X-ray of a Successful Global Enterprise Digital Workplace Strategy

Reviewed and updated in October 2026.

After small and medium-sized businesses and enterprises, the final part of our series looks at a global enterprise: offices with hundreds of employees each in the United Kingdom, Germany, Spain, the United States, Australia and New Zealand.

A global enterprise digital workplace strategy adds three things to an enterprise strategy: secure connections between offices in several countries, compliance with each country's rules on where and how data is stored, and a management model that keeps local teams in control of local resources without creating separate silos. In practice that means separate tenants where data residency requires them, Zero Trust access for users anywhere, and one management and monitoring layer across all environments.

The global enterprise scenario

Some offices run local infrastructure, mainly for software testing and internal training, and all of them use common SaaS services for productivity: email, collaboration tools and document repositories. Most staff work remotely, with a few in the office. Each location has its own IT team. Laptops and desktops are company-owned main work devices, and mobile devices are a mix of COPE and BYOD, deployed as needed.

Which challenges does a global enterprise face?

The main challenges resemble those of an enterprise, but going international adds a layer of complexity:

• Connecting offices and allowing easy, secure access to all authorized resources from anywhere
• Complying with local laws on handling and storing sensitive data, including data residency within the EU, which drives requirements for local data centers
• Different management solutions and tools at different sites
• Unique business cases that lead to one-off technology requirements
• Introducing new processes and technology through training

In theory this is one company. In practice it behaves more like several organizations that share resources and collaborate while keeping control of their own local resources where needed.

How did they address these challenges?

Employee devices

Using different ownership models depending on business requirements, the organization gave everyone a laptop, encrypted and managed under corporate policies, and provided mobile devices to users who need sensitive corporate data on the go.

Handling and storing sensitive data

Ideally, work data is never stored on any employee device. Where it is, data leaks must be prevented:

• On personal devices (BYOD), app containerization keeps work data secured and separated from the rest of the device.
• On corporate-owned devices (COPE), Android devices are separated at operating system level with the work profile, and iOS devices at app level with managed apps.

Going international adds data residency. For on-premises services this was easy to enforce. For cloud services it was more delicate, so each office had to use a tenant located in its own country, or at least within the European Union for the EU offices. Microsoft now supports this with its EU Data Boundary, under which customer data of EU and EFTA customers in services such as Microsoft 365 and Azure is stored and processed within the EU and EFTA, with limited, documented exceptions.

Because the company handles sensitive corporate, internal and above all customer data, it had to make sure that data was handled and stored according to local rules, which differ considerably:

• In the EU, the company confirmed with all software and solution providers that their products complied with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Since Brexit, the UK office falls under the UK's own version, the UK GDPR.
• In the US there is no single federal privacy law. Personally identifiable information (PII) is protected by state laws such as the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) and by sector-specific rules.

To enforce this, a dedicated cloud-based data loss prevention (DLP) solution was implemented to prevent data exfiltration, intentional or not. Corporate documents on all corporate endpoints that contain company-specific or regulated sensitive data were inventoried, so that any extraction could be detected, reported and blocked in real time.

How did employees access data?

The environment is a hybrid of on-site and cloud services, so the company took a full Zero Trust approach to provide secure access to corporate resources wherever they are located and wherever employees connect from. NIST describes the model in SP 800-207, Zero Trust Architecture.

• Between offices: dedicated connections using VPN technology protect all traffic from being intercepted, accessed or tampered with. The offices are defined as trusted locations in Conditional Access, so employees reach resources at other offices transparently.
• From anywhere else: employees also connect from mobile devices or laptops, usually from a home office but potentially from a customer site or an airport. To allow only legitimate connections, a user and entity behavior analytics (UEBA) solution was combined with multi-factor authentication (MFA), so every request is verified before access is granted. A gateway solution is another option.
• Cloud resources: a Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) solution controls access and ensures that only managed, trusted and healthy devices can connect.

How Zero Trust extends to mobile devices is covered in How to Extend ZTA to Your Mobility Infrastructure.

How did they unify the IT groups?

All contracts with service and software providers were reviewed to consolidate the solutions in use and avoid running two products for the same job where possible. The goal was simpler, unified management and a single channel to each vendor, for example when escalating issues, saving time and money.

That was not possible for every product, for technical reasons, because of contractual obligations or because of specific business needs. Microsoft 365, for example, is used everywhere, but data residency requirements meant a separate environment for Europe, so that European data stays in a tenant within Europe. The same applies to the SaaS UEM solution that manages all endpoints. Keeping apps, policies and profiles aligned across both environments takes extra work, so that all employees get almost the same services and functions, with some local requirements on top.

A set of common apps, such as the Microsoft 365 apps and other business apps, is distributed automatically to employees' personal and corporate devices, fully configured and provisioned.

How did IT manage it all?

With separate environments for the same solutions (Microsoft 365 and UEM), the company needed to manage all assets and endpoints from a single pane of glass, with monitoring and migration capabilities, using technology-agnostic tools.

It chose ISEC7 SPHERE, a vendor-agnostic management and monitoring suite that connects several UEM and mail environments in a single instance. This also makes it easier to integrate existing and future solutions, and help desk and service desk staff at every office only need to learn one common tool, regardless of the solutions running in the background.

How did they train everyone?

All these technologies still depend on one critical part of the organization: its employees.

Employees were first trained on what integrating a new office into the existing environment meant for them: which tools are available, how to access them securely, from where, and what can be done with them. The larger the environment, the greater the need for defined processes and procedures.

Employees are trained again whenever a new technology, process or procedure is introduced, in internal sessions on site or online. A cloud-based learning management system (LMS) lets employees access new content from any device at any time, while managers track their progress. Why this matters is the subject of Why Training Is Important.

What makes a global strategy succeed

A digital workplace strategy is only as good as its adoption, and that requires understanding and commitment, which come through training. In a global enterprise, employees also need to understand local rules on handling and storing sensitive data, and why easy, secure access to authorized resources from anywhere matters. For the wider question of control over infrastructure and data, see Digital Sovereignty: Controlling Infrastructure, Data and Risk.

Frequently asked questions

What changes in a digital workplace strategy for a global enterprise?

Compared with a single-country enterprise, it adds secure connections between offices, compliance with each country's data protection rules, data residency for cloud services and a management model that combines local control with central oversight.

What does data residency mean for Microsoft 365?

Data residency means data is stored in a defined country or region. Organizations can use separate tenants per region, and for EU and EFTA customers Microsoft's EU Data Boundary keeps customer data for services such as Microsoft 365 and Azure within the EU and EFTA, apart from limited exceptions.

What role does Zero Trust play in a global digital workplace?

With users connecting from offices, home offices and customer sites in several countries, the network location says little about trust. Zero Trust verifies every request based on identity, device state and context, using tools such as MFA, Conditional Access, UEBA and ZTNA.

How can IT manage several UEM and Microsoft 365 environments?

Through a vendor-agnostic management and monitoring layer that connects all environments in one console. That way the help desk works with one tool, and status and compliance are visible across all tenants.

Running a digital workplace across several countries? Our team supports endpoint management and endpoint security internationally, and ISEC7 is authorized to offer official trainings in Europe, North America and Asia-Pacific. Contact us with any questions.