of IT staff in order to conduct meetings. While those systems still make sense for large group meetings, several new developments are helping to drive the power of video collaboration into all corners of the workforce.
