Partner Article

Offices in the cloud

Dr Steven Turner, Vice President of IT Optimisation at Intergence, a leading independent IT Optimisation consultancy, outlines how using cloud services benefits mobile workers and those operating virtualoffices that traditionally have to rely on high speed broadband links to their corporate data centres for connectivity.

Cloud computing enables businesses to make use of software and services as and when they need them,
requiring only an Internet connection and a web browser, going some way towards solving the problems of
resourcing and collaboration. One of the largest challenges of running a small business is trying to predict
what services will be needed in the future if circumstances suddenly change. For example, if the company
expands quickly, then more employees and resources will be required to support and enable the business
to perform optimally. However, investing too much, too soon could also be potentially disastrous.

Secondly, regardless of location, employees can use cloud services to share files, access business services,
talk to each other or collaborate on shared documents in real time. Cloud computing allows people to
build a geographically diverse team that works together with all the benefits of improved productivity
and better communication. A good example of a popular cloud-based service is Google Documents which
allows businesses to create and manage documents online. Some users probably don’t even realise they
are using the cloud when accessing services they use on a daily basis.

Cloud based services can improve the remote worker experience in the following ways:

• Easy-to-access resources anywhere without specialist software; only requiring a standard web browser.

• Secure access to corporate resources, ensuring the user has access to only the systems and services for which they are authorised.

• Flexible computing power which can grow with the business needs, guaranteeing the infrastructure is sized for the demands of the users.

• Greater available bandwidth to users than would be feasible for an organisation to provide itself.

• Higher application performance via cloud hosting regions which are local to the user, hence reducing latency.

Traditional remote access is not flexible enough to support business growth and can often suffer from
congestion and latency during periods of heavy use. To help ease the burden on the business, remote
employees should be able to take advantage of cloud services which provide users with virtually unlimited
computing power, whilst establishing a much more flexible infrastructure that can grow with the business
requirements.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Dr Steven Turner .