Zscaler Makes Virtual Teams A Reality

Before COVID19, remote work and virtual teams were a possibility. 

Now, they are a necessity. 

In these extraordinary times, technology leaders in enterprises of all sizes have one top priority – ensure the rapid deployment of safe, secure and scalable infrastructure. An infrastructure that will ensure businesses can keep functioning, supply chains stay connected and jobs are saved. However, delivering on this demand, in the face of the greatest business disruption challenge we have ever experienced, means overcoming connectivity limitations, security risks, and unsustainable costs – even for the most advanced enterprises. 

A surprising example of these A recent example of this commonly shared pain point: On April 2nd, Cisco VP of Customer & Seller Bailey Szeto presented during a Cisco Live virtual for the Asia Pacific and Japan about what the multinational IT conglomerate is experiencing during the scale-up remote work process.

At the beginning of 2020, Cisco was easily able to roll-out work-from-home for employees in individual countries and cities, focusing predominantly on China and Australia from February 3rd to March 4th. Then, according to Cisco VP of Customer & Seller Bailey Szeto, the barrage of office closures prompted Cisco to adopt a mandatory work-from-home policy by March 16 — this meant preparations needed to be put in place for 140,000 employees and partners with 130,000 devices and 55,000 BYOD devices, across 498 offices in 94 countries.

The scale of the requirements induced a scramble for resources, such as computers, storage, or networking capacity. Szeto says Cisco has turned to different resource-allocation strategies – like load balancing and follow-the-moon – to handle the number of activities and mitigate security and productivity risks. 

Zscaler CEO and Founder Jay Chaudhry says many enterprises have reached out to their company for help delivering technology capabilities to their team “regardless of where they work, what device they’re using, or what business applications they need.” Zscaler offers organizations a way to quickly move applications and infrastructure to the cloud via a secure platform, to preserve productivity, agility, and cost containment.

Chaudry says that since January 1, Zscaler’s traffic has more than tripled, mostly driven by existing customers taking advantage of the Zscaler Private Access (ZPA). Others have also noticed the potential Zscaler provides in solving the remote work challenge. ZPA enabled global freight forwarding company, DB Schenker, to enable most of its workforce across the Asia Pacific to work remotely. Soon after COVID-19 began spreading, the company implemented ZPA to work in tandem with its Zscaler Internet Access (ZIA) as part of its “cloud-first strategy to balance security with fast user experience.” The roll-out was completed in four weeks.

Zscaler offerings have the power to simplify remote work pain for global enterprises in the following ways:

  • Providing a business continuity program that ensures organizations can respond to internal or external crises by giving employees fast, secure, reliable access to essential applications and services, in addition to helping professional service teams deploy ZPA quickly.
  • Reinforcing scalability measures with 150 globally distributed data centers and continually increasing cloud capacity.
  • Lessening bandwidth use and enhancing the overall user experience, while simultaneously improving security by minimizing the attack surface.

COVID19 has accelerated our need for IT transformation so that in the event of more black swans in the future, enterprises that are supporting global trade and industries are online and as productive as ever. Zscaler addresses many of the remote work headaches while bringing solutions to light for the existential big picture considerations for home- and office-spaces after the first wave of the crisis has passed.