Cloud. Employees. Security. The three major shifts in organizational behavior driven by the COVID-19 pandemic have caused seismic challenges for traditional companies. Six months in, most companies have switched from panic mode to under control (for now). But a new problem is emerging: Lost productivity due to a chaotic remote environment.

“Typical employees use more than a dozen apps to get work done … and they are interrupted by alerts and texts and chats every few minutes. That really keeps them from doing their core jobs,” said Tim Minahan (pictured), executive vice president of strategy and chief marketing officer of Citrix Systems Inc.

Minahan spoke with Jeff Frick, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, about the upcoming Citrix Summit Series. They discussed Citrix’s insights on the current work-from-home environment, how the Citrix Summit has evolved for digital consumption, and the future of the employee experience. (* Disclosure below.)

AI key to the future of worker productivity

Enabling efficient remote operations has been a focus for Citrix since long before COVID-19. The company recently released Work 2035, the cumulation of a year of quantitative research on the future of the workforce. Designed to spark the discussion about “how we should be leveraging technology, how we should be changing our operating models, and how we should be adapting our business culture to facilitate a new and better way to work,” the report points to “augmented work” as a future trend, with artificial intelligence key to higher efficiency and productivity.

AI will “help us throughout our day, guiding us to the right decisions and automating tasks that typically add noise,” Minahan said.

This will free employees to focus on the areas where humans excel: “The key decision-making, the creativity, the innovation to drive that next wave of growth for our companies,” Minahan added.

The Citrix Summit Series is a switch from the usual in-person conference with its fixed agenda and lengthy keynotes. Designed for the “digital attention span,” the event has been split into three parts. This is to match the current prioritization of hybrid/multicloud transition plans, advancing the digital workspace, and a more contextual security framework, according to Minahan.

“We wanted to be very focused around the cloud acceleration, the workspace and employee experience strategies and security strategies,” he said.

Adding to the convenience of the digital conference, the sessions themselves have been truncated to make them easier to consume.

“No individual segment is going to be more than 20 minutes long,” Minahan said. “You can almost choose your own pathway as you go through the conference rather than having to commit a whole day.”

Watch the complete video interview below. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the Citrix Summit Series. Neither Citrix Systems Inc., the sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE