Business Talk – In conversation with Aptronics MD Alex Russell
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Alex Russell is joint managing director at ICT service and solution provider, Aptronics, a division of iOCO.
Aptronics forms part of the iOCO Compute and platform cluster of businesses, having integrated the technology solutions business of EOH with Aptronics. This merged business takes the iOCO compute and platform value proposition of datacentre – workspace – cyber security to market.
Russell was formerly a managing director at EOH, and was MD at SmartAxess prior to that. He has a bachelor of business administration from the University of South Africa.
As we move into a completely new age of employee engagement and the evolution of the workspace, Russell believes it is critical to build solutions around flexibility and mobility. These solutions will inter-change from an office to a home connection, with the understanding that security, redundancy, monitoring and reporting are built-in, to ensure true engagement for an organisation’s greatest assets: their people, he says.
In this episode of Business Talk with Michael Avery, Russell highlights some of the technical challenges forced on businesses during lockdown as the global Covid-19 pandemic forced people to change the way they work, overnight.
Remote working quickly became the norm and many organisations scrambled to adapt to maintain productivity, Russell says.
A growing number of companies are rethinking their ways of working and for many, the remote working trend is here to stay; however, the implementation of effective remote working poses some challenges, including the rapid roll out of remote work capabilities at scale for employees; ensuring employee productivity remains high; and providing a seamless work from home environment without compromising security and control.
In some instances, employees are returning to the physical workplace, and businesses must support and protect these workers to ensure their physical safety and mental health as well as their communities and customers, Russell says.
He says that Aptronics/iOCO, HPE and Citrix can help businesses navigate new ways of working by applying resources, technology, and talent to address the critical challenges they are facing with Covid-19 and the need to deliver and manage a sudden and secure remote workforce as well as assist in safely transitioning employees back to the office.
This extends to 24×7 support, financial flexibility through HPE financial services and committed support from joint alliances, product, sales and support teams.
The full interview is embedded below. You can find all the Business Talk with Michael Avery interviews here.