The challenges of business connectivity

It's no secret, and even more so these days: having high-performance WiFi in a company is essential. Not only for the digital transformation in the broadest sense but also for the daily well-being and comfort of employees in all industries. 

Supporting new ways of working

Providing employees with good working conditions is the number one challenge for the success of a company in 2022. This is why many IT departments want to optimise their IT mobility and allow employees to access suitable work tools (business applications or video conferencing, for example), regardless of where they are.

In fact, more than 60% of employees work from home at least part of the time. Apps like Teams, Zoom or Meet have become the most popular means of communication. But it is true that offering new ways of working to employees is not so simple. Between bugs, network problems or lack of training in these tools, employees are sometimes lost. Connectivity has therefore become a priority and many companies are now opting for outsourced, high-performance professional WiFi.

Is outsourcing your telecoms network a necessity?

Whatever their sector of business, CIOs have the same objectives: to focus on their core business. To do this, it is important to ensure that the WiFi will work everywhere and all the time by delegating responsibility to a professional operator. This is the choice the international hotel group Barrière made. Emmanuelle Anglade, the Group's Director General of Commerce, Marketing and Technology, explains:

The WiFi solution developed by Wifirst will help us achieve our vision of digital transformation. The challenge was to find a business partner that would help us find an economically viable, reliable and scalable solution to adapt to the new uses of today and tomorrow. We had a two-fold need for connectivity and it was very important for us to ensure that our customers were fully satisfied with our services and to be able to simplify the daily lives of our employees by giving them access to the best technologies on the market.

In 2020, Barrière's Information Systems Department expressed the need to update its fibre and WiFi wireless infrastructure as part of a programme of deployment and renovation across its establishments. In line with its digital transformation, Barrière turned to Wifirst for the deployment and management of its telecom network which, in addition to enhancing the customer experience, now supports the use of mobile technologies throughout the organisation (including the head office) to improve the productivity and working comfort of its 7,000 employees.

Google Workplace integration: the ultimate employee experience! 

Theodo Group is composed of nine startups specialised in the creation of digital solutions for companies. In order to create a tailor-made connectivity environment adapted to the needs of its 500 employees, it chose to outsource 100% of its telecom network and called upon Wifirst for a state-of-the-art "as a service" solution. 

As part of our strong growth, we needed to find solutions to make the WiFi experience excellent and to drastically increase the security of the network. To succeed in these two challenges we needed an expert who could understand us and propose creative solutions. Wifirst successfully met the challenge. says Fabrice Bernhard, Cofounder & Group CTO

In addition to customised internet access, with different VLANs and a Firewall as a service solution, Wifirst offered interconnectivity with the Google Workspace productivity suite (Gmail, Meet, Drive, Calendar, etc.) with a simplified and secure connection experience.

Wifirst engineers have deployed and are operating a bespoke authentication service (integrating the Radius brick) to query the Google user base of the different companies in the group in order to offer secure authentication via the 802.1x protocol for WiFi access.

This device makes the employee experience perfectly seamless: no shared passwords between employees, no passwords for WiFi or VPN, and a single entry/exit management via Google Workspace. All you have to do is use the credentials of your Google account to connect to WiFi and join your company's VLAN. Bonus for the VPN connection, this authentication mode includes Google double authentication for more security.