Businesses are paying more attention to empowering remote office, branch, and satellite locations. A recent survey provides insights into how they are ensuring operational excellence and an excellent employee experience in locations outside of headquarters: They are bolstering remote support and tapping into what those users want in order to make the right network technology decisions.

According to IDG Research Services, 71% of the IT decision-makers recently surveyed said they are enhancing remote IT support to support employees in non-HQ locations. More than 40% are even locating IT resources in or closer to those non-headquarters locations, a relatively expensive undertaking that underscores the level of importance that enterprises are placing on supporting non-headquarters locations.

Furthermore, 63% indicated that they are seeking input from those workers about their technology needs.

Getting closer to customers, partners, and suppliers is increasingly crucial for companies seeking to transform their operations with digital technologies, so it makes sense to focus more of IT’s attention on the distributed workforce. It also reflects growing reliance on cloud and edge computing technologies rather than the centralized data hubs that used to house most business applications.

Many companies have housed those applications in more-cost-effective cloud services, although they’re increasingly centralized in large cloud farms operated by a few giant service providers. “Edge computing is computing that’s done at or near the source of the data instead of relying on the cloud at one of a dozen data centers to do all the work," Paul Miller explains in a Verge article. “It doesn’t mean the cloud will disappear. It means the cloud is coming to you.”

To find out more about how IT decision-makers are supporting workers in non-HQ locations, read Outside HQ: Meeting The Bandwidth Challenge white paper.