Half of Irish branch offices are much more poorly equipped than their respective companies’ head office and 75pc of firms benchmark the branch office’s performance against head office expectations.
The survey of 70 IT specialists reveals that most Irish branch offices represent a ‘dumbed down’ version of the head office’s IT infrastructure.
The survey conducted by Citrix revealed that while branch offices are losing out on IT infrastructure, more and more of them benefit from customisation of their IT requirements.
Some 48pc of those surveyed admit trying to change the “one size fits all” approach espoused by head office and address their IT needs on an individual basis.
The survey also pointed out that more than two fifths of Irish IT specialists are responsible for managing as many as 16 branch offices whilst more than 70pc are responsible for over six branch offices.
Accessing software applications remotely is becoming more and more critical as executives now have the means to work from home or on the road with various broadband technologies.
This includes employees working from home (87pc), employees on the road (75pc) and partners and suppliers (52pc).
“Delivery of applications over long-distance wide area networks (WANs), often on low bandwidth links, can significantly degrade application performance, lowering productivity for large numbers of employees,” explained Citrix vice-president Richard Jackson.
“WAN optimisation appliances like Citrix WANScaler allow organisations to improve branch office productivity, as users waste less time waiting for applications and data,” Jackson claimed.
By John Kennedy
