The cloud-based digital workplace platform also includes remote desktop services and provides a collaboration space 

London, UK, 30 November 2021

Konica Minolta Business Solutions (UK) Ltd is pleased to announce the launch of its new Workplace One cloud-based digital platform, which enables SMB organisations to have their IT infrastructure and business applications hosted on the cloud and managed by Konica Minolta. The complete package is aimed primarily at small and medium-sized organisations with up to 300 employees, relieving them of a large proportion of their IT tasks and making them ready for digital transformation.                               

Workplace One is part of Konica Minolta’s cloud strategy, offering organisations another attractive option for moving their on-premise IT environment to the cloud, benefiting from its numerous advantages. Workplace One also includes a Microsoft 365 licence for all an organisation’s employees and a collaborative space for communication, collaboration, and project work. 

Phillip John, Category Manager at Konica Minolta Business Solutions (UK) Ltd comments, “With Workplace One, we have set ourselves the goal of driving digital transformation, especially for small and medium-sized organisations. It is a secure digital workplace that is available everywhere and relieves IT teams of administrative tasks, while promoting communication and collaboration.”

As the complete package, Workplace One’s primary benefit is the ability to seamlessly move the on-premise IT environment to the cloud, but it also delivers various other components that are vital to SMBs looking to make this transition. This includes managing and hosting the IT infrastructure in the cloud – i.e., servers, storage, networks, and all business applications that are already in use for CRM, ERP, finance, information management, etc.

Konica Minolta’s Workplace One also ensures SMBs no longer have to worry about operations, maintenance, user management, licences, updates or security. This allows these organisations to save on IT resources, reduce capital expenditure and lower ongoing operating costs. Thanks to a fixed monthly fee, they also have better predictability and cost planning. Remote Desktop Services (RDS) are also included, as well as a daily backup that ensures that their organisation is protected against data loss. Standard multi-factor authentication also prevents unauthorised access to sensitive data.

Collaboration space for communication and project work

Employees can also access their business applications and Microsoft 365 applications via a landing page based on SharePoint Online. In addition to this, the site also serves as a collaboration space, offering functions such as intranet, chat, social networking, team sites, project teams, file sharing, a task planner, and a news feed.

The site can be designed in the organisation’s own graphic profile and custom-built according to its requirements. It can be accessed at any time and from any device via Microsoft Teams, mobile apps, or web browsers.

For growing organisations: Differentiation according to user authorisations

“Workplace One also offers the option of differentiating users into user groups with different authorisations. This can be particularly useful for smaller organisations that are still evolving and therefore want to grow their IT environment at the same pace”, says Phillip John.

There are usually three distinct user groups:

• Cloud User Light/Full: These are users who do not have access to the business applications because they do not need them to do their job. However, they still have full access to the landing page with Microsoft 365 apps, public web applications and collaboration spaces (users from all three groups have this authorisation).
• Published App User: On top of cloud user authorisations, these users can access at least some of the business applications — but only those they need to carry out their work.
• Full Remote Desk User: These user groups have full access to all the business applications and features mentioned in the above user groups.