By Insight Editor / 20 Oct 2021 / Topics: Hybrid cloud Software
In this week’s TechTalk episode, Rhett Livengood, director of digital business enabling at Intel, shares his top tips and strategies for enabling an inclusive, secure and high-performing hybrid workforce. From monitoring who’s dominating the conversations to upgrading to WiFi 6, Rhett reveals the technical and cultural changes that’s helping hybrid thrive at Intel.
Want to learn more? Check them out at Part 2 and Part 3 of the series.
To experience this week’s episode, listen on the player above, watch the conversation below, or scroll down to read a complete transcript. You can also subscribe to Insight TechTalk on Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify.
Audio transcript:
Erin
Hello and thank you for joining us for another insight tech talk, my name is Erin Hazen and I'm a client solutions executive here at insight and I'm joined today by Rhett Livengood, Director of digital Business enabling at intel. Thank you so much for being here with us today, Rhett.
Rhett
Hello everyone and yeah, great to see you Erin we're still working remotely as you see but that's part of the topic we're talking about today, so hi everybody,
Erin
super, yeah, we're thrilled to have you and I'm really excited to kick off this three-part series together where we will explore intel theme of ready set accelerate and today we're going to be talking about all things being ready with the dynamic technology portfolio for all organizations from sMBto enterprise with intel. Are you ready, Rhett?
Rhett
Yes, we are ready to go.
Erin
Excellent, excellent. So, let's start off with talking about what everyone is talking about these days, being ready to go back to work both in person and remotely and I know that intel has some eye-opening statistics and exciting solutions to address this back to work readiness. Can you tell us a little bit about that Rhett?
Rhett
Yes, so um when the pandemic started, Gosh, it's been almost 18 months ago one of the things we did at intel to get ready is we moved um our employee base to more than 90% notebooks versus desktop and you know at the time we didn't know um about the pandemic but we did know people were getting more mobile and we were able to our I. T. Was able to deliver services you know faster, cheaper better in that way. Wow overnight um The other big thing that we had to do to get ready was we had a lot of our applications or on virtual private network. Well, it's one thing when you have 70 to 80% of your employees in the office where all of a sudden overnight 100% are at home, your VPN gets swamped. You probably remember the early days, a lot of companies you couldn't even get email to run or anything to run. So, we had some we had to bring in some extra servers and actually go online and actually doubled the amount of VPNS and when you have over 100,000 employees you can imagine what that was like for that weekend. But what we have done now is a lot of applications including um things like email are now cloud based and don't need VPN and allows you to really um you know, our philosophy is really to get your office, experience anywhere. So, it's kind of work from anywhere. And I think if you have that readiness, whether it's a coffeeshop, you know, your office, you’re your bedroom, your kitchen table or actually back in the uh the four walls of your your company's space for you, you're you're ready to go and can be productive.
Erin
That's excellent. I know I certainly have established a car office that I think with me when I'm traveling around and uh and I start my laptop. Yeah, no, you're you're so right, we have to be ready to work anywhere. So one of the most difficult things to address is, you know, with a sort of that variety of people being in different places is how do we address the inclusivity? When you are having this mix of hybrid work environment with maybe people in office, some people at home, um and what is the intel's approach to this uh from a technology perspective when you're leveraging these kinds of challenges?
Rhett
Yeah, so in inclusivity, um you know, one some awareness training is good, whether you're, you know trying to be inclusive and you're all in the same place or you have some people that might be in a meeting room, at your corporate headquarters or at a sales office and then the rest of the people are dialing in remote, you want to make sure that you pull everyone in, ask them questions, make sure you take note of who's doing most of the talking and there's actually software that will monitor this now for you, so you can see who's participating in who isn't. And a lot of these tools really help pull from the collective knowledge, whether they're calling in from home or they're actually at work. So, I think using some of those tools um, that we have and I know inside has got a good sweet. I call them collaboration tools is important. That would be number one. Number two, everyone really needs to look at their, their wifi. What do they have? What is it a notebook, Is it a phone? Um, is it a desktop system? Wifi six extended or wifi sixties actually out? And people don't realize that they're like, well, I still have wifi our, wifi five. I don't need wifi six, but they don't realize is if you um, upgrade or you have a newer device, the wifif our and five radios are better than the old wifi fouror five radios. So I told people that wifi 60 is just coming up, but making some investment in your wifi and your router will be really good for your collaboration and you won't have to apologize for things if you'll notice in the, in the background here, this is live, this is Wifi 60. You notice my head's not an egg, right? The background I can move for. That's what if you have a pan older pc withhold wifi while you have what I call the egghead the floating head. The floating head syndrome. So don't have floating head uh, work with your work with your insight team, you could fix this and it will cost you that much.
Erin
Well, I love it and that and that's a huge challenge when you're trying to establish like a seamless conversation amongst the team if you know somebody is lagging or and that lagging often result in like side chatter uh in the office and that's that's a huge thing that we have to all address. Right?
Rhett
Yes. Yes. And I think you know, some of the inclusivity stuff, um a lot of it's common sense, but some of it is really just making sure you call on each and each person to comment on whatever that whatever the topic is. And I think remembering that sometimes people forget and they kind of, you know, our offline are distracted and um you know, those tools help the the other thing that we have done um at intel is we are expanding the amount of collaboration room. So of course, there's the big board meeting conference room and that's obviously for for very important meetings. But these collaboration rooms now have very large um screens, marker boards that you now of course with with teams or zoom or um you know, whatever type of collaboration you can actually interact back and forth with people people at home that are may be drawing on their on their pc. So that's another way to be inclusive that some people like to be able to see or draw or touch and not just type all the time. So adding these in, you know, I think if the team bought in and has them up there, it keeps people focused and again, I think it helps with the inclusion.
Erin
I love that. I love that that tie so succinctly back to the theme of being ready because really what you want to make sure and I'm sure intel this is a huge part of your strategy is that there is that readiness with the tools with the knowledge so that you can then go right and then make some big strides as a team. Um I love that. So what are your customers saying? What are our customers saying about the common concerns around the hybrid environment? Is the security an issue and, you know, are we talking about stuff like that? Um and what can we see or expect to see evolve in the coming year around this um dual state working situation?
Rhett
Yeah. I think once people got um, settle, they they maybe got a proper desk chair and hopefully some of the companies might have helped, might have helped uh invest in that and they got, you know, some a decent microphone that's not them speaking into the, you know, in into their, into their their their phone and maybe a, you know, a decent camera and some lighting where they can see one of the things you have to think about is security when you're in an office environment. Um you know, you don't usually have uh, other folks perhaps um uh you know, I would say when you're when, when you're at work your your security guard might be a little down. You're not worried that somebody's going to come by and steal your stuff when you go eat lunch and um you know you know try to break into your system when you're working from home people get and forget about. There are certain things that you need to be careful. For instance how many people are working on their home wifi network and they have not set the password. In other words maybe your neighbors are using it. You know maybe grandma's using it. Nothing wrong with grandma but it might be good for grandma to actually put in a password so a lot of people don't have the regular password on. It's just like being in an airport you know if you're going through a virtual private network that's one thing. But if you're just going into one of these cloud apps that may or may not have the security turned on and you you really need to use the security tools and it's very they're very easy to turn on. Um And use you just have to be aware. The other thing is in terms of being ready we now monthly uh send out some um some emails that are security breaches that are practice ones and for instance here we are talking with Insight I could spell inside I. N. S.I. G. T. And leave out the h. And it looks just like the inside emails, you would be surprised how many people click on that and instantly their system is affected. So just being ready and having people aware that you know not every email you get is from a from a business associate or a person that you know you have to be very vigilant and I've got you know either through the phone coming in or emails, that's one of the number one security concerns. So being ready we actually um uh do practices and I believe inside has got some good programs so that will actually set it up for your company and they'll be the bad actor and test out how security aware your employees are and you would be surprised how many people stick in. So those are those are just some ideas I think that people whether you're at home or in the officer in the cafe, you just have to be careful, you know sending bank payments, sending contracts, doing business over the phone, you got to think about where are you and what is the security you have around you and it just takes a little more thinking than being in the office where someone else is doing that thinking for you.
Erin
Totally and I to know that you know you don't have to be overwhelmed because you are supported by organizations like intel and insight. You know sometimes I think people get a little overwhelmed or maybe evenlike afraid of what that looks like and that's what the bad actors kind of rely on is that you're going to be, you know insecure, just sort of in using those tools. So I really love that we, you know, collectively have a programs in place and support in place to help people navigate um just feeling like, okay, I understand what's going on here and I know how to protect myself and my organization, um I think that's really great, so that's an awesome segue right into maybe just talking a little bit about the partnership between intel and insight and tell us a little bit about the experiences and the relationship that we have.
Rhett
Oh yeah, you Insight has been a partner of intel's for a longtime. Um you know, we Intel has big manufacturing site and lots of employees in Chandler Arizona and insight also has great facilities in Chandler. So I've been to the facility Chandler, uh you guys have the big sales, I'll call it the arena, you have your big arenas. In fact I helped set up at Intel actually had a little demo center in their back when people went into work, so that that's been great, but I think a lot of the teaming um that we've done um in the last few years, which has been great, has really been um pulling um you know, the internet of things and some of the new technologies um into the client space when you think about managing, you know pcs we're talking about security now, you know, it's interesting that a lot of workers in addition to maybe a phone or a notebook or a desktop if they happen to have that at home or maybe they are going back into the office, they might have some other handheld devices, maybe they're measuring pressure or temperature or they're out doing reads and stuff and I think adding those devices and looking at all your collective devices together and managing those. This is a good time to do it, especially um during the pandemic when a lot of the security and and software and online stuff has really gotten a lot more advanced. So um I think that partnership on really being on the on the leading edge and pulling that technology and we really and you know enjoyed working within insight um in pulling those technologies together and of course, you know, we're coming up on, you know, some exciting times, at least in the client space. Um we've got you know, Windows 11 coming out from Microsoft, a joint partner of ours and um you know, insight continues to work with a lot of the leaders in the industry whether it's security or manageability or collaboration and all those continue to be very important. So, whether we're together in Chandler or uh you know our remote around the world um it's been good teaming.
Erin
I love it. And we are so grateful for the partnership. You know, just to know that we've got a significant and trusted relationship with intel where we can go out and support clients together through innovation and through that, that development and that's, it's such an inspiring um, you know, time to be connected together and I'm so grateful for your time today. Thank you so much for sharing your insight and expertise. It's extremely valuable to all of our customers and our teammates alike.
Rhett
Yes, well thanks so much. And you know what with um if you're not sure how to become ready, um, insights got a great um, and and and it's online, you can go through a checklist. Doesn't take long to really have you think about are you ready from either working from home or as you go back into the office, are you really ready? So I would take advantage of that. And Aaron, it's been great talking with you and meeting with insight.
Erin
I love it, Thank you so much. Rhett. And you know what will definitely include that link in this episode’s show notes. So definitely that will be something that we include. And let me just take a minute to say thank you to our viewers for taking time today to join us. And um, like Rhett said, if you'd like to learn more, make sure you visit Insight.com while you're there. Sign up for our quarterly digital magazine. It's called uh, Tech Talk or sorry, the Tech Journal. We're doing the Tech Talk right now Journal Journal that's going to provide with you with even more inspiration and insights around the future of business and technology. It is a free resource that we're happy to provide and uh love providing the opportunity for additional inspiration and education. My name is Erin once again and it's been awesome today to spend this time with you. I can't wait to Techtalk again soon. Have a terrific day.
Director, Digital Business Enabling at Intel
Rhett has a passion for building partner business development teams in an emerging digital economy. He’s a proven leader, having founded three businesses and managed hundreds of employees across marketing, sales and operational teams. He has worked to launch 22 new products over the past 10 years, generating billions of dollars of revenue and enhancing customer relationships.
Client Solutions Executive, Insight
Erin is passionate about supporting clients and helping organizations thrive by leveraging digital transformation. Throughout her career, she’s made it a priority to develop meaningful connections — whether that’s through events, leadership opportunities, marketing initiatives, or connecting over coffee. Erin is an intuitive and attentive leader and collaborator who establishes and fosters trust relationships with clients, teammates, and stakeholders alike.
Receive automatic notifications when new episodes are released.
