With “work-from-home” recently becoming the new normal in response to COVID-19, FPT Software’s Chief Digital and Technology Officer Dao Duy Cuong shared how the company has adapted operations to accommodate an unexpectedly vast increase in remote workers.

“Remote work is nothing new to our employees”, Cuong said. Serving companies from various parts of the world, FPT Software has dozens of tools to allow our people to work and communicate with customers seamlessly. “However, when thousands of employees turn to work remotely, all at the same time, we do have to make some adjustments”, he noted.

Cuong pinpointed four areas that needed to upgrade to keep home-working employees productive: availability of online collaboration tools, network capacity, information security compliance, and finally, performance management.

 

FPT Software CDTO Dao Duy Cuong identifies IT infrastructure upgrade and Digital transformation among key areas supporting remote working.

 

IT Infrastructure Upgrade

According to FPT Software CDTO, the company has significantly increased the number of licenses for online collaboration platforms such as WebEx (up 288%), Vidyo (106%), Zoom and Blue Jeans (200%), while Microsoft Teams and Facebook Workchat were already adopted for nearly 90 percent of its employees worldwide.

To ensure a secure Internet connection, FPT Software has scaled the capacity of a virtual private network (VPN) by 10 times and tripled the number of Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) users.

Information security training was required for all employees to be eligible for remote work. Besides, the company has taken extra actions to ensure security compliance, from providing work-from-home guidelines to requiring remote workers to sign non-disclosure agreements.

“Our customers have very specific requirements for network capacity, security compliance or communication channels. The key here is that we need to understand their needs and prepare our infrastructures accordingly”, he said.

 

Digital Transformation as Savior

According to FPT Software CDTO, it is a digital transformation that has helped the company navigate through the crisis.

“We turned to VDI five years ago to reduce hardware dependency and improve flexibility. This allows our employees to instant access to VDI from any device, anywhere”, Cuong said. “With the infrastructure already in place, now we only need to scale it”. He also noted that the company has set to adopt VDI devices for 5000 employees globally.

“FPT Software embraced digital transformation in early 2019, and it has certainly helped us. The bottom line is that we need to fast track the process and constantly prepare for any other global shocks that may come in the future”.