Cloud Migration Supports the Changing Workplace
The workplace is changing and that is putting new demands on IT. There’s a changing structure to the workforce too with remote, part-time and freelance employees as well as full-time office based staff.
Around 22 percent of Americans work from home and 50 percent are involved with remote or virtual team working, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. Remote working is increasing, but 38 percent of respondents feel they are not equipped with the right technology to work effectively away from the office, according to a study by Deloitte.
Connectivity Anywhere
All employees need to share knowledge, best practices and support in what Deloitte call the Hyper-Connected Workplace. Businesses want to operate globally, but manage locally, and that means offering and maintaining consistent access to applications and services across all locations with managed services.
In this distributed environment, effective collaboration is critical. Deloitte reports that 70 percent of business leaders believe workers will spend more time on collaboration platforms. And, those companies prioritizing collaborative working are five times as likely to be high performing, according to the firm.
The Cloud Connection
These trends make it essential for IT to adapt its services and support to the needs of new working practices and new workspaces by capitalizing on the cloud. The challenge for IT is to provide secure access to services, applications and data to the workforce, wherever they are located. While remote access is not a new requirement, it’s the scale of the change that is significant.
Cloud deployment means that remote employees and virtual teams can access their essential tools anywhere at any time using their mobile device and a high-speed Internet connection.
Reducing Complexity
There’s a benefit for IT too because there is no need to set up and manage dedicated remote access networks. That reduces costs and network complexity. Cloud scalability will also be important because the availability of virtual resources will allow businesses to easily outsource services like call centers, technical support, marketing and product development. During peak operations, cloud-based resources can scale on demand to meet the increased workloads.
However, cloud migration is a time-consuming task that can lead to downtime, increased costs and delays to critical company projects and business processes. Migration consists of many small, repetitive tasks across complex infrastructures that must be completed quickly and accurately.
Automating Migration
To speed up the process and ensure successful transition, many IT teams have turned to migration automation tools that reduce risk, minimize disruption and lower costs. Migration automation tools provide essential support at each stage of the process from data collection and processing to project management and reporting. To help clients, VTG has developed its own proprietary migration tool, ZENfraTM which reduces the complexity of data capture and eliminates the risk of human error by automating the collection of data from log files.
Cloud migration is a priority in the workplace of the future. With the right cloud technologies and processes, the workplace of the future can become a reality and deliver powerful business benefits.
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