We recently sat down with Shepperd, Associate Director of Infrastructure Platform Services at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, to hear about his career, how the pandemic has impacted his team and tips for maintaining a work/life balance while working remotely.

Can you tell me about your career journey and your current role at Vanderbilt University Medical Center?

SHEPPERD: I came to the Medical Center as the Windows and Virtualization Director, which now is called the Infrastructure Platform Services Director. My team and I take care of the complete virtualized infrastructure, virtualization hosts, virtualized guests and all 3,500 Windows servers.

I spent 10 years in the Marine Corps. When I left, I decided to go to college and focus on Information Technologies. I had already gotten my start in IT while in the Corps. After college, I worked for a Fortune 100 company for about nine years. I decided to get off the road because time with my wife and kids was more important than traveling for work. I worked for a couple of small companies before moving to Vanderbilt University as their Unified Communications Manager. I managed email, SharePoint and instant messaging for all 66,000 people. And then, in 2016, we split into two organizations, namely Vanderbilt Medical Center and Vanderbilt University.

What my team has accomplished in the last five years for the hospital has been amazing. Before, we were a hospital in downtown Nashville with a few clinics and affiliate networks in three states. Now we have four hospitals with over 30 clinics and affiliates in three states. We are growing exponentially.

How has the pandemic impacted your team?

SHEPPERD: Actually, our productivity has increased during the pandemic. The hospital has two virologists who helped develop the vaccines, subsequently putting Vanderbilt at the forefront of the research. Our researchers have had enough input into the vaccine’s development that there are entities using cyber-attacks in an attempt to access our research. In return, our team has become hyper-alert about our security.

As an organization, we still have about 20% of our employees working remotely, but the far majority of IT is remote and we’ll stay that way moving forward. There’s no chance we’re going back into a physical location, but that has its pros and cons. Since our home is now our office, employees can’t get away from their work. They can work anytime they want. The con, however, is that they can be called into work at any time. Employees may feel the requirement to be constantly on camera or constantly in front of the computer, and this drains people very quickly and burns them out.

About six weeks into the pandemic, I was sitting in front of the computer and realized my team never logged off. They thought they had to be plugged in at all times. In the next team meeting, I told them to set realistic boundaries. My expectation is productivity, not time. Productivity is more important.

Your office and your house may be in the same place, but there’s an invisible line that needs to be acknowledged. Boundaries must be created. Your house may be an office when it’s time to work, but it needs to be your home when you are off the clock.

What are some ways that you and your team handle stress?

SHEPPERD: Early in the pandemic we didn’t do well, but we’ve now found outlets that help. The first thing we did was create a virtual office workroom. It’s basically a meeting that’s constantly running, where team members can jump in and jump out. They can talk about work, non-work subjects, or whatever is on their minds. It’s important for my team to still personally connect and have a sense of comradery. Because of that, we also decided to host more team-building events.

On a more personal level, I didn’t want my team to lose focus of their personal relationships with family and friends. Their families are ultimately their support systems. My boss and I both believe that our family comes first. It’s easy to execute that philosophy when your supervisor holds the same belief. If there’s ever a choice between work and family, the answer is family. Don’t ever think a day of work is more important than the needs of your family. That was my belief before the pandemic, and it’s the same now. Especially now. If everything is alright with your family and you’re good there, then you can be more focused and productive at work.

Lastly, but certainly not least, is the need to reassess your priorities. Employees should take time to unplug, re-center and re-focus. Whether that means spending time with family or just getting away from the computer screen, downtime is incredibly important. It allows an employee to come back refreshed, with a renewed perspective.

How have you found ways to unplug?

SHEPPERD: Just a few weeks ago, my wife and I took a two-week road trip following old Route 66 that runs from Chicago to Barstow, California. The pandemic had made us a bit stir crazy and we needed to get out of the house, away from work and away from technology. We drove over 4,000 miles along the historic highway, staying in restored pre-1950s court motels and eating in notable diners and cafés. We visited historical locations, national parks, and some very quirky sights along the way. Along with that, we met some incredible people with amazing life stories, which truly put perspective to ours.

^{Photo by: April Shepperd}

As we eased into our vacation, we became more relaxed and our stress waned away. Each day, we were excited about waking up and experiencing a new place and a new adventure. Along with driving the “Mother Road”, we were also driving our stress away. That’s what the whole trip was about.

To learn more about our featured guest, Guy Shepperd, check out his bio on LinkedIn.

This post is part of a series of blogs that highlight IT practitioners and their on-the-job experiences, diverse backgrounds and what it means to work in IT today.

If you’d like to share your story with Snow readers or nominate an ITAM/SAM star to tell theirs, please send an email to kathleen.shepherd@snowsoftware.com.

The post The Importance of Unplugging in the Era of Remote Work appeared first on Snow Software.

Or at least it isn’t the subject of an all-out ban as it once was. The rise of easily downloadable cloud technologies has enabled plenty of business-led IT purchasing in the spirit of improved productivity. This trend accelerated with the implementation of remote and hybrid work environments. In this new landscape, how can IT wholly block shadow IT?

Turns out, that isn’t the question to be asking.

It’s about your data

Savvy CIOs know blocking the download and/or installation of applications is much like drinking from a fire hose. Even with your best efforts, some will slip by and their price tags, bandwidth requirements and vulnerabilities, unfortunately, come with them. The crux of the shadow IT problem though should be security. Because throughout it all, your greatest concern should be your organization’s most important asset: your data.

With a growing emphasis on digital transformation, data as a strategic asset continues to evolve for most organizations. As its value climbs, so does its security needs. The risk shadow IT brings to your data gets played out in data loss prevention strategies whereby you need to prevent corporate IP from falling into the wrong hands, either illegally by sophisticated cybercriminals intent on profiting from your data or unwittingly from the private use of enterprise-grade collaboration apps who (under terms on consumer EULA) contractually come to own whatever your employees upload. 

You also see it in data protection efforts as organizations work to comply with global data security and privacy regulations like GDPR and a host of others. You must know where your data is at all times and effectively demonstrate just how it’s protected. With data and its protection a primary consideration when it comes to shadow IT, your perspective changes. Your tools and tactics do too.

Collaborate with your CDO

CIOs rely on software asset management (SAM) programs to gain deep insight into their software and cloud estate. What do you have, who has access to it, and how is it being used? This inventorying can not only save you budget when it comes time for a vendor licensing audit, but it can also generate red flags for the possibility of data at risk.

If you’re a CIO for a larger organization, chances are high that one of your colleagues is a CDO. If this is the case, you have a great opportunity to support the organization and each other in the flow and protection of data and in communicating to the workforce the importance of having good governance. Knowing what software and cloud applications are being used where, and by whom can inform data strategy and digital transformation projects, as well as drive data protection strategies. 

How can IT educate? 

Now, more than ever, IT teams are trying to find the right balance to effectively manage – but not control – their technology resources, budget and security measures. Unfortunately, with business-led IT, there may not be an IT veteran or procurement professional offering counsel to teams as they consider purchasing new services, applications, or even spinning up cloud instances. So while it’s no longer realistic to talk about eliminating shadow IT, there are steps you can take to better manage overall technology resources when driven by departments or individuals. 

A good place to start is with education and ultimately transforming IT into the role of a trusted advisor. The goal is to enable users to make smart choices around their technology resources while putting governance and guardrails in place to ensure IT doesn’t lose sight of what is in their environment in case something goes wrong. Because shadow IT has evolved and become an inevitable part of organizations, CDOs and CIOs should engage in regular discussions with employees about their needs and their understanding of the resources available. With more insight into employees’ needs, IT will be better prepared to enable their workforce, as well as protect them. 

For more on managing IT risk and protecting your organization’s data, download the e-book, Managing Governance and Risk in a Security-Centric World.

The post What CIOs Should Know About Today’s Shadow IT and Share With CDOs appeared first on Snow Software.

One of the biggest changes this past year was the shift to remote work. Generally speaking, IT used to support remote work only in absolutely necessary instances. This was particularly true in Germany, where working ways have always been more conservative. Recently, there’s been a lot of speculation and uncertainty around what work will look like after the pandemic. That reality will look different for every organization and region. The only consensus is that the way we do business is changing — even for organizations planning to make a full return to the physical office.

For many businesses, remote work is here to stay and that means IT leaders will need to rethink their strategies to continue to evolve. Here are three resolutions for your IT team to consider in 2021 to support this monumental shift.

1. Reposition strategy to support limited office work

Open-space concept offices may feel like a distant dream. And the offices of yesterday will continue to be a distant memory for some as the pandemic has driven many organizations to become permanently remote. Rather than everyone coming to work, many organizations will instead encourage employees to come into the office only to meet and collaborate as a team. Their desks will remain at home, or wherever that individual might be. While there are certainly companies whose employees must be ‘in office’, remote work will remain the general trend. IT leaders will need to continue to adapt their strategies when it comes to technology infrastructure, management, security and governance to support this shift.

2. Dial up security to support remote work

For many companies, security hasn’t been taken as seriously as it should have been in recent years. Now with an increasingly distributed workforce, this will have to change. Most assets and devices are no longer located in a traditional, physical office meaning it’s harder to keep track of what’s happening in your IT environment. To make sure your organization is keeping up with the appropriate levels of security, start by looking at hardware and your entire software landscape. What’s being used? Does it meet your company’s security standards? How is it being used and by whom? These and other questions will be increasingly important in ensuring a safe digital workplace.

3. Do more, with less

The pandemic certainly slowed down business for many organizations but even if it didn’t impact yours, CIOs today must take a stringent look at the technology they have and optimize it for the highest ROI. In 2020, businesses implemented technologies they needed to stay operational and keep their employees connected. But now, it’s time to optimize and remove what you don’t need.

There are regional differences to this approach – most English-speaking countries in the EU, the U.S. and even Australia look to implement at say, 80% with the intent of going back and optimizing later. This used to be an acceptable approach, but after the uncertainty, last year, it’s more important than ever to examine your licensing against your software usage and your cloud services and cut the unused and unnecessary. This will save you money and reduce risk come audit time.

Preparing for the future 

We can start to better understand and prepare for the future of work by looking around us today. Employees are working off home networks, on either their own laptops or one supplied by the business. They rely on cloud-based collaboration tools and they dial into your networks via VPN or other tools to access the data they need. For many organizations, the distributed workforce is here to stay and in 2021 IT teams will need to find more ways to support it.

CIOs will continue to have a degree of uncertainty as to what comes next. But by improving visibility over your technology, you can think strategically about the technology you’re using, how it’s being used, and how your business can be better equipped for the future.

The post What Happens Next? 3 IT Resolutions for 2021 appeared first on Snow Software.

The pandemic will continue to drive even faster conversion to cloud-based IT for businesses across so many industries. According to new analysis from IDC, the market for cloud services and the wider ecosystem around it could top $1 trillion by 2024.

“By the end of 2021, based on lessons learned in the pandemic, most enterprises will put a mechanism in place to accelerate their shift to cloud-centric digital infrastructure and application services twice as fast as before the pandemic,” noted Richard L. Villars, group vice president of worldwide research at IDC.

Rightsizing your expectations

But if the market is accelerating at such a rapid pace, why does it simultaneously feel like cloud migration is such a slow process?

I am often asked why transitioning to the cloud takes so long and what can executives do to speed up that migration. I remind these leaders that while it may be painful to wait on new business-critical infrastructure and services, rushing to the cloud blindly is actually worse.

The pandemic forced many companies to embrace the cloud faster than they were originally anticipating in order to support their employees amidst the shift to remote work. If you were one of the organizations that accelerated your digital transformation journey to simply keep up, you’re not alone. But it’s important to keep in mind that any cloud usage burst will inevitably lead to more expense. Despite popular belief, the cloud is oftentimes much more expensive than the data center – if you don’t plan for it accurately.

Strategically moving to public cloud

Years ago, we saw many large corporations take the plunge into public cloud to see what the buzz was all about. Instead of saving money, many learned early on that you don’t go to the public cloud to save money, you go to public cloud for agility.

So, the question became, if you’re not going to save vast amounts of money using public cloud, how much will you overspend?

The answer: well, it could be a lot.

Treating public cloud like an extension of your existing data centers is a surefire way to run up a bill and miss out on the advantage of cloud native technologies. So much of today’s cloud consumption occurs in an ad-hoc or varied fashion across several pockets — especially within large organizations.

The cloud may have been an inevitability for organizations looking to increase their agility and the speed of innovation during this time of uncertainty, but it’s also complex. With the initial promise of the cloud, organizations were rushing to implement ‘the next great thing,’ but many failed to successfully create a hybrid strategy. There were no guardrails or guidelines implemented alongside cloud strategies, as in many cases, there simply wasn’t time.

Taking the hybrid approach

My advice? Remember that hybrid cloud isn’t going anywhere – you don’t have to go all-in public cloud. A hybrid strategy can provide greater agility and innovation while controlling cost and risk across the organization. But it can’t be an afterthought.

If you made the jump to the cloud to keep your business up and running, remember to take a step back and ensure you have the right policies in place for long-term success. That includes best practices like incorporating automation, implementing power schedules, leveraging reserved instances and regularly analyzing usage patterns for rightsizing or downsizing opportunities.

Get an accurate sense of how much you could save at any stage of your cloud transformation journey with our Hybrid Cloud Management Cost Saving Calculator.

The post How to Avoid the Cloud Acceleration Backlash appeared first on Snow Software.

We need to start by accepting that remote work (where possible) is here to stay (although as Stephen Gates of InVision points out in this webinar for the Global Innovation Forum, remote work will eventually be ‘work from anywhere’ rather than ‘work from home’). While a survey by iOmetrics and Global Workplace Analytics run between March 30 and April 24, this year found that that 76% of office-based employees want to continue to work from home at least part time, workplace changes mean that we will need them to even if this isn’t their preference. In our own survey conducted in May 2020, we found that 47% of respondents said they will feel comfortable returning to a physical office once their company outlines a clear plan that ensures the safety of employees. However, 43% would like their company to offer work from home options even after reopening. 

Physical distancing and disinfection measures needed to minimize infection risk mean that site capacity in most workplaces has been drastically reduced. With a requirement for lower density occupation, space needs to be dedicated to genuine business need – those people who can’t work remotely (due to their role or their circumstances) or those activities that can’t be carried out remotely.

What might stop people working remotely?

Problem: Not everyone spends all day sitting at a computer. Many people (‘key workers’ or ‘essential workers’) don’t have the luxury of being able to work from home (latest estimates suggest that around 36-37% of jobs can be done from home) – there are millions of jobs in education, manufacturing, logistics, retail, utilities, agriculture, construction, waste management and healthcare that rely on people turning up in a given place at a given time, whether to operate machinery in a specific location or to interact with others face-to-face. 

Solutions: 

• Creating distance between workspaces – if sites are suitable, it may be possible to expand into space previously used by those now at home.
• Extending the working day – rather than sticking to traditional core business hours, extend those hours using shifts to allow the same work to be done over a longer period, with appropriate disinfection between shifts. Depending on the environment, these may be fixed shifts or optimised for the circumstances of individual workers.
• Investing in automation to remove people from risky situations. While we tend to think of automation in relation to manufacturing production lines, there are many other places where robotics can reduce risk. 

Problem: While I’m lucky enough to have a home with dedicated office space, a nice view out of the garden and reasonable broadband connectivity (most of my colleagues will probably feel that this is a generous description of the string-and-sellotape that connects me to the outside world!), for many their home environment is a constraint on their ability to work from home. This may be down to space – with two or more people working and studying from home (and younger millennials and Gen Z employees may well still be living with parents or in shared accommodation – this isn’t just two homeworking parents and a couple of kids having lessons online), both space and bandwidth can be an issue. 

Problem: Ensuring privacy and confidentiality – should procurement be negotiating a deal in a room where someone else is on a call to a different company? How about the HR manager dealing with a grievance or disciplinary? Or the CFO discussing the organisation’s financial position and strategy?

Problem: Working from the kitchen table on a laptop isn’t ideal even in the short term – but without monitors & peripherals or even a proper desk or chair many employees will feel the physical impact of inappropriate space and poor ergonomics. Mental health is also driving a desire to return to the workplace on the part of those living alone, or with caring responsibilities for whom work provides a regular break.

Solutions: 

• Workstation assessments for home offices
• Improved provision of homeworking kit (monitors, headsets, keyboards, mice, cameras, microphones) but also desks and chairs 
• More small offices/space in local co-working hubs with private space and decent connectivity plus shared kit e.g. high-quality video conferencing for client meetings)

Why else do we need flexibility?

Problem: Education and childcare will continue to be disrupted. Distancing is particularly problematic in schools where either facilities are overcrowded and designed for large class sizes, or young children have difficulty grasping distancing concepts.

It seems unlikely that schooling and childcare will return to pre-pandemic capacity soon. There are proposals around part time schooling (different year groups or classes on different days); shift-based schooling (teenagers may benefit from this, as they’re not designed to work in the mornings – as most parents are well aware!); blended on site/home schooling and more. While these changes obviously present challenges for schools in terms of staffing, they will also present challenges for parents when school and workdays are no longer aligned. It is also likely that there will be periodic school closures resulting from increased reproduction rates (R-rates) either locally or more widely.

Problem: Employee burnout is an increasing concern as the stress and uncertainty linked to the pandemic combines with the pressures of work and the lack of childcare, schooling or support for carers.

Problem – Ongoing intermittent local/regional lockdowns due to R-rate fluctuations for the foreseeable future. I’ve been clear in other posts that no one can predict or plan the future more than about 6 weeks ahead. We don’t know yet when (or whether) the pandemic will subside, there will be effective treatments or vaccines. Until we know more, we have to accept that there may be times when restrictions may be lifted, and others when they may be re-imposed, depending on local conditions. 

Problem: Recruitment and retention – despite increasing unemployment there are still skills shortages in some areas, and it is likely that while some areas are negatively impacted (travel, hospitality) others will see growth (SaaS companies). However, while there will be people looking for jobs, they may not fit the profile for the industries that are growing. 

Solutions: 

• Focus on outcomes not hours. Challenge any culture of presenteeism and the ‘always on’ mentality (spyware is not the answer). 
• Organisation-wide consideration of work-life balance and the differing priorities and responsibilities facing parents and carers.
• Encourage all employees to respect others’ calendars, commitments and time zones.
• Move away from the concept of ‘core hours’, with global rather than local roles where relevant making non-standard hours a benefit rather than an issue.
• Personal user manuals to help employees understand how best to work with others – availability and the best ways to contact and interact with them depending on the context. 
• Use remote work to make roles location-independent – recruit the best talent regardless of location. 

Keeping the workforce healthy

Problem: We need to manage sickness and provide infection control. It is no longer acceptable to be in the workplace when sick, but this clashes with the culture of presenteeism – people dragging themselves into work to prove how dedicated they are. Or in some cases because they simply can’t afford to stay at home as they won’t be paid. 

Solutions:

• Improved sick leave provision for those who can’t work remotely.
• Mandatory remote working for those who can when potentially infectious but well enough to work. It must be socially (and contractually) unacceptable to be in the workplace while unwell.
• Better distancing and infection control in lower-density workplaces.
• Multi-skilled workers with blended roles that allow them to work remotely at times. This will also allow individuals to cover for each other more effectively if someone is off.

Flexibility requires culture change

Just as we’ve had to change our attitudes to remote work (so many people who were told that it wasn’t possible for them to work from home previously have now been doing so successfully for 3 months, and are being told that the change is likely to be permanent!) so we need to change our attitude to flexibility. By making a genuine commitment to work/life balance we can enable and empower our employees to be more productive. For example, in global organisations, flexibility allows roles to be globally focused rather than local – not restricted by the traditional 9-5 working day but allowing individuals to combine business and personal needs to create the optimal working day. As an example: 

One couple told me that while it is a struggle fitting everything in, they have established a routine which splits the working day/school day between them and allows them to make up the rest of their working hours before breakfast or after the childrens’ bedtime. Both work for global organisations, and this has allowed them to be more flexible in terms of availability to colleagues and clients elsewhere. They may continue working like this at least in part in the long term.

While I’ve heard stories of many people struggling, whether due to lack of appropriate space or technology, because of caring or parenting responsibilities, trying to cope with feelings of isolation, suffering from zoom fatigue or just having general difficulties in adapting to the current way of working, I’m also hearing a lot of positive stories. There are families who are enjoying eating together 3 times a day, people using their ‘commute’ time for exercise (either alone or with their families), parents enjoying being more involved in their childrens’ education. 

Another parent talked about the fact that the 6-hour time difference with the rest of their team now works to their advantage. They have shifted their working day to fit with their team, and as a result are able to cover half the day’s childcare while their partner does the other half. 

Creativity and flexibility around roles and allowing different ways of working will help protect employees from infection. While healthcare workers have already been moving to video, phone or even webchat when quarantining, this kind of flexibility is providing solutions for others as well. 

A call centre worker with caring responsibilities who has been moved to remote working told me how her employers quickly realized that working on the phone at home was difficult, so her role has changed to supporting online chat – there are no issues with background noise and interruptions. However, she is keen to get back to the office as this gives her a break from her responsibilities. 

Different ways of working or using existing skills in different parts of the organization helps build resilience and can bring broader business benefits as ideas and best-practices are shared across the organization and a culture of collaboration develops. As organisations change the way they work, IT leaders will need to provide innovative and flexible solutions (and practical infrastructure) to enable this.

There are many similar stories – I wrote a couple of months ago about my own lifestyle changes and how the lack of travel has given me more time to explore some of the ideas that have been on my list for a while. I’ll be sharing them with you as I (hopefully!) start to make sense of them. 

What is clear, is that while long-term planning is difficult to do, we can create environments that will be flexible enough to allow us to adapt to change. We need to continue to listen to our employees and customers to understand the evolving situation, and as IT professionals, innovate solutions that allow them to continue to be productive while prioritizing their safety.

The post Beyond Remote Working: The Case for Flexible Working Practices appeared first on Snow Software.

Based on conversations with our customers, we know the impact of this new normal has varied greatly and is heavily influenced by how their workforce operated prior to the current crisis. Some organizations were highly mobile already and simply needed to enable outliers. Others have had to completely change the way they work, sometimes having to ask employees to purchase and expense laptops from big box stores when IT ran out of devices.

But across the board, an unplanned spike in SaaS usage is a common concern. Let’s break down the challenges and then take a look at a few suggested action steps for where to go from here.

SaaS Challenges

I like to think of IT as the members of the Guardians of the Galaxy; a diverse group that comes together to fight chaos and restore order in the galaxy – or, in IT’s case, the network. Their job is to make sure we’re using the right kind of resources for the most effective and efficient way of getting work done across the organization. But right now, most workforces are focused on trying to get their job done – whether they have the right tools or not. Given this, many IT teams are facing:

• Business units buying software and sending IT the bill. This, of course, happens even in the best of times, but leaders are under more pressure than ever to enable to their teams
• Individual users subscribing to SaaS applications without informing IT. Not only is the spend uncontrolled, but more importantly any sensitive data held in these apps is untracked and could lead to a potential security breach
• “Free” or Trial offers are being accepted by users with little consideration for how they will get the data out of the application once the complimentary trial period is over
• Compliance concerns are left largely unaddressed, either because they aren’t completely understood or because employees are out of their routine.

Establishing a New Foundation

Dealing with a surge in SaaS is both a hardware and a software issue. Now that the initial tsunami of change is hopefully subsiding, it is time to get a handle on the current status quo. This means:

• Identifying any new devices and bringing them under management
• Ensuring devices are patched and updated with the latest operating systems and security software
• Providing users with a portal or list of remote access tools and cloud applications to ensure they remain compliant from both a licensing and data privacy perspective
• Discovering any additional software, SaaS apps and cloud instances that are in use, so that IT can perform the due diligence around costs and security

Once you have a grasp on the current landscape, it’s time to dig deeper into the SaaS applications being used. As you discover new vendors in your estate, here are the questions you should ask them right away to understand your new risk profile:

• Who owns the data that is entered into your application?
• How is data segregated and protected?
• Who has access to this data?
• How is identity verified?
• What backup and restore process exists and when was it last tested?
• What happens if there is a data breach?
• What happens when the contract ends?

Common Software Exposures

Many SaaS applications are incredibly easy to purchase and start using – but they can be difficult to stop using. It’s important for IT teams to investigate any potential exposures that they may need to mitigate.

Some exposures are not all bad. Take Zoom for example. Users receive full access to the video conference tool for up to 40 minutes per call for free. The company is seemingly playing the long game with this approach. If you’re using it to connect now and it becomes a habit, chances are good that you’ll buy it a year from now, especially considering competitor solutions don’t offer a free version. And despite some recent issues with security and privacy, the company has been very active in trying to quickly address these problems – which means potential new users may benefit in the long term.

On the flip side, take Box or Dropbox or even Microsoft Teams – it’s a hassle to get your data back out of their platforms if you decide to switch tools. This isn’t something users are necessarily thinking about upfront when their top priority is immediate productivity. Exiting this kind of SaaS agreement is difficult, so be sure to read the T&Cs carefully.

Freemium versions are also challenging, particularly with data sovereignty issues. GDPR has a specific clause that requires a right to request data deletion but in some free versions of applications, the vendor may clearly state that they can hold your data as long as they want. This could set you up for painful compliance issues down the road.

Times are challenging for everyone right now and keeping the business functioning has to be the top priority. Keep in mind though, your organization needs to be in this for the long term too. Get your arms around the new hardware and software accessing your network now and remember, there’s no such thing as a free lunch.

Looking for more best practices and advice? Check out our new Essential Resources Center.

The post The SaaS Surge: A Perspective on Managing Cloud Applications as Remote Work Accelerates appeared first on Snow Software.