Many office workers are already familiar with how convenient it is to work remotely. We can grab our laptop and mobile phone and as long as we’ve got connectivity, we can do just about anything from anywhere. Online meetings and screen shares are a common everyday practice for us. Transitioning to working from home is easy for that type of worker.
Education, Healthcare & Government
For education (both Higher Ed and K-12) the challenge of facilitating remote learning in times of crisis can be more difficult when everyone is scrambling to figure out how to make this happen so quickly. Educators are experts at educating, and not necessarily at using collaboration technologies, so making it all work seamlessly in such a short window of time won’t be easy, but it is doable. Staying connected at a time that requires we disconnect is a challenge that we need to overcome together.
The same scenario holds true for healthcare organizations. Is there any sector right now that could benefit from virtual meetings with video capability more than healthcare? Is there any sector right now that is so overrun that there just isn’t time to learn a new technology? Again, a challenge, but not an insurmountable one.
Government provides essential services to constituents, and of course local and state governments are on the front lines of the effort to combat the spread of coronavirus. Collaboration is never more important than at a time like this. Hosting virtual meetings can be a good answer for how to keep government business moving along while also keeping people safe.
A Challenge for Everyone
At FirstLight we’ve been thinking a lot about how to help our clients and the broader community during this difficult time. We’ve recently signed the “Keep Americans Connected” pledge that FCC Chairman Pai recently spearheaded. We all have families and each of us has a personal stake in the communities in which we work and live. Candidly, we’ve been focused on supporting our clients while at the same time not wanting to appear disingenuous in our offers to help. There can be plenty of opportunists during a crisis and we want our customers and community to know that we are here to help. One area where specifically we can help is to share our technology expertise to show how to best implement remote work, remote learning or remote health.
Take Advantage of Free Trial Offers
Cisco Webex offered an extended 90-day trial now, with many resources online for users and IT admins to help jump start using the solution. As a Cisco Premier Partner, we can help facilitate this trial license and make sure that the full functionality of Webex is part of it for you. It may be an option that works for the long-run, or is simply a stop-gap measure to get through the next couple of weeks or months.
Another potential solution that has a free trial offer is Cisco Umbrella. Protecting workers when they’re outside of the corporate firewall is always a challenge and of course that is growing exponentially during this time. Cisco Umbrella is a way to help protect users when they’re online, and with more people working remotely you can be sure that bad actors are going to try to take advantage of us at our weakest moments.
Take Advantage of Our Team
For our data center customers, please feel free to leverage our remote hands capabilities. Rather than dispatching your employees to perform these tasks, FirstLight’s capable staff can be that extra set of hands during this difficult time. We can quickly respond to requests to keep your business operating smoothly.
For more information about these programs you can read more here, or contact your FirstLight account team who can setup a time to discuss potential solutions with you.
Call 1-800-461-4863 or e-mail [email protected] to schedule a time to discuss.
