Employees are demanding technology that helps them innovate, collaborate and communicate faster. It's a new age of disruption for IT departments, under pressure and overwhelmed by the needs of the connected workplace.

The rise in technology in the past few decades has transformed how employees work and the expectation of those from younger generations who are joining the workforce.

Although flexible work has grown with the spread of powerful mobile devices and broadband, it's only recently that joined-up and secure services gifted remote workers equal presence and ‘touch' with those constrained inside the four walls and firewalls of their employer's premises.

So great and fast is the shift to remote working, that a global survey of 20,000 business people by flexible workspace provider Regus found more than half worked outside a designated office half the week (48% for Australia).

Today, a cosmos of point business technologies in the cloud boost productivity, slash costs, amplify talent, exalt customers, and transform operations for the flexible, ‘Connected Workplace'.

The challenge for trusted advisers is to bundle a dizzying array of technologies that span collaboration, voice, storage and security into a cogent solution to deliver the biggest bang for their customer's buck.

Savvy partners will leap from recommending disparate technologies to weave their own intellectual property (IP) that meshes solutions with secure and managed delivery into repeatable products that become just another item in their inventory on top of their unique value-add, business insights and consulting.

To narrow alternatives and deliver quality advice to its partners' customers, distributor Ingram Micro Australia ran workshops in May 2018 with five vendors that enable a reseller-partner to compose a compelling value solution for business customers seeking the benefits of the Connected Workplace.

In collaboration with key vendors in this place, Ingram Micro Cloud developed an eBook to understand how these new cloud technologies are enabling the connected workplace transformation and how well-placed technology partners are to satisfying the end customers' requirements.

The eBook covers the following:

• The challenge of bundling an array of technologies that span collaboration, voice, storage and security into a cogent solution to deliver the biggest bang for the customer's buck.

• How Savvy partners will leap from recommending disparate technologies to weave their own intellectual property (IP) that meshes solutions with secure and managed delivery into repeatable products.

• How Ingram Micro provides compelling cloud solutions for business customers seeking the benefits of a Connected Workplace.