When you think of a contemporary work environment, do you still envision a traditional cubicle with a desk and landline telephone? If so, it’s time to rethink your vision of where and how people are conducting business these days.

Thanks to the advent of mobile technology, many workspaces are expanding beyond the office. In fact, about 30 percent of Americans now perform their jobs remotely—at least part of the time. In other words, the modern workspace can be defined as any place where people choose to work supported by the Internet. Some examples include coffee shops, home offices and airports. The workspace can be accessed from any location, at any time, using any device (like laptops, PCs, smartphones and tablets)—wired or wireless—and can include an endless amount of applications and data.

Novell ZENworks is a unified endpoint management platform that facilitates a seamless end-user work experience, situating end users in the middle of a robust and flexible remote workspace. It provides access to devices, applications and data conveniently and securely. The beauty of ZENworks is that it is built with user-based strategies and policies, which ultimately means an ultra-user-centric approach to remote working.

How exactly does ZENworks enable this user-centric workspace experience? It was designed around the following core elements:

1. User Self-Services: Novell makes it possible for end users to perform a variety of tasks themselves, like request corporate apps and assets, request helpdesk support, print materials, share files, manage their mobile devices and more. Using self-services, end users can free the IT department from having to manually provision these items. These services are mainly found in the Novell Service Desk, ZENworks Application Virtualization and ZENworks Mobile Management products.

• Automation: Automation is used throughout all ZENworks products. This service, for example, can remotely and automatically deploys patches, applications, user self-services, and instantly deploy them to end-user devices. This automatically secures the devices and data through processes like encryption and containerization.

• A Single Pane of Glass: This makes life simple for the IT department, as it consolidates all seven ZENworks products into one management console via the ZENworks Control center. This provides a complete view of the corporate workspace, so that IT managers can gain a bird’s eye view of everyone who is accessing services and the network. Novell is the only company to offer such tight integration and transparency.

• Security: ZENworks makes it possible to securely access and share critical information outside the walls of the office. It provides full disk and data encryption including mobile management for corporate applications, as well as application virtualization and secure containers for storing encrypted data.

One of the best parts about ZENworks is that it provides location-awareness security, which automatically tightens workspace security when end users log into unsecured hotspots.

5. Compliance: ZENworks primarily provides asset management for desktops and laptops, but it can also facilitate corporate compliance for mobile assets, apps, and devices when using ZENworks Endpoint Security Management, ZENworks Full Disk Encryption, ZENworks Patch Management and ZENworks Mobile Management.

Click here to learn more about how the Novell ZENworks Suite can enhance the way your remote workforce connects to your enterprise.