Lawyer Monthly Magazine - September 2021 Edition

45 SEP 2021 | WWW.LAWYER-MONTHLY.COM GETTING CONNECTIVITY RIGHT FOR YOUR FIRM Staying connected is important So, what does this all boil down to? We believe that persistent connectivity matters immensely. Enjoying persistent levels of connectivity is what allows your people to do more. We all know how frustrating it is when connectivity drops on your device. Equally discouraging is when the device that you are working on fails to find a network to connect to, or if the device decides to switch between different networks. Any such drop in connectivity effectively means that a user is not connected for a small period of time. When the user is not connected even for a short period of time, there is no work output. And if connectivity is persistently bad, then these intervals of lost time will soon mount up. This results in very little work output at all. All of this disruption ultimately delivers poor user experience. Consequently, negative user experience impacts on the quality and quantity of work. So, our notion of persistent connectivity provides the flexibility for firms to overcome these challenges. In essence, with consistent connectivity you can ensure that any technology employed is working precisely as it was designed to work. Under these conditions, your people get to enjoy choice user experience wherever they might be working from. This is getting close to the seamless, “same-as-working-from-the-office” experience that we have already touched upon. And people are not just WFH. Many might be working in a variety of remote locations or even on the hoof. If you picture your own firm, then how many hours might your people spend on a train, in a hotel or even on a client site? With all of this in mind, persistent or consistent connectivity is critical – you have to remain connected irrespective of where you might be working from. So, it is clear to see that as firms grapple with all of the challenges of an ever-mobile workforce, the notion of connectivity will be key. Indeed, it is difficult to envisage successful remote working without it. Your people will need encrypted and reliable connections that can allow them to quickly and easily reach those business applications and services that are important to them. Nobody likes working in a disconnected environment. People will only get frustrated, and workflow gets disrupted. Nobody wins in this scenario, and it is not conducive to the successful pursuit of remote working practices. Improving the user experience (UX) When we talk about the concept of traffic optimisation, we are talking about tweaking the connection performance in a way that allows crucial business applications to run accurately and reliably across networks. If we apply this thought process to mobile traffic optimisation, then we are looking to ensure that applications, resources and connections are adjusted for any weak or intermittent network coverage and are able to roam between wireless networks as conditions and availability alter. When connections deteriorate due to poor performance, then any applications that are essential for getting the job done will suffer accordingly. We are talking about the likes of packet loss (when one or more packets fails to reach its intended destination), jitter (when packets do not arrive in the same order as they were sent) or latency (unnatural delays in audio/video). All of this makes working on the move a messy and complicated affair. Unfortunately, wireless networks operate under highly variable conditions, where you have to factor in things like terrain conditions or mobile tower congestion. These problems do not arise with fixed networks (the norm in any office environment). So, by optimising the flow of traffic, you are able tomitigatepacket loss, which canhappen on a regular basis if you are out and about or changing between different networks. Packet loss is effectively data loss, so if you are using a data-hungry application, that application will become increasingly difficult to use as packet loss increases. Packet loss is par for the course for those people who commute by train. Traffic optimisation is a key factor in determining the quality of UX for your people. Make sure that you invest in technology that provides for this. As your firm considers new technologies in the face of adapting working conditions, it is critical that they understand the importance of secure access to resources but also optimising connectivity to provide an enhanced UX for all the members of your team. There is a myriad of security and compliance issues that arise from agile and remote working.