Questions with "Jed Ayres of ControlUp"

Ever since the establishment of the Controlup Community, I've had the pleasure of getting acquainted with Doug Brown and many other remarkable individuals associated with ControlUp and the DEX community. Through this network, I had the privilege of connecting with Jed Ayres shortly after his appointment as the new CEO of ControlUp.

I decided to reach out to Jed with a few inquiries, and to my delight, he graciously responded. While I don't know Jed very well, one thing is abundantly clear his genuine enthusiasm to engage and converse with individuals from all walks of life, regardless of their stature.

@ Jed, I simply want to express my gratitude for taking the time out of your undoubtedly hectic schedule to address my questions. Your willingness to connect with both the influential figures and the less prominent individuals, like myself, speaks volumes about your character. Thank you.

" In your view, what is the current state of Digital Employee Experience (DEX), and how does ControlUp's approach to DEX differentiate from others in the industry? "

Measuring digital employee experience (DEX), its importance, and the benefits it brings is no doubt an area that many organizations are now starting to prioritize and evolve a longer-term strategy around. In fact, the increased adoption of DEX tools as recognized by Gartner® who

“…forecasts that the DEX tool market will reach $476.8 million by the end of 2023 and grow at a compound annual rate of 17.3% through 2027, based on constant currency,” and reports that “by 2025, 50% of IT organizations will have established a DEX strategy, team and management tool, up from less than 20% in 2023.”

For many years IT has utilized monitoring tools to measure various IT assets, infrastructure, and services to help provide IT visibility into their environments, ensure services were performing correctly and monitor for downtime, etc. These tools have typically been highly IT-centric.

DEX tools, however, take an employee-centric approach, and while still assisting IT in reducing cost, becoming more sustainable, being more agile, and doing more with less, DEX solutions additionally address and aid in delivering an improved employee experience, which has several benefits, starting with improved employee productivity.

Fueled by the pandemic, many organizations have had to refocus their attention on the employee and their digital experience to help improve how new employees are onboarded and provide all employees with frictionless access to their digital workspace. For some organizations, this focus on the employee and DEX is essential to employee well-being; for others, it can help improve employee retention, but for many, it helps drive increased employee productivity.

ControlUp is uniquely placed in the market to help IT and organizations mature their DEX strategy, starting with our unique approach to delivering real-time visibility with automated remediation across any desktop, any application, anywhere, regardless of how the digital workspace is being delivered.

" Looking ahead, what major trends or innovations do you anticipate will significantly impact Digital Employee Experience (DEX) over the next few years, and how is ControlUp positioning itself to lead or respond to these changes? "

One area of change will see more organizations realize the importance of Employee experience when it comes to growing the business, winning new customers, and retaining existing clients. For many years, customer experience (CX) has been the priority, but successful organizations can now demonstrate that customer experience can be improved by focusing on their own employee experience. Empowered, happy employees are passionate about the organizations they work for and go above and beyond, which translates into better customer experience, which ultimately helps drive company growth. Digital employee experience plays a key part in achieving good employee experience as the digital workspace is typically the primary tool for so many employees.

AI will also play a pivotal role in any DEX management solution - simplifying how DEX can be measured, presented, and self-aware.

ControlUp has several strategic areas of focus this year and will be bringing out innovation during 2024 to help organizations respond to these changes...

One area of innovation will come from new employee-centric dashboards that include DEX scoring. These new insights provide IT-improved employee views across the estate and allow detailed drill-downs into low-scoring experiences, providing detailed snapshots of device, application, and network metrics at a single point in time.

Another area of innovation due to be released in Q2 will introduce generative AI into the ControlUp DEX platform. This will allow IT admins to query the data sets captured by ControlUp in new and unique ways, faster and simpler. This new AI functionality will assist in finding anomalies and improve custom-based reporting in the 1st instance.

" As we progress in 2024, what are the most exciting goals or initiatives for ControlUp, and how do these align with the evolving needs and expectations of your customers regarding DEX? "

ControlUp is widely accepted as THE solution when it comes to DEX in the VDI and DaaS space. However, with a new combined DEX platform, and continued investment in innovation, ControlUp is uniquely placed to offer a complete DEX solution across both virtual and physical environments. This provides a single platform regardless of how the workspace is being delivered and supports the hybrid deployments our customers are now deploying...Additionally, by integrating with Microsoft Intune, ServiceNow, and others, ControlUp also complements existing tools and improves IT efficiency, further improving employee experience.

" Which upcoming feature or improvement in ControlUp's offerings are you most excited about for 2024, and what makes it a game-changer for improving the Digital Employee Experience? "

Another exciting innovation coming in Q2 includes our new security capabilities within our DEX platform. For years, IT admins, digital workplace engineers, and EUC managers have been responsible for deploying and managing the desktop (hence the need for DEX), but also ensuring it is secure and compliant. The shift to remote work alongside the rise in cyber threats and vulnerabilities has IT admins spending more time hardening security and compliance protocols.

Our secure DEX offering empowers IT admins to identify, prioritize, and manage endpoint security risks with a unique employee-centric security view all within a single platform, allowing admins to easily assess and remediate endpoint security tasks.

" What do you see as the biggest challenges and opportunities in enhancing Digital Employee Experience in the current remote and hybrid work environment, and how is ControlUp innovating to address these? "

Hybrid work typically refers to where people work, but today, the application stack, the infrastructure, and how we work is all hybrid. This drives a need for a solution that can support remote workers, different application types, and a variety of infrastructures, including VDI, DaaS, and physical endpoints.