With the ongoing pandemic businesses saw a huge slowdown in operations. With no sign of relief from the infectious disease, we need to look at the benefits of alternative solutions that help retain productivity while preventing the spread of COVID-19. Basically, every business needs to adopt a work from home approach and the easiest way to do so is by using cloud solutions.
Let’s start by defining cloud computing, the availability of computing resources like storage and computing power without direct management by the user or physical presence of the computing device itself. There is almost no limit to what can be achieved with these services and they are much cheaper than getting physical resources. An advantage that has become extremely apparent now is the work from home capabilities of the cloud. Everyone from the CEO to a low-level employee can perform almost the same amount of work at the same quality by taking advantage of these resources.
Most successful businesses these days make use of cloud in some form or the other, regardless of whether it’s one of the popular services or a personal one. The results are quite clear as well, the companies that use the cloud effectively still continue to make money. Those that did not use the cloud have started signing up by the droves. The past few months saw extremely high growth. Now the important questions, Is there a reason to go back to non-cloud solutions? The answer is quite clear and it’s a resounding “NO”. We live in a VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous) world and no one can predict what the next major disruption will be. Cloud is the best platform for business and will be for the foreseeable future.
Dropbox CEO Drew Houston talked about the success of his company following the spread of Covid-19 in a recent video. The Dropbox cloud service was focused on storage and transfer for the longest time, but since they had a large user base even before this year, they were able to add functionality to the service to enable it as a business platform. The valuation of the company has skyrocketed. They did not originally plan for their product to be a one-stop cloud solution, but people used it like that anyway because of how easy it was to use. So, they decided to evolve the service and make it even more accessible.
Is cloud going to replace the physical workplace? Not just yet. This is because today’s workforce is not yet ready to imagine a world where you don’t have to go to work from 9-5.
Can Cloud replace the physical workplace? Most definitely, only the most customer-facing jobs or ones involving physical activities need actual workplaces.
