Make Your Workplace Smarter

Solutions Brief Make Your Workplace Smarter Boost efficiency and productivity with IoT in your enterprise The Internet of Things (IoT) is becoming an...
Author: Meryl Martin
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Solutions Brief

Make Your Workplace Smarter Boost efficiency and productivity with IoT in your enterprise The Internet of Things (IoT) is becoming an increasingly critical component of enterprise IT strategies. Put to use in your office building, IoT not only offers significant savings in energy, efficiency, security, and time, it can also automate processes that can make your employees’ work lives easier and more productive.

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Solutions Brief

Make Your Workplace Smarter

You Cannot Afford Unproductive Meetings An organization can spend 15 percent of its collective time in meetings, and executives average more than two days per week in meetings.1 This statistic doesn’t even account for the time spent on administrative details like making room reservations, sending or updating invitations, downloading meeting software, or troubleshooting software problems. The frustrations plaguing today’s meetings can decrease the productivity and morale of your busy employees. Unfortunately, inefficient meetings aren’t just annoying. An unproductive meeting can cost your company an alarming amount of money. One study found that at a 10,000-employee business, $60 million (which is 20 percent of meeting costs) was squandered in unproductive meeting activity. Even something as simple as arriving five minutes late to a meeting can cut into 8 percent of that meeting’s value.1 By taking advantage of IoT, you can help give your employees their time back so that they can focus on getting real work done instead of shuffling meeting logistics.

A Day in the Life of Your Smart Workplace Meeting improvements are just the beginning of what you can do with IoT in your enterprise. IoT can deliver cost savings and efficiency gains across your office environment, from your data center to your conference rooms to your utility bills. And the best part is that IoT doesn’t have to be implemented all at once. By using technologies from Citrix and Intel, you can take advantage of technologies that you already have in your environment, even if you don’t have any smart devices, and you can then add what you need over time.

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This paper discusses several scenarios—made possible by technologies that exist right now— that show how IoT can be easily integrated in almost any office environment. Simple solutions using Citrix Octoblu and Intel IoT Gateway can help your organization: • Increase efficiency for everyday employee tasks • Save time and reduce the hassle of managing meetings • Reduce energy, utility, and maintenance costs • Boost productivity and security in your data center With IoT solutions streamlining your processes, you can significantly boost productivity and efficiency in your workplace. Increase Efficiency for Everyday Employee Tasks Samar and Rachel are accountants at a large financial firm.2 They aren’t involved in the setup of IoT solutions, but they certainly appreciate the many conveniences that those solutions provide. Like today, when they need to collaborate on a budget spreadsheet. They meet in the open office area—a space designed for working together, with large computer monitors available.

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Make Your Workplace Smarter

Samar and Rachel sit down at one of the monitors to start crunching numbers. Samar has the spreadsheet open in the Citrix XenApp session on his tablet. To share the document to the monitor, Samar simply swipes up on his tablet, and his XenApp session appears. He and Rachel can start collaborating instantly. After finishing their budget spreadsheet, Samar remembers that he needs to print a compliance memo for his next meeting. His XenApp session has already automatically detected the nearest printer and connected to it, so he can simply print there, without having to find or install a printer manually. He also wouldn’t mind having that meeting in a conference room rather than his office, so he uses the Citrix Cubefree app to locate the closest available conference room. He books the room instantly, and his Citrix GoToMeeting invitation sends an automated update to the meeting attendees, notifying them of the new location. After their meetings, Samar and Rachel decide to grab lunch together. Rachel uses the Citrix XenMobile app on her phone, which is linked with sensors in the garage, to remember where she parked, so that they don’t have to roam the garage looking for her car. And when they return from lunch, as usual, the garage is packed. The XenMobile app notifies them of an open spot on the third floor. Because they don’t have to circle around the garage looking for a spot, they both make it back with time to spare before their afternoon meetings. Now, instead of arriving late and frazzled, Rachel can refresh herself on the meeting agenda in order to keep conversation on track.

What Is the Internet of Things? The Internet of Things connects devices (such as printers, HVAC units, or company cars) to a network, enabling information gathering and remote management of these devices through software. The end result can be increased efficiencies, new business insights, or other health, safety, or environmental benefits.

Save Time and Reduce the Hassle of Managing Meetings Arriving late to meetings is often unavoidable. Brie, the company’s chief financial officer, is stuck on a high-profile client call and is running 5 minutes late for her internal budget meeting.2 Thankfully her company has implemented a Citrix and Intel IoT solution that links and automates her meeting tools. Her Citrix GoToMeeting app has detected that her current meeting is going over time and that her next meeting has already started. This triggered an automatic e-mail notification or text message to everyone on the meeting invitation: “From Brie Delgado: budget meeting delayed 10 minutes.” Relieved that her colleagues know about her delay, Brie can concentrate on wrapping up well with her client instead of worrying about being late to the next meeting. Finished with her client call, Brie walks into the conference room that she previously reserved for her next meeting. The room’s sensors sync with her XenMobile app and automatically adjust the temperature and blinds to Brie’s preferred settings. In addition, the display, which is enabled with Citrix Workspace Hub, automatically turns on and pairs with her laptop so that she can share the slides for the meeting with the local coworkers sitting in the room. Brie’s GoToMeeting software starts the meeting automatically and calls the conference room phone, connecting her to the London office. Brie answers and begins the meeting, “Hey all. Thanks for your patience.” As she settles in to address the budget constraints of Q2, GoToMeeting automatically begins recording the meeting.

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Make Your Workplace Smarter

A tired Brie exits the conference room 45 minutes later. The lights and display turn off automatically. GoToMeeting uploads a recording of the conference call to Citrix ShareFile and then emails a link of the recording to everyone who was on the call. Brie is spared the 15 minutes it used to take to do these tasks manually. Enterprise IoT Made Simple with Intel IoT Gateway and Citrix Octoblu Together, Intel IoT Gateway and Citrix Octoblu provide a workplace IoT solution that is surprisingly simple and affordable. This simple solution can help you improve productivity, increase efficiency, and see value quickly. Intel IoT Gateway provides the critical hardware component and the APIs that connect devices in your workspace and that enable seamless and secure data flow between those devices and the cloud. Octoblu software works with Intel IoT Gateway to help set up and manage the connections and cloud services of your IoT solution. Octoblu is a powerful solution for automating, monitoring, and analyzing the enterprise workplace. Octoblu can work in conjunction with the Citrix enterprise suite (Citrix XenApp, Citrix XenDesktop, Citrix XenMobile, Citrix NetScaler, and Citrix StoreFront) and with software-as-a-service (SaaS) products (Citrix GoToMeeting, Citrix ShareFile, Podio, and RightSignature).

Lower Energy, Utility, and Maintenance Costs While Brie and her coworkers go about their daily work, their company is using resources to keep the office atmosphere comfortable, safe, and inviting. Ken, who is in charge of facility management, works tirelessly behind the scenes to check energy costs and keep things running smoothly both inside and outside of the building.2 Thanks to the Citrix and Intel IoT solution, Ken has recently made huge strides in efficiency and energy savings. Recently, he installed several smart devices, sensors, and beacons both inside and outside the building to help monitor and manage the building’s systems. Ken was surprised at how inexpensive it was to install everything. In conjunction with Octoblu and Intel IoT Gateway, the sensors, devices, and beacons that he installed have provided a comprehensive IoT solution for a variety of functions and features: • Presence sensors can gather data about who uses what rooms and when. Ken’s analytics software can then use that data to help the company see its usage patterns and plan its space more efficiently. • Using sensor data, Octoblu can automatically adjust the temperature of different rooms or zones based on seasons, times of day, outside temperatures, usage trends, days of the week, number of people in the rooms, or employees’ personalized settings. • Octoblu can automatically turn the lights on or off in different rooms depending on the presence of people, the time of day, and the day of the week. • Employees can remotely lock and unlock doors through a mobile app. Sensors can help with security measures by immediately notifying Ken and other managers when occupants are in areas that they shouldn’t be able to access. • Octoblu can regulate water usage for outside sprinkling systems based on time of year, day of the week, and recent rain. Sensors can trigger notifications for broken sprinkler heads, or trigger an action to shut down the system. • Sensors connected to Octoblu can help Ken’s staff manage the premises as effectively as possible. For example, a sensor connected to Octoblu could trigger a notification when office supplies are low, paper towels are out, or recycling bins are full. One of the perks that Ken likes most about the IoT sensors is that he can get instant notifications and can adjust building settings from anywhere using his phone. He no longer has to wait around for the company party to end to make sure that the lights all get turned off. IoT can help him make better use of his time.

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Solutions Brief

Make Your Workplace Smarter

Boost Productivity and Security in Your Data Center Daniela, a data-center admin, has been implementing Citrix and Intel IoT solutions into her data center slowly over time.2 The company didn’t have a lot of smart devices at first, so she used the Citrix and Intel solution to integrate her company’s existing Citrix products. She then integrated Salesforce services and SAP software—enabling her IT team to offer solutions that break down silos. Then she started integrating her network-system processes. In addition, she started using the solution to monitor when systems are online or offline, to facilitate communication across servers, to report metrics about resource usage, and to automatically reroute traffic according to usage. She has also saved a lot of time by automating administrative processes, such as granting one of Ken’s new facility employees the permission to use certain applications. Now, the system checks the new hire’s credentials against the requirements to get the app and grants access accordingly. If the employee doesn’t yet have access, the system will automatically email Ken a request. Once Ken approves the request, Octoblu automatically updates permissions in the app to grant access and then notifies the new employee. Daniela can work with fewer interruptions. Also, when trouble tickets surge into the data center, the events trigger a light to change colors in the support department on the second floor. When the designated overhead light changes to red, support engineers know to immediately address the situation without their manager having to intervene. This means that customers can get service faster. When the queue returns to acceptable levels, the light switches back to its normal color. Daniela also recently started using the Citrix and Intel solution to help boost security. She has implemented policies that prevent employees from using certain applications outside their geo-fenced areas. For example, employees cannot access sensitive data from the lobby, cafeteria, restrooms, parking garage, or outside the building. Additionally, employees no longer have to worry about losing their nearfield communication (NFC) badges, which are required to access the building. Instead, the XenMobile application on their smart phones can act as a smart card. An easy IoT solution: Citrix Octoblu software runs on the Intel IoT Gateway hardware to allow devices within your office to communicate seamlessly with each other, people, and cloud services

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With the Citrix and Intel IoT solution, Daniela can remotely lock and unlock doors to the secure server rack based on access approvals. She can use sensors to track temperature and humidity in the data center, where climate monitoring is required. If temperature or humidity limits are breached, Daniela will immediately receive an SMS alert.

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Solutions Brief

Make Your Workplace Smarter

Start Using IoT in Your Workplace Today Octoblu and Intel IoT Gateways provide you with an easy-to-use IoT solution that you can start implementing even if you don’t have smart devices yet. You can take advantage of IoT with your technology already in place, and you can then adapt the solution as your needs grow and change. For starters, if you’re using Citrix meeting tools, you can apply the Citrix and Intel solution right now to automate your meeting-management tasks. Gain efficiencies and boost productivity by making your office smarter today. Learn more at now.citrix.com/intel/octoblu or intel.com/iot.

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Bain & Company. “Busy CEOs spend nearly one day each week managing communications, two days in meetings.” May 2014.

http://www.bain.com/about/press/press-releases/busy-ceos-spend-nearly-one-day-each-week-managing-communications.aspx. Used with permission from Bain & Company.

2

Brie, Ken, Daniela, Samar, and Rachel are fictional composite personas.

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About Citrix Citrix (NASDAQ:CTXS) is a leader in virtualization, networking and cloud services to enable new ways for people to work better. Citrix solutions help IT and service providers to build, manage and secure, virtual and mobile workspaces that seamlessly deliver apps, desktops, data and services to anyone, on any device, over any network or cloud. This year Citrix is celebrating 25 years of innovation, making IT simpler and people more productive with mobile workstyles. With annual revenue in 2013 of $2.9 billion, Citrix solutions are in use at more than 330,000 organizations and by over 100 million people globally. Learn more at www.citrix.com. Copyright © 2015 Citrix Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. Citrix, the Citrix logo, Cubefree, GoToMeeting, NetScaler, Octoblu, Podio, RightSignature, ShareFile, StoreFront, XenApp, XenDesktop, and XenMobile are trademarks of Citrix Systems, Inc. and/or one of its subsidiaries, and may be registered in the U.S. and other countries. Other product and company names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective companies.

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