Technology Reseller - v29

01732 759725 06 TECH TRENDS Businesses must do more to support home workers From the start, the coronavirus lockdown has been described as the world’s greatest experiment in home-working. So, one month into the UK’s lockdown, what are some of the early results? A survey of the current working habits of 3,000 office workers by Atlas Cloud, which resells application hosting and DaaS services for Internet Service Vendors, provides some interesting insights. This shows that most employees have adapted easily to working from home, with 79% of those doing so believing they can do so effectively. However, it also highlights the shortcomings of existing arrangements: n 34% of home workers say their work is being hampered by poor home internet connectivity; n 25% are using a personal laptop for homeworking, with more than half of those storing work files on that personal device and 7% having no password protection (16% are working on a company laptop bought since the coronavirus pandemic); n 24% complain of having to log in to too many separate software packages and apps while working from home; n 22% can’t access the computer files they need while working from home; and n 20% say the quality of the laptop, desktop or tablet they work on from home is negatively affecting their productivity. Given these challenges, it is not surprising that more than half of office workers (57%) believe their company should be doing more to help them work productively from home. Almost one fifth (19%) say their company needs to act urgently to enable them to work productively from home. With the possibility that home-working will be adopted more strategically after the lockdown, it is instructive that just two in five workers believe their employer has helped them make adequate provisions to work from home long-term; 38% say their employer needs to invest in longer-term solutions if they are to work from home in the future. Pete Watson, CEO of Atlas Cloud, said: “We anticipate that among the largest changes we’ll see to our working lives as a result of the coronavirus pandemic is a much larger proportion of Britain’s workforce working from home more often and a change in how British businesses manage their IT and handle business information.” Manufacturers grab PPE lifeline There’s nothing like a cliche in a crisis – ‘in these unprecedented times’ and ‘the new normal’ have become ubiquitous. ‘Necessity is the mother of invention’ is another we will no doubt hear a lot as manufacturers switch production to counter a catastrophic decline in demand for their core products. For some, the manufacture of face shields has been a lifeline – and a valuable contribution to the PPE provision for frontline workers. DisplayMode, a provider of retail and point of sale displays, began making the shields on a not-for-profit basis to avoid having to furlough staff. It started out producing 10,000 masks a week, but within just two weeks was making 100,000 a week. Over the same period, the cost per unit has fallen from £5 to £2. Binding specialist Renz responded to a 75% collapse in orders in a similar fashion, using its expertise and spare manufacturing capacity to produce a lightweight Protective Face Shield now certified by ECS GmbH, the European Certification Service. Graphic display specialist Leach is partially compensating for a big dip in orders from its museum, exhibition and leisure sector customers by launching a range of social distancing window, floor and wall graphics and establishing a new e-commerce arm. Following orders for 10,000 square metres of social distancing graphics in the last month alone, Leach is now printing hundreds of stock visuals that can be bought through a dedicated virtual shop at https://weareleach- socialdistancing.com/. Print service provider Carly Press has been using spare capacity to print free ‘self isolation’ stickers for local residents to put up outside their homes. 3D printers take up the slack On a smaller scale, people have been finding new uses for 3D printers. Y Soft Corporation has been using its fleet of be3D eDee 3D printers to produce 500 protective face shields per day, which it is donating to a number of hospitals, including three in the UK – University Hospital Bristol, Devon Partnership NHS Trust and UHCW NHS Trust. Meanwhile, a Lancashire-based cloud specialist with a passion for all things tech is using money from a cancelled cruise to produce face guards for shop assistants and other key workers. Craig Holmes, Head of Cloud at Yorkshire technology firm Vapour, spent his cruise money on two high-end 3D printers, which he is using to 3D print up to 300 headbands/visors a week, with material and distribution costs paid for by Vapour. Lockdown look-out Predictably enough, cyber-criminals have been quick to exploit the security risk presented by home workers. Cyber security company Centrify reports that 71% of business decision-makers believe the shift to 100% remote working during the Covid-19 crisis has increased the likelihood of a cyber breach; 46% have already seen an increase in phishing attacks since implementing a policy of widespread remote working. To counter the risk, 79% have increased their cyber Tech trends: ICT in the UK today Pete Wilson, CEO, Atlas Cloud DisplayMode Leach Carly Press