How empowering employees is key to ensure business survival

How has the role of IT departments evolved post-pandemic? 
The pandemic moved IT departments from the back office to the front line as businesses reevaluated decisions and adopted new technologies and processes. Our 2021 Digital Readiness Survey polled 1,210 qualified executives and technology professionals about how the pandemic and the remote work revolution have affected their IT departments. The survey revealed that 84 per cent increased their use of cloud solutions and 83 per cent found that remote workers placed additional challenges on security. Furthermore, 86 per cent increased their use of AI during the last two years. For decades, IT has been viewed as a separate entity. Now, technology adoption is a priority, and it will continue to evolve and help drive business success.

How is empowering employees key to ensure business survival?
Employee empowerment can have a significant impact on employee satisfaction, productivity, and engagement. It unlocks the opportunity for business innovation and growth. The pandemic didn’t change the fundamental nature of work. Companies still work for their customers, creating products and delivering services that customers value. And companies still work for their employees, empowering them with the training, information, and tools they need to best serve customers. Leaders in the organisation continue to lead – determining strategies, initiatives, goals, and quantitative or qualitative measures of success – but employees have control over their jobs. Employees who are more knowledgeable, have better training and tools, and have better access to information are better able to serve customers. They solve problems faster, see opportunities more clearly, and deliver more value. Empowered employees foster happy customers, and this is the most important factor for business survival.

What did you showcase at Gisec Global 2022?
We showcased our IT security products that help organisations combat evolving cybersecurity threats. Our key focus was the recently launched cloud access security broker (CASB) component of our SIEM solution, Log360. We also emphasised how the rapid growth of cloud infrastructure services is driving increased interest in securing data, applications, and workloads in cloud computing environments.

How are you playing a key role in helping organisations secure their sensitive data?
Securing the cloud, especially a multi-cloud environment, largely depends on gaining visibility into cloud activities. We help organisations achieve deeper visibility by providing analytical information on cloud user activity, cloud app usage, cloud data access, modification activities, and more – all from a single console. With this, enterprises can monitor and reduce the risk of shadow IT in the cloud, understand user behaviour in the cloud, and prevent sensitive data leaks.

Can you shed some light on your 10th Middle East user conference?
Our annual user conferences connect us with our customers. They enable our customers to meet the people behind the solutions they use, and share their product needs and expectations. These events help us improve, and identify upcoming marketplace challenges. We also aim to educate our customers by conducting detailed product sessions and helping IT professionals gain valuable insights into IT service management, IT security, IT operations management, analytics, and other domains. This year’s conference in Dubai on March 1 and 2 featured Rajesh Ganesan, vice president at ManageEngine, who spoke about how the future of work will be driven by democratised IT. Ramprakash Ramamoorthy, our director of research, shed light on AI-enhanced IT management.