The world of work seems to be seeing a return to normal since the end of the health crisis. But it is clear that collaborative practices are no longer the same, and companies are forced to adapt their organizations to meet new expectations. Marc Delois, Managing Director of VMware France since October 2022, explains to Forbes France how the provider is supporting its customers towards this unprecedented hybridization.
Face-to-face work appears to be back full time, but some stigmas of the health crisis linger in corporate regulation? Which one do you think will be sustainable?
Hybridization will take hold in the world of work. We must be able to offer employees the possibility to be in the office to continue maintaining social links, but also to work from home, with complete flexibility. To adopt this hybrid model, companies must acquire customized technology solutions such as those of VMware.
Before the health crisis — and waves of confinement — telework existed less in Europe than in the United States. You have to allow time to incubate the hybrid and this often involves building a company 1-2 days of remote work per week, or even more depending on the organisation. In general, there are still hurdles but French companies have mostly switched to hybrid mode, even since the end of the crisis.
according to A recent survey we conducted in partnership with Vanson Bourne, 59% of French employers believe their company is more innovative when its employees are in the office. In contrast, 81% of employees feel more professionally satisfied when they are free to work where they wish. It is therefore necessary to consider these differences between companies and employees and the impact of the workplace on the ability to innovate.
What approach would you recommend to achieve the perfect crossbreed?
A company that wants to make its operations more flexible to meet the varying expectations of its employees must first deploy appropriate tools that complement those already in place, without duplicating them. In general, maturity is present at this point but we must also bear in mind that this topic is not only of a technological nature.
Internal communication is also necessary, even if it seems that there is no real danger if we believe the collaborators who are mostly in favor of crossbreeding. It is now necessary to establish a charter of good practices and to allow remote working and return to the office. Thus, providing equipment for the home office is an investment that can be directly recouped in terms of overall productivity.
What are the main barriers that continue to slow the adoption of the hybrid model?
The problem is not technology: our technology is sustainable and we know how to deploy it in any organization and in the service of all professions. The main obstacles that remain are cultural. They are usually related either to internal operations or to sovereign considerations. This was the case, for example, with the world of banking, which has not changed much over the past twenty years; The transformation the sector is witnessing today has been enabled by acculturation.
What changes are being made to your offering to better meet these new expectations?
One of the strengths of our applications is the ability to provide employees with all digital workspace solutions in the same place and in a secure manner. workspace anywhere It takes care of sustaining hybrid work: in other words, employees can find the same experience in a secure way, no matter what device they are using or where they are connected.
For companies, the service VMware Horizon It allows management of these spaces as digital workstations and access to the various applications available. All again with a high level of security and multicloud management (public, private or hybrid).
And so, both in terms of applications and hosting: we want to become the pioneers of hybridization in the world of work and the cloud.
What are also strategic issues for your organization in the coming years?
The first issue is obviously climatic and we formulated it ESG 2030 Commitment For a more sustainable, fair and secure world. In total, we have formulated 30 ESG goals within our entities and our management team, and we are well aware that we cannot achieve them alone. We must also support our entire ecosystem from customers, partners and even employees in the hope of real impact reduction. Our operations have been powered by 100% renewable energy since 2019 and our goal is to achieve net zero emissions by 2030.
The second major challenge is precisely related to this hybridization of the world of work and this particularly involves meeting all cloud needs, both private and public. The topic of sovereignty is a logical part of this approach and as such we have published on OVHcloud virtual platform Equipped with a high level of security for strategic data in the cloud. A data hosting offering can blend the use of private data centers with public cloud offerings.
Finally, I would say that the last issue is again cultural: we must continue this education effort around the benefit of our solutions to organizations and employees in order to enable them to be more agile than ever before.
Your VMware ESXi has been hit by a massive campaign of ransomware attacks recently… Are you ready to face the reported prevalence of this type of threat?
I’d like to point out at this point that these attacks affected customers in our ecosystem who didn’t necessarily update their virtualization tool. This is the most important thing to do to ensure a good level of security and we must continue to remind our customers and partners of these computer safety rules. This is also a major project that concerns all IT operators to avoid exploiting the flaws.
