As more and more businesses continue to strive toward digital transformation and adopt a virtual workplace environment, the business procedure scrutiny continues to rise. The availability of cloud computing services, software defined platforms and available low latency internet connections have pushed many organizations to explore shifting their workforce out of expensive brick and mortar spaces and into the virtual workplace of the future.
What is a virtual Office?
Well... Exactly what it sounds like! A flexible work environment that isn’t located in a physical location. Due to recent events and a push for social distancing, Remote work in 2020 is becoming more common for all types of employees and businesses. The temporary adoption of Remote Working is shifting from "Temporary" to the New Normal. Thanks to virtual communication tools, it’s easier than ever for employees to collaborate with peers and clients no matter where they’re physically located!
According to a 2019 IWG survey: 70 percent of professionals work remotely at least one day a week, with 53 percent working remotely for at least half of the week.
Why should your New Office be Virtual?
Aside from new regulations for temporary virtualization, There are many reasons why organizations should embrace the concept of the virtual office.
Traditional office spaces may have been the normal arrangement and have been deemed a necessity, but that was in the past. For many of today’s companies, especially smaller ones, having an office is just one more ongoing operational expense that eats into revenue without providing substantial benefits.
According to a recent PGi study, the average operational savings from shifting to a fully virtual workforce works out to $10,000 per employee each year.
Using remote work also allows organizations to leverage a much broader talent pool. Organizations have the ability to gain access to skilled employees in other markets, expand opportunities and growth, and employ innovative teams outside of their community without asking employees to relocate or enduring expensive costs related to employee relocation.
Aside from the recent concerns with health precautions pertaining to COVID 19 and considering the crucial health benefits to employees, studies have shown frequent or full time ability to work remotely results in higher retention.
The Role of our Data Center in your Virtual Workplace
bigbyte.cc data center will be crucial to your virtual office because we serve as a central "HUB" so to speak, or a single point of access for your data and critical business applications. When working remotely, employees log into the network for the day, they typically utilize software defined tools or SaaS (Software as a Service) Platforms to perform their daily business operations, these tools and platforms are located in a data center environment somewhere.
(Yes, the rumor is true... The cloud is someone else's computer.)
Making these services as streamlined and secure as possible, SaaS Vendors and Providers are allowing organizations to get the most out of their virtual office environment!
4 Ways bigbyte Data Center & Colocation Services Can Help You!
1. We took on the Expensive Cost, so you don't have to!
Operating an efficient and compliant Data Center Infrastructure is a huge undertaking for any organization. If your company is entertaining the idea of shifting to a more flexible or full Virtual Office Environment, your data, critical business applications and platforms need to live and store data somewhere. Preferably, somewhere safe! While some have implemented cloud based storage solutions, others may prefer to store essentials on a physical server, and many are choosing a Hybrid Solution that optimizes the benefits of both. Having a physical server allows your business the control of access, redundancy, and safety of your assets. Colocation services in Data Centers allow organizations to utilize state of art environments to house critical data and virtual applications without you having to take on the cost of housing and maintaining the equipment to ensure safety and compliance of these assets. More importantly, quality colocation providers such as bigbyte.cc, provide around-the-clock remote hands support, which eliminates the need to keep an IT staff on call at any given moment to troubleshoot problems. These advantages are crucial for companies looking to eliminate real estate from their infrastructure and support a virtual less expensive footprint.
2. Direct Connect to Cloud Access!
The bigbyte carrier-neutral colocation environment provides the connectivity options that are an absolute necessity for organizations to access their preferred SaaS applications. Cloud computing is for remote work is critical because it allows employees to access key applications and data as well flexibility in remote collaboration with peers and clients in a virtual work environment. Colocation data centers make it easy for organizations to set up the cloud environments that streamline remote business operations, whether that means direct connect access to a single cloud provider or shifting between several platforms within a multi-cloud environment.
3. 0 Down Time and Complete Reliability
Data availability is one of the greatest challenges organizations face when migrating to Virtual Office Environments. If remote employees aren’t able to access the data and applications they need to do their work, they may spend a lot of time sitting around waiting, resulting in low productivity. Since virtual office operations are geographically distributed, losing access to the network means that operations come to a halt. Many companies embracing remote work think they can get by relying on cloud computing, but many cloud providers don’t have uptime SLAs that meet their needs. Amazon’s AWS platform, for instance, only delivers 99.99% up-time, which means it will be down rather frequently. Every moment of cloud provider downtime translates to revenue losses in the virtual business operation. Colocation data centers like bigbyte, with superior reliability records and 100% up-time ensure that remote employees will always be able to access the servers hosting the data and applications they need to do their jobs.
4. Occasional or Flexible Office Space available
Some Data Centers offer their tenants and clients the unique ability to utilize flexible office space in the event a physical space is needed.(Sometimes Zoom isn't enough!) Meetings, conferences, client events and employee training can be held right in the Data Center to eliminate the need to have an office on hand for sporadic needs.
Overcome the Challenges of Remote Work with Colocation
For companies looking to explore the potential of the virtual office and ditch the real estate, colocation data centers are a necessity. Leveraging a secure, reliable data center infrastructure with robust cloud connectivity allows organizations to step away from operational expenses to maintain their own facility or daily office expenses. If everyone can log into company systems hosted on servers in the data center, there’s no need to have them come to a centralized location.
As organizations explore virtual office options, look for flexibility and weigh cost benefits... the services provided by colocation data centers will likely become more vital to the overall IT strategic plan and Business Continuity. Colocation offers flexibility to organizations of all sizes need to achieve a true digital and virtual transformation. With the incentives for shifting to remote work growing each year, and technology to make operational applications cost effective and easy to implement, companies that align their IT networks with those needs will be in a strong position to remain resilient and competitive in the future.
