January 2017 | Business View Magazine

14 15 opening lines technology. When it comes to work, they expect their devices and apps be mo- bile-first and customizable and meet them on their own terms, regardless of location,” said Chris Chute, vice president, Customer Insights and Analysis Group, IDC. “Mobility is essential, and cloud solutions are only going to become more the norm, so it’s clear that businesses need to adapt to this changing environment to remain competi- tive in 2017 and beyond.” “The Millennial generation is impacting the way we work and the technology we use in fascinating ways,” said Patricia Ames, President and Analyst, BPO Media. “Their penchant for mobile access, collaboration and open and transparent processes and communication have forced enterprise IT environments to abandon their silos and create efficient and more effective work- flows for the modern office workers.” During the panel discussion, Ames noted that creativity is essential for business and these younger workers are proof new hab- its and ideas can change a whole business landscape. They take mobility as a given, and have no qualms about being “always on” but also expect to use technology as they have grown accustom to, personalized to their individual technology preferences. Tom O’Neill, Director of Product Market- ing for Canon U.S.A.’s Enterprise Solutions Division, noted the inherent tension for the enterprise environment when it comes to addressing these changing conditions. For the enterprise environment, a primary goal is achieving standardization, man- aged controls, and security features. De- cision-makers, therefore, need to actively avoid creating a problematic dynamic given Millennial expectations for technol- ogy, flexibility, and customization. O’Neill discussed how Canon embrac- es a unified ap- proach across hard- ware and software solutions to help enterprise envi- ronments optimize their digital workplace transformation to help meet the expectations of today’s workforce and support the mutual goal of access controls and an efficient, productive business environment. One such exam- ple is seen with Canon’s third generation imageRUNNER ADVANCE systems that now include uniFLOW Login Manager (ULM), an easy to use authentication application, which can help IT security administra- tors control who uses the device and the functions available to that user. With the My Advance feature, once authenticated, users can customize their individual user interface with the common functions and settings they use, for example setting the interface to display a particular language. This is a solution that helps balance access control with the needs of the enterprise environment and the customization expec- tations of the individual. And with this type of standard authentication found on Canon’s third generation imageRUNNER AD- VANCE systems, ac- cess to cloud services with security features that can help users protect documents and limit access to data is available to the user, and with the growing use of cloud based solutions, this ability to provide technology transparency to users and security features to the enterprise environment will grow in importance. Dupree, a millennial himself, said that he expects that in 2017 will see even more demand for IT flexibility, customization, and convenience in the workplace, and that providing a virtually seamless experience is critical to achieving the ROI that enterprises expect.