IGEL Development Takes the Office Home

Special situations require special action. The current COVID-19 global pandemic has made it necessary for companies around the globe to react as quickly as possible by moving workers from their offices to their homes, oftentimes as mandated by local, state or even country-wide government mandates.

Not unlike other organizations, IGEL, a developer of edge operating system software for cloud workspaces and endpoint hardware, had to quickly send literally all employees from their IGEL offices to their homes. This was no problem for employees who occasionally work from home and were already equipped with IGEL OS-powered mobile devices like laptops and tablets. But for those who come to the office every day, like development engineers based in Germany who use fixed desktop PCs or IGEL desktop endpoint devices, the change was significant.

These people are truly “the heart” of IGEL. They are the passionate minds that develop and maintain IGEL OS and the rest of IGEL’s suite of software solutions. How could these crucial employees move their digital office environment to their homes without missing any key functionality or compromising security? The answer: IGEL’s own UD Pocket. It’s a small USB stick, no bigger than a thumbnail, that turns any x86-64 endpoint device like a desktop or laptop PC into a trusted endpoint for secure and fully managed working in virtual and cloud-based environments.  And with the IGEL Cloud Gateway (ICG) feature, that work can take place in a fully secure and managed fashion from home or anywhere else.

The coronavirus crisis overtook Germany faster than expected, so rapid action was called for. Nearly 60 developers based in IGEL’s Augsburg, Germany subsidiary needed to work “overnight” from their home offices. Fortunately, because IGEL employees already use devices with IGEL OS, the team was able to quickly mobilize to work from home. UD Pockets were mailed to employees’ homes and the development teams were able to remain productive in their new home offices.

“The use of UD Pockets and IGEL UMS has made the process easy for us to quickly turn our in-office workers into mobile work warriors!” – Tobias Hafner, IT Administrator IGEL

All members of the IGEL development team are now fully equipped to work from home, with their familiar development environment and remotely collaborating using unified communications tools like Microsoft Teams and Zoom, thanks to IGEL’s own solution. Read the full case study here.

Our own IGEL experience of taking our offices home with us is just one example of how IGEL OS software, along with VDI and DaaS solutions from key partners like Amazon, Citrix, VMware and Microsoft WVD, gives people the freedom to work from anywhere while also giving IT teams full management and control for devices both on the corporate network or off – even in our employees’ homes. The goal for all of us now is to stay healthy.

We believe that keeping people productive in their work, while enabling them to treat their family’s health as their top priority, helps not only maintain a positive state of mind, but will also help all of us  quickly return to “normal” once the current crisis passes. Hopefully that’s much sooner than later!

Stay healthy!