Remote Work Is Here

Companies are increasingly relying on remote work. Remote work culture has become commonplace as these companies realize how important flexibility is for their operation. Furthermore, this is happening across industries. From streaming services to banking and financial services, it’s clear that remote work is depending on the cloud. The novel Coronavirus outbreak tested cloud infrastructures in ways previously unimagined. All at once workers were forced to depend on a cloud environment to access important data, documents, and connect with colleges.

And It’s not Going Anywhere…

In fact, according to a Techwire survey, 48 percent of technology companies believe that cloud services will increase as a result of the shut in. This suggests that Cloud adoption is seen as a long term strategy rather than a temporary fix. This however, isn’t surprising when you consider 56 percent of the workforce already have jobs that are compatible with remote work. Based on those facts we can conclude that remote work will only increase in frequency even after workers are allowed back into their offices. We’re already seeing a rapid growth in the use of cloud-based video conferencing applications like Zoom and Microsoft teams. Even Billionaire and financier  Warren Buffett weighed in on the shift to remote work in an interview with “The Real Deal” stating: “The supply and demand for office space may change significantly,” Buffett said. “A lot of people have learned that they can work at home, or that there’s other methods of conducting their business than they might have thought from what they were doing a couple of years ago. When change happens in the world, you adjust to it.”

Benefits of Cloud Storage for Remote Workers

Now that we’ve established remote work is a more permanent change, we have to go into the key technology that enables remote work, the cloud. If remote work is to succeed, you and your team, collaboration is essential. The best way to achieve this is to adopt a cloud storage system that can handle any project without slowing down or crashing. Nightmare scenario:  Imagine that while you’re working remotely, collaborating with your team, someone edits or deletes important information and now you’re several steps behind schedule. The good news is that the cloud has file- recovery capabilities. Nerds Support’s managed cloud services, for example, allows you recover a deleted file or return to your last save to avoid these kinds of blunders.

Disaster Recovery

Cloud also helps with disaster recovery situations as demonstrated by its reliability during the lock-down. Because of the absence of on-site IT professionals, businesses are relying on the cloud to monitor, check and maintain their storage and servers in data centers. Enterprises are leveraging the cloud to create a suitable environment that caters to remote workers around the world. The lock-downs have proven the need for disaster recovery capabilities and strong security but also network resiliency.

Cloud Storage Promotes Remote Work

The Techwire survey also revealed that 34 percent of respondents reported increased spending on remote productivity. IT organizations are preparing to deliver remote capabilities to end- users as the demand for remote increases. We’re already seeing this more permanent transition play out as companies like Nationwide announce plans to move towards a hybrid operation of mostly remote employees. Having the ability to work from various locations is a strategic benefit of remote work but now it’ll be a necessity. Cloud storage can help remote workers stay productive from wherever they choose to work. Cloud- focused applications facilitate this experience because they permit users to synchronize mobile devices, tablets and computer together.

Productivity Increases

With remote work becoming the norm, we have to take a look at productivity levels to see how they’re affected. There’s no use in implementing remote work if it those working do less of it. One study in 2015 based in a Chinese travel agency found that call-center employees that shifted to working from home saw increased productivity by an average of 13 percent. But will employees prefer remote work?  A Harvard study found more than 40 percent of people would do away with a portion of their salary if they were offered a remote work option. Cloud computing enables remote work without interruption. Employees can easily access their work station at home just as though they were in the office. All important information centralized in a single cloud infrastructure easily retrievable for the employee.

Security & Cyber Protection

If everything in the cloud is so accessible for the employee what about someone else? Can a hacker break into the cloud servers and steal all your data? What measures does the cloud have to prevent a breach? Not to worry, cloud computing protects you from both data breaches and hackers. With the cloud you’ll have an outsourced IT security team 24/7 constantly monitoring complex and changing threat environment. That includes protection from social engineering scams and malware attacks. The cloud also protects you and your business from data loss and hardware failure. Multiple redundancies are put in place so that everything is backed up should anything happen. Another valuable feature is multi-factor authentication. Let’s say your company device was stolen or lost. Multifactor security features prevents access the device and files if user identity is not confirmed on a secondary device. If a hackers attempts to log in, they’ll need access to your mobile device and log in again. If that confirmation doesn’t go through within a set time, access is denied.