What Is a Digital Workspace, and How Does It Empower Organizations?

New technologies such as virtualization and cloud computing have forever changed how employees connect, communicate and collaborate. A digital workspace—a workplace evolution trend shaped by virtualization and cloud computing—can be the foundation for business agility, high productivity, and better employee experience in organizations.

Discover what a digital workspace is, how it differs from a digital workplace and what organizations can achieve with its implementation.

What Is a Digital Workspace?

A digital workspace—also called a virtual workspace—is a set of evolving technologies that centralize the management and delivery of applications and desktops. It allows employees to access corporate resources and work securely from any geographical location by leveraging any device. This is regardless of whether applications and desktops reside in an on-premises data center or the cloud.

But a digital workspace is not just about facilitating remote access. It is a culmination of the enterprise mobility trend that has evolved over time to provide IT administrators with a streamlined and secure experience to corporate resources. In this regard, it allows IT, administrators, to simplify and centralize the management of applications and devices via tools such as

Application and desktop virtualization.
Mobile application management (MAM) and mobile device management (MDM).
Enterprise mobility management (EMM).
File sharing and content collaboration.
Secure access to software as a service (SaaS) applications.
Identity and access management (IAM) features such as single sign-on (SSO).

What Are Some Use Cases for a Digital Workspace?

A digital workspace flips the traditional workplace model, allowing organizations to derive numerous benefits. Here are a few cases demonstrating how a digital workspace can help businesses.

Mobile and remote employees

Remote and mobile employees come in many forms, including:

Employees who work at sites other than the head office.
Workers who often travel across the country or the world.
Employees who want to work from home or co-working spaces part-time.
Employees or freelancers who are fully remote workers.

A digital workspace allows these employees to access corporate resources—including legacy applications—and get the job done. A digital workspace can also help enforce compliance requirements such as the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) for regulated industries such as banks.

If employees often travel, for example, a digital workspace can allow them to work securely from any location, but only with applications and desktops that are risk-appropriate for each situation. Home healthcare workers, such as doctors and clinicians who often roam visiting patients, can also leverage digital workspaces to have immediate and secure access to sensitive data.

Knowledge workers

Usually, knowledge workers such as designers, architects, and researchers work on top-secret projects containing sensitive information and intellectual property. Sometimes, they may want to access these resources from endpoints in other locations outside the head office. A digital workspace can encrypt sensitive information and make it accessible only to the team.

Contractors

Many companies rely on contractors, but managing their unique challenges can be problematic. For example, organizations must provide contract employees with company-owned devices and applications or deal with multiple contractors’ software environments when outsourcing for projects.

IT administrators can control access to applications and desktops while delivering the connection point for contractors by using a digital workspace such as a virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) solution. Temporary workers can then perform tasks via corporate resources without accessing applications that are not related to the contract.

What Are the Benefits of a Digital Workspace?

Digital workspace solutions are here to stay because of the many gains they provide to organizations. Below are few examples of these benefits:

They enhance flexibility. Digital workspace platforms allow employees to work at any time, from anywhere, via their preferred devices. Because of this, employees enjoy an increase in flexibility in both their work environments and work schedules.
They foster productivity. Research shows that the more engaged workers are in their workplaces, the more likely they are to be self-driven, innovative and productive. Without a digital workspace, employees spend a lot of time searching endless stacks of applications, systems, and sign-ins across multiple endpoints. This is not only tedious and time-wasting, but it can also impact their productivity negatively.

They enhance collaboration. A digital workspace facilitates easy and efficient interactions between supervisors and coworkers. By sharing documents, data and images, employees can work on projects in real-time, regardless of their geographical locations.
They can enhance high employee retention rates. Because of digital workspaces’ flexible working styles, employees feel appreciated in the organization. This, in turn, increases their satisfaction levels, making it more likely for them to remain committed to the organization for extended periods.
They can reduce operating costs. A digital workspace eliminates the need for a traditional workplace environment by allowing employees to leverage the bring-your-own-device (BYOD) framework coupled with appropriate policies. This enables the organization to save costs in areas such as telecommunications, hardware, and support and training.

What Are the Differences between a Digital Workspace and a Digital Workplace?

Both a digital workspace and a digital workplace share the same goal: they ensure that employees have access to digital tools necessary to get work done regardless of the environment. Despite this similarity, digital workplaces and digital workspaces don’t mean the same thing.

For the most part, a digital workplace is a digital environment that you create for your employees. It could be the office building if your employees prefer in-office working or co-working spaces for remote working. When employed in an organization, a digital workplace facilitates collaboration while streamlining and automating all the internal business processes.

In contrast, a digital workspace is a collection of all the individual tools that employees require to do their work. This usually starts with endpoints such as laptops and other mobile devices and includes additional tools for communication and collaboration and specialized software such as VDI solutions. These tools may vary from organization to organization.

Delivering Virtual Desktops and Applications with Parallels RAS

Transforming your organization for competition in today’s fast-paced, ever-evolving digital economy is more than just a technology refresh with the latest hardware, applications, or switch to cloud services. You have to adapt to new styles of working and create consistent digital experiences.

Leveraging a VDI solution such as Parallels® Remote Application Server (RAS) can help you create consistent digital experiences while allowing your employees to adapt to different working styles. Below are a few ways Parallels RAS can help you create an engaging digital workspace:

It blends well with different technologies. Parallels RAS is compatible with Windows Server 2008, 2012, 2016 and 2019. Employees can use it to access Windows applications—including legacy software—from any device on any platform. It also supports various remote access options, including remote desktop session host (RDSH) and VDI, and it integrates seamlessly with Windows Virtual Desktop.
It streamlines VDI deployment. Parallels RAS provides an integrated management console where IT administrators can automate image optimizations easily via simple configuration wizards.
It is multi-cloud ready. Parallels RAS supports various cloud deployments, including on-premises, public and hybrid cloud, or any combination of these. It also supports hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) solutions such as Scale Computing HC3.

Download the Parallels RAS trial today, and experience how it streamlines the delivery of virtual desktops and applications!