For years the power of the PC has remained in the office and been difficult to extend to staff when they are out and about, or forced to work from home.
Laptops were designed to enable flexible access to applications, but have proved costly to support and administer, not to mention the security issues of dispersed data.
Additionally applications that were designed for the local area network (LAN) do not perform well across remote links, reducing effectiveness.
So is your IT limited to the office and if so what are you missing out on? Have a think about what your staff can do when they are not in the office.
What kind of remote access do you have in place? Is it as functional as being in the office, or is it watered down? Studies have shown that enabling 'workforce agility' can massively improve productivity.
What so we mean by workforce agility? An agile workforce is a workforce who can:

• Work from anywhere
• Connect from any device
• Work at any time
• Get full access to their desktop and applications at all times

We can't always get into the office, for example, illness, bad weather, traffic jams, family commitments etc.
Not to mention the time wasted driving to the office if not necessary.
By enabling staff to access their full IT experience from home you can significantly improve productivity.
Staff who are mobile may have access to e-mail when they are on the road, but how about the ability to send quotes, access CRM, update data bases etc.
Further studies have shown that many of the highest calibre staff desire flexibility rather than the highest salary.
The ability to work when it suits them as much as possible, for example working in the evening when their children are sleeping and doing additional work at weekends.
Therefore to attract the highest calibre individuals you need to be offering flexibility.
So how do you go about achieving an IT solution that can enable workforce agility? I believe the best way forward is to centralise your desktops and applications in the data centre.
Leading desktop virtualisation (VDI) solutions are now available for as little as 10 users.
By taking the operating system (OS) and applications off the PC and running them centrally you are enabling flexible access, not just to e-mail or file shares, but to the entire desktop.
Staff connecting from home get the same experience as if they were in the office.
Most VDI solution will allow staff to connect from any device too, so if they prefer an apple, or a tablet they can use it.
Many enterprise organisations have flexible working in place so if you want to remain competitive and attract high calibre staff and enable them to be as productive as possible - enabling workforce agility should be high on your agenda.