Among the many social changes that COVID-19 has wrought, perhaps the most lasting will be the change in white-collar work spaces. People have moved board rooms to chat rooms. From cubicles to kitchens.

CEO’s in businesses as wide ranging as Morgan Stanley and Twitter are looking closely at this worldwide experiment. And a large part of what they’re seeing are empty offices that don’t need to be heated, real estate footprints that can be vastly diminished, and employees whose morale has – all things considered – risen.

When thoughtfully employed, even a part-time work-from-home environment is cost effective. According to Global Workplace Analytics, the average business can save around $11,000 annually for each worker who spends half their time working remotely. According to the same study, those employees in turn each save between $2,500 and $4,000 dollars.

However, it isn’t enough to close your doors and tell your people to work from home. They need support and tools that are cloud based and accessible.

At the same time, in order to be cost effective, these tools need to work as much as possible with the company’s existing infrastructure.

At Proximiteam, in the months since the outbreak of COVID-19, we’ve had more and more companies ask us about tools they could use to empower their people to work remotely. We understand these needs intimately not only because it’s our business to know the IT side of it, but also because our business model has included remote work since our founding. It’s in our DNA.

We know the tools you need. We know how to make them work. And we know how to integrate them into your system.

Cloud-based IT benefits

There are many benefits to cloud-based IT solutions. Perhaps the three greatest are scalability, accessibility, and security.

Scalability

Cloud-based computing removes the physical constraints to scalability. It reduces the financial limitations of adding computing power and infrastructure, it allows you to expand or reduce your resources with ease, and has been designed to accommodate fluctuations in markets, applications, and data size.

This is most dramatically seen in seasonal businesses or businesses whose demand changes periodically – for example, during rollouts of new product.

On-site IT solutions have to always be able to handle these peak demands. This means large databases and enough computing power to handle the highest demand the business might see. It means more office space, more climate controls, and more personnel.

Cloud-based IT solutions, in contrast, can be changed as easily as adding new channels to your cable subscription. The databases and hardware are off-site. Powering them, cooling them, and maintaining them is someone else’s responsibility – in essence, you are renting their digital space.

Accessibility

Of course, renting that space isn’t free. There are costs involved. But what is gained far outweighs those costs.

Cloud-based IT solutions allow your workforce to communicate with each other, either through messaging, email, or video, or even in documents such as Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. They allow databases of all sorts – from project management and calendars to employee rosters and job titles – to be accessed by everyone who needs to, allowing your teams to stay on track and on target.

All of the information your people need to do their jobs becomes on the one hand centralized and searchable, and on the other accessible from anywhere by anyone who’s been granted access.

This offers a degree of flexibility the world has never known. Your business instantly becomes more flexible not just in how its information is accessed, but in how the business is structured and from where business can be done.

Security

Nothing is 100% secure. But some systems are more secure than others.

One reason there are have been so many huge data breaches in recent years is that those companies didn’t think of themselves as IT companies. They thought of themselves as banks and hotels and social networks with IT departments.

But the reality is that every company should consider themselves to be an IT company, with valuable assets that cyber criminals can profit from.

Cloud-based IT solutions know they’re in the IT business. They use the very best cyber-security with multiple layers of defense, including intelligent threat detection, extended validation certificates, multifactor authentication, fraud detection, encryption, and many others.

The weakest link in cloud-based security is the same weak link that every other security system has suffered – the people. Especially for employees who handle sensitive information, they should be trained in some simple best practices such as avoiding public Wi-Fi, securing company computers and devices, being aware of sight lines and anyone who might read sensitive data, and keeping security software up-to-date.

Cloud Migration

Cloud migration is the process of moving your business’s IT assets (data, systems, and IT processes) to a cloud environment, or even between clouds. It most often means moving business data from a legacy, on-premise IT infrastructure to a cloud-based system.

Especially in a world of lockdowns and shutdowns, legacy IT systems and on-premise IT solutions will hinder your business’s operations and agility. If your team is forced to work remotely, these legacy systems might even cause you to shut down at least temporarily.

Proximiteam offers a personalized, thorough Cloud Migration Service that eliminates the uncertainty and pain of moving your assets. As your IT partner, we will handle the timescale, budget and services of your migration, and minimize the downtime and disruption to your business.

Whatever your industry, we’ll help define your cloud migration roadmap, plan and execute your migration to the cloud, and work with you to take advantage of your new cloud-based solutions.

The benefits you should expect when using our services for your cloud migration process are reduction of migration risk, optimization of your cloud-based IT environment and costs, minimize downtime and disruption to your business and your customers and maintain the productivity of your workforce as it operates remotely through continuous, reliable and secure access to data, applications and devices.

This is how we do it!

Proximiteam is founded on the principle of supporting our North American customers remotely. We designed our culture and working methodologies this way.

We would love to discuss how Proximiteam can support your organization and help it grow even under the most challenging demands. Contact us at info@proximiteam.com.