EDITOR ’ S QUESTION

accelerated from multiple years to days and weeks , meaning that organisations needed to prepare for a changing landscape at light speed . In a market already short in skilled IT and security personnel , it puts further pressure on these organisations to deliver business transformation securely and at scale . To make matters worse , some organisations were forced to downsize , further impacting business transformation initiatives . The result ? Organisations were forced to turn to turnkey technologies like Software-as-a-Service and cloud computing to meet these urgent needs on IT skills . This puts further pressure on IT and security organisations .

The result also put pressure on IT and security vendors to deliver solutions faster and with more agility . These solutions needed to meet the rapidly changing needs of the business they serve , solve complex issues , but be easy to adopt and quicker for customers to implement .

Moving existing systems to the cloud in March last year was unachievable and time-consuming for organisations to handle , so for most , SaaS or managed turnkey solutions were the answer . Also , customer organisations focused on solutions that used modern cloud architectures and could be implemented through simple APIs , meaning implementation can be done easily into their existing infrastructure without the requirement for overworked specialist staff , and that are self-serve , so users can operate them without significant intervention from IT teams .

Most recently , the move to a hybrid working environment has meant that organisations are battling multiple connectivity requirements for their workforce . The meeting of the physical and virtual world can be clunky , with employees now using different mediums to communicate , such as Zoom , Teams , Slack , the phone and in-person . Sadly , current systems aren ’ t yet equipped to meet the requirements of the hybrid workforce and this lack of collaboration can easily impact the performance of teams .

Undeniably , addressing the change in customers ’ expectations has been a challenge felt by most organisations . At Entrust , we know that people want seamless and secure experiences , but we also understand how complex security can be for organisations to address . In the last 18 months , we accelerated our ‘ as-a-Service ’ product offering and simplified the experience from the end-user ’ s perspective , so our products can be handled with minimal staff or can be managed by Entrust for the customer . This opens up solutions that are not only easier to implement and manage but provide help to organisations that may be feeling the effects of a skills shortage .

In the last 18 months , Entrust has also transformed our business . We have learned the best ways to interact with customers transitioning from physical interactions to digital communication . We ’ ve created digital user groups for our customers to replace the in-person groups we held previously , as well as put systems in place to ensure we have the capacity for customers to connect with us digitally , whenever they need us . Plus , we operate in different time zones , so we had to ensure that staff members were available digitally and remotely for all hours of operation . Like most , we ’ ve also transformed the way we work internally by building systems and utilising tools and collaboration platforms to keep our worldwide operation connected to each other and our customers . www . intelligentcxo . com

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