As the work from home (WFH) revolution continues to solidify in business culture, leaders are seeing benefits of productivity and efficiency, as well as the acceleration of digital transformation to power workforce technology. According to a FORTUNE 500 survey of CEOs, 75 percent say that economic crisis will accelerate digital transformation. In addition, 26.2 percent say 90 percent of employees will continue in a remote capacity and may never return to their usual workplace. As one CEO on the survey said, “working from home works.”
The plumbing of our internet infrastructure -- from service providers and innovation to the physical structures around the world that keep us connected -- has enjoyed great progress in recent years. In a previous blog (How Netflix Binges Saved 2020), we shared a point of view on how the ability to stream bandwidth-heavy data for entertainment essentially laid the technology foundation for tens of millions to work to work remotely.
Now companies face their own transformational infrastructure challenges. Edward Wustenhoff, infrastructure expert and partner at StrataFusion Group, explains the WFH scramble came when enterprises discovered the lack of sufficient capability at offices or remote datacenters, as well as the difficulty adding network capacity in a private location rather than in a well-connected, co-location (colo) facility. Cloud service providers are already connected at the front door to the Internet with high-end security monitoring, tested redundancy failover strategies, and the ability to leverage vast network capacity instead of building your own. It’s time to get senior leadership comfortable with the cloud because running and securing a data center is harder and riskier than you think, with many more unseen costs.
Trying to decide whether a system should be in the cloud or on infrastructure managed more by an internal team? Here’s what you should do first:
- Determine the amount of control you need over certain functions. If your infrastructure requires a lot of performance tuning or if you cannot share components for security and/or privacy reasons, keep it close. If not, a cloud solution is probably best.
- Spend some time to understand how long the system will exist. If it’s a short-term project, cloud could be your best bet. If you know the system is going to exist for a longer time, and you are OPEX sensitive, buying the gear and running it in a co-located data center, might be better for you.
Working from home is working. This evolution is not just a passing trend, it’s a strategic approach that is taking root and enhancing productivity (and life) for millions. Now companies must ensure their IT approach can securely support this new structure.
Author:
Edward Wustenhoff 2020