How Cloud Computing Adoption Has Accelerated in the Remote Work Era

The development of the cloud computing industry has rapidly expanded in this new era of remote work. To survive and thrive in the digital age, organizations have had to expedite their transition to the cloud. A new set of business goals and priorities emerged, including corporate agility, cybersecurity, and remote work management. Gartner predicted that global end-user spending on public cloud services was forecasted to grow 20.4% in 2022 to total $494.7 billion, reiterating the potential of the cloud. As organizations migrate to cloud networks to stay afloat in 2022, the growing trend doesn't show any signs of slowing down, and a shift in focus is needed on security and compliance to keep up.

Changes in cloud computing

Since the earliest tech professionals were able to work independently thanks to technology, remote working hasn't just become popular recently. Long before the flexible work revolution, businesses were successfully utilizing cloud-based networks. The adaptability and agility of cloud-based technology–assisted by email, messaging tools, mobile applications, PWAs, and even VOIP as a norm of telephony–were recognized by digitally-mature workers and organizations. This has accelerated in the last couple of years with the need for tech employees and organizations to be highly dependable, always on, and always available.

For organizations to be more agile in their application development and digital application experience, an emphasis on modernizations that make use of cloud-native capabilities is essential. Many SMEs now have an equal playing field, thanks to low-code and no-code integration that has helped speed up development and decrease reliance on IT and DevOps teams. Cloud computing systems enable employees to work securely, whenever and wherever.

The new norm involves flexibility, agility, and remote work

Workflows can be made more efficient by employing intranets and portals to collaborate in cloud settings. Protecting data and personal information for remote workers has been a major priority for digital leaders, which has had a huge impact on organizations’ remote workforce management and security.

According to a Gartner survey from May 2020, 74% of CFOs perceived the operational benefits of remote work and expected to permanently increase the number of remote work possibilities for their organizations. In the controversial decision to close physical offices, Deloitte and others took the lead. Along with business systems, portals, and the widespread adoption of video conferencing applications to support home office settings around the world, cloud computing was crucial to this cultural workforce paradigm change. The viability or failure of many organizations was determined by the scalability of their cloud integrations.

Collaboration in the cloud enables WFA (working from anywhere)

Workplace importance has been entirely eliminated by cloud-based cooperation. With their mobility and data centralization, web-based business apps have made it possible to create workspaces that are consistent and flexible in ways that were unthinkable, even ten years ago. Regardless of location or time zone, employees can have the same working experience whether they are in an office building or not.

An intranet, which Gartner defines as "a network internal to an enterprise that uses the same approach and techniques as the Internet but is accessible solely to employees," has been built by several organizations for their workforce. Knowledge management, internal collaboration, and corporate communications are supported by an intranet. It is like portals, which act as a meeting place for persons with established connections. These connections might be made with co-workers, suppliers, partners, and regular clients.

Intranets and portals are developed to simplify workflows and provide users with what they need quickly so they may move on to the next activity. According to the new paradigm, all meeting venues include a virtual component, and employees can move seamlessly between in-office, remote, and hybrid settings. Accessibility that supports all the modalities that the cloud enables is a requirement for the centralized storage and management of content. Because enabling tools and technology are advancing, organizations cannot afford to ignore the increase in productivity brought about by this highly collaborative working style.

WFA can increase output

Smart managers are realizing that remote work's flexibility may increase productivity. Unsurprisingly, a survey conducted by Greatplacetowork.com of 800,000 Fortune 500 employees found that productivity for work done from home was on par with or better than that of traditional methods. Employees have reclaimed hours in their days and are utilizing these hours more efficiently by eliminating their daily commute and having fewer in-office personal encounters.

Effects of the cloud on security and management in a remote setting

In light of constantly changing work patterns, management and security must also evolve with the times. The difficulties of managing a remote workforce are easy to see, and managers must change their leadership styles to put more emphasis on goals and results rather than on employees' physical presence. Therefore, taking care of employees is critically important, not only for their wellness but also because of the organization's increased security threats due to the introduction of new personal devices and IP addresses into networks, plus a general decrease in security vigilance. Understanding remote employee behavior requires a certain degree of employee data security surveillance, and managers can gather a wide range of analytics in real time to ensure best practices are being followed.

Workers have limited expectations of privacy when on business property or using company equipment, according to the law. Most of us are aware of and agree that those clauses exist in our job contracts. However, the conventional lines are blurred in modern workplaces when personal gadgets are used for work-related activities. The best managers will ethically use the data to chart trends, assign responsibilities, and streamline communications.

The prevalence of remote employment creates security challenges as well. Since everybody can work from anywhere and on-prem is vanishing, tech teams must now confront new problems to protect data and individual information, and security has a completely new definition.

Organizations now understand that moving from outdated IT infrastructure to the cloud is the best way to maximize speed and security. Large hosting services enable virtualization between numerous data centers, automated software patching, manpower, and physical security that much exceeds what is feasible for most organizations. Its trusted cloud deployment provides stable, secure remote work across a wide range of devices and locations. With today's cloud deployment, businesses have access to a globally distributed infrastructure that is centralized, controlled, compliant, secure, and highly optimized.

PaaS and SaaS products to improve the digital experience

Organizations are integrating the cloud into their development environments due to the growing relevance of digital experiences, making the underlying architecture that underpins these experiences even more crucial.

Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) choices give businesses the ability to speed up the time to market, improve operational effectiveness, and scale to handle erratic traffic increases and decreases. The PaaS concept offers a setting for developing applications, enabling several developers to collaborate regardless of location. By not having to worry about hardware maintenance, DevOps teams can concentrate on their creative job aspects while still being in charge of it. This is frequently preferred by DevOps teams over SaaS deployment, which provides less process control.

A cloud computing future

It is safe to say that remote work is here to stay given how much the tech world has changed in the last two years. People's priorities have changed, regardless of whether they work as entry-level IT employees, managers, developers, designers, or security experts. Our personal and professional lives are fundamentally shaped by technology, and there is, to a growing extent, an increased reliance on cloud computing. Businesses' demand for workers with cloud skills will be the next hurdle as on-prem technology fades away and they embrace the cloud as their future.

Diane Murray is Strategy Lead at Progress.

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