In the last year-and-a-half, we have seen major paradigm shifts in the way we approach business, which is in part due to the pressures of Covid-19 accelerating innovations that were already in the works, and pushing them into the mainstream. A great real-world example of this is all the work Microsoft have recently been doing in supporting their customers for hybrid and remote working scenarios – their most recent operating system, Windows 11, is the only operating system on the market that is built for hybrid work.
TechQuarters, who are a London IT Support company that have not only been partnered with Microsoft for over a decade, but have spent just as much time supporting their customers and helping them migrate to infrastructures that are perfect for the type of hyperconnected business that we are beginning to see emerge in the 2020s.
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What is hyperconnectivity?
The term ‘hyper connected business’ is being bandied about a lot recently, but what exactly does it mean? Hyperconnectivity is quite a broad term, but it essentially means any state where multiple forms of communication are being implemented within networked organisations or networked societies – this would include person-to-person, person-to-machine, and machine-to-machine communications.
A hyperconnected organisation or society would take advantage of several different types of networks, the most readily available of which would be landline networks, mobile phone networks, and the internet via PCs or laptops. Additional network-connected devices include servers, Clouds, and IoT devices. In the context of business, hyperconnectivity pervades various layers of an organisation. For instance, hyperconnectivity can represent various means of communication between colleagues, or even the business to their customers. Hyperconnectivity can also refer to a business’ network infrastructure. Hyperconnectivity may also refer to the implementation of smart devices at an organisation’s site. Getting hyper-connected by an SEO expert.
It is these multiple layers of hyperconnectivity that businesses are moving towards in 2022.
Network Solutions
These days, a large amount of business communication is supported by network connectivity – in other words, strong and reliable internet-based communication is essential for becoming a hyperconnected business; even landline telephones in a business context are beginning to be phased out in favour of Voice over Internet Protocol (aka ‘VoIP’, sometimes known as Cloud Telephony).
It is important then for businesses to invest in a good network infrastructure. Some of the ways to do this is to invest in advanced network analytics, so that you can get real-time data on network performance.
Cloud Computing
One of the biggest ways that businesses have become more connected in the past few years is through the prevalence of Cloud technology. Take Microsoft 365 as an example; an almost entirely Cloud-powered service, Microsoft 365 provides a business with nearly everything they need to operate on a daily basis.
The Microsoft Office apps are all fully integrated with OneDrive and SharePoint (both of which are Cloud storage services), so users are able to access, create, and co-author documents easily through the Cloud. A new app, called Microsoft Loop, takes collaboration one step further by offering real-time, instantaneous collaboration; Loop integrates with all the Microsoft Office apps, as well as providing canvases for collaboration, and a diverse range of elements built off Microsoft’s earlier Fluid components project.
Cloud Computing has excellent applications in hybrid and remote work scenarios. Having a company’s resources and infrastructure stored in the Cloud means they can feasibly recruit or continue to employ workers no matter where they reside. Many businesses have been able to recruit global workforces thanks to the Cloud. This is what TechQuarters have been doing for years with their Managed IT Support Services – which include migrating customers to Cloud infrastructure, thus replacing their on-site hardware.
What is more, Cloud computing makes onboarding much more straightforward; there are many businesses leveraging Cloud hosting and Containerisation in order to roll out software to users without them needing to download anything. Microsoft have even developed a new type of computing they are calling Cloud PCs, which allow businesses to create virtual desktops for their users automatically, without the need for lengthy setup, as is common with other VM services.
Internet of Things
Being able to leverage Internet of Things technology within your business is another critical part of developing hyperconnectivity within your business. Internet of Things is the growing network of smart devices that are able to record information from their environment (such as temperatures, motion, sound, etc.), process it into digital data, and communicate it to other devices and platforms. Individual IoT networks might be the devices embedded in an office, a smart home, or even a factory.
IoT has revolutionised methods of collecting data and monitoring systems – the fact that IoT devices are capable of transmitting real-time data to a centralised view and control platform means that companies have even better control over the physical resources. A great example would be a factory containing its own IoT system, with devices embedded into all the equipment – the stream of data being collected from all the machinery, recording their performance, and any faults they experience, provides unprecedented business intelligence that could be used to predict when equipment is likely to experience faults, which would be incredibly valuable in devising a support strategy for said factory.
Internet of Things creates hyperconnectivity internally within a business – although it is also being implemented in many public-facing sectors, such as Retail. The ability to collect highly detailed, up-to-date data has huge advantages for business.
Machine Learning and AI (127)
As has been described with the Internet of Things, data is an incredibly valuable resource when implementing hyperconnectivity in a business. The massive amounts of data that are produced when a business implements unified communications between people and machines would be wasted if businesses were not able to extract insights from it. This is where Machine Learning comes in, because it is not feasible to expect users to be able to sift through terabytes of data – on the other hand, AI-driven programs are able to do exactly that in short amounts of time.
What is more, we are beginning to see ways in which Artificial Intelligence is being integrated into apps and other software ecosystems to make the flow of work more intuitive and more seamless. An example of this is Microsoft’s Context IQ technology.
