Making the most of the cloud’s benefits

Many more people around the world are having to work away from the office as their busy schedules demand them to travel for meetings, manage their workloads via the cloud or even check in while on holiday.

In fact, the UK has seen the number of those working from home increase by more than 250,000 in the last decade, and the UK’s Office for National Statistics (ONS) claims the trend is showing no signs of slowing.

Challenge

While working from home can increase productivity and reduce stress levels, an increase in ‘distant’ office workers can prove to be a challenge to ensure your colleagues can access their programs and documents when away from their traditional desks.

Rather than installing every program each employee may need to use on every computer they use, many businesses are increasingly turning to the cloud for help.

High-speed internet

With the roll-out of high-speed internet across much of the world, it has been possible to host programs and files on the cloud which can be accessed via a secure third-party system, such as what Penta offers its clients.

Increasingly, companies have turned to businesses technology partners to implement Software and Infrastructure as a Service (SaaS and Iaas), an infrastructure management and software distribution model in which applications are hosted by a vendor or service provider and made available to users over the internet.

Cloud integration

There are several advantages to moving to the cloud and, with the ONS predicting half of all UK workers will work remotely by 2020, there will several companies looking to move to the cloud in the future. Benefits include:

• Users will be able to access documents and programs from any device they happen to be using. For instance, if an employee is working away from home but has not packed their laptop, they will be able to access their work files from a shared hotel computer.
• There is no need to remember several different usernames and passwords, as one account will enable users to access whatever resources they need.
• Improved efficiencies. If half your workforce can work from home effectively, then this can lead to significant rental savings as businesses look for offices to accommodate only those staff which need to be on-site each day.
• Instead of sending documents to colleagues for approval by email, systems can be set up so certain programs and documents can be viewed and worked on by multiple people at the same time.
• The ease of access of cloud systems also allows staff to check on their work out of hours, allowing them to finish jobs in the evenings when normally they would have to wait until the next day.

But given the ease of working online, it is important to be aware of the risks involved too. And this is why we will soon be looking in more detail at what you can do to ensure you keep your data safe, no matter where in the world you find yourself needing to work.