“Digital networks will need to be adapted to an increase in hoteling and hot desking,” says Gary Sorrentino, global CIO of Zoom. Although it’s a cost-effective solution for accommodating employees who are only in the building part time — and therefore have less need for dedicated offices — it does pose a hiccup for an organization’s network.
Previously, digital networks in office buildings aimed for broad coverage: corner-to-corner Wi-Fi, with no cubicle, desk, conference room or office left without stable connectivity. Hot desking and hoteling introduce dense clusters of employees, often with multiple mobile devices, whose network usage suddenly becomes very concentrated. That can lead to unbalanced connectivity throughout an organization’s physical space, with hybrid workers at shared tables using a large amount of bandwidth and compromising the work experiences of others.
Hybrid Work Places a Heavier Burden on Networks
The second challenge is that employees returning to the office — even part time — aren’t abandoning the remote habits they picked up since the start of the pandemic.
Videoconferences are now standard. Full-time and part-time in-office employees will connect with others through Zoom, Microsoft Teams and other platforms, and that places a heavy burden on a company’s network.
“Organizations are experiencing higher volumes of traffic over their networks, reducing the bandwidth available for video communications,” Sorrentino explains. “This lack of bandwidth can quickly become a bottleneck that slows real-time communication and collaboration, resulting in poor audio and video quality.” That doesn’t even include the bandwidth-intensive collaboration tools, including Zoom, Cisco Webex and Microsoft Teams, that are being used more often in the workplace, which can also tax unprepared networks.
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