As the world battles to contain the novel coronavirus pandemic, businesses are adjusting the way they operate. In many countries, most employees have been asked to stay home. And in other regions, companies are considering remote work as a way to keep their business running while their offices are shut down.

But some firms aren’t enthusiastic about remote working. They fear that they will be unable to track employee productivity, guarantee the security of work files and applications, or get their teams to collaborate as effectively as they would if they were all in one place.

Businesses can address these concerns by adopting cloud computing solutions to enable secure and flexible remote working. With the right cloud-based solutions, they can plug the monitoring, collaboration, and performance gaps they are most concerned about, and ensure that their team stays just as effective on their job as they can be in an office setting.

How Cloud Computing Can Help Enterprises Through the Coronavirus Disruption

IT-driven organizations in Nigeria are beginning to weigh their remote working options, as the threat of the COVID-19 pandemic grows in the country. If your business is also mulling this, you could find this article useful.

Here are five ways cloud computing can help your company or agency function optimally in these times.

1. Data Storage

You can keep your files on cloud storage platforms, and allow access to them for members of your team who might need to use them.

Cloud storage works by holding your files on remote cloud-based servers. In reality, this means your data is held on hardware in a remote data center that’s maintained by a cloud service provider, such as Layer3. The service provider ensures that the server on which your data is held functions as it should. And because they are experts at their job, you would usually not have to worry about losing your material along the line.

In a nutshell, the data is stashed in a remote location, and you can access it from wherever you are. Compare this to holding your data on stationary computers or hard drives at your office, and you’ll see why it’s a better way to keep your files if you want employees to carry on working in times like this.

2. Collaborative Work

With cloud computing, several people can access a particular set of files at the same time, from different physical locations. They can also edit those files, and see changes made by other team members.

This opens up several functional possibilities for your team. If they are using the same cloud platform, they can collaborate on projects in real-time, regardless of how far they are from each other. It also makes tracking much easier; admins will see the progress that’s being made on work, without having to contact the employees concerned.

With this increased visibility, your team is likely to be more productive, and work should carry on as usual.

3. Business Continuity

Perhaps you have a plan of action in place for when your business experiences network disruptions due to power outages or server downtimes. But how does your plan work when your team has to do their job from multiple locations?

A managed IT service provider can help you with a backup system that takes care of this need. For instance, Layer3 provides Remote Backup as a Service (BaaS), which backs up its client business’s data on the cloud. This means they can call up the stored data if a copy gets lost during a disruption.

Layer3 also offers Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS). This involves creating virtual versions of a company’s data and applications, which replace existing copies when outages or downtimes happen. This ensures that employees can carry on with tasks, without losing ongoing work to disruptions.

4. Scalability

Businesses on the cloud can quickly scale up their cloud-based resources to meet with increased demand.

If you want more work done in a cloud environment, you can expand space to take in extra staff. Your company won’t have to purchase new hardware for additional staff; all that’s required is that they get granted access to the virtual workspace, and they can begin collaborating on projects with other team members from wherever they are.

This saves you the cost of buying extra equipment and allows your enterprise to only expend its resources when it needs to.

5. Security

This is probably the biggest problem that businesses face as they consider going remote. How do they protect their data from being accessed or stolen by hostile actors? At first glance, it’s not clear how they will safeguard sensitive files when employees are working on them from locations outside their office.

Thankfully, you can eliminate many of these problems by encrypting your cloud storage and granting access only to team members that need it. You should implement multi-factor authentication to make it difficult for hackers to break in.

Your cloud service provider could arm you with managed VPNs, firewalls, and technologies that predict the risk of a security breach. These tools will enable you and your teams to minimize security threats while working remotely.

 Final Words

Sometimes, organizations have to adjust their work models to stay functional. Whether it’s the coronavirus or an extended holiday, certain situations will warrant you to try out more flexible approaches to work.

Layer3cloud allows you to make the switch to a predominantly remote working model, without putting your company’s productivity and cybersecurity at risk. If you want cloud-based solutions that will keep your business running in these times, we can provide them for you.

For over 14 years, Layer3 has served both private and public sector organizations, supplying them with the IT infrastructure and support they require to perform optimally. We leverage this experience to deliver the high-grade virtual servers, data backup, and recovery services, and managed security services you will need to maintain full-scale productivity.

Contact us today to learn more, and see how the cloud can help sustain your operations.