Importance of Remote Work and her Key trends , facing days of UNCERTAINTY.

Truth be told, this is the era of cloud computing and AI, with totally forecasted change in paradigms with unprecedented incidences caught the world so fast, which we are fighting, many lost jobs, business are slowing down or closing down, people are working from home. Critical infrastructures are trying to manage the situation to avoid a total collapse of the business across the world.

In recent times, a substantial percentage of companies host  and outsource their technology infrastrcutures by hosting data in cloud with 100% BCP & DR implemented. And these are normal as there are well defined governance in place.

Focusing on Africa, and other developing nations and  economies these rules /governance are not fully in place or nor practiced fully. I have been a resident in these continent for a while and done lot of projects in more than 30 countries. I have had first hand experience in implementing the additional cost of a Disaster Recovery or a backup, many of the organizations setbacks are tied around budget limitations, so they end up with the generic two word phrase “let’s manage”.

Looking at the current situation of COVID-19 which is now a PANDEMIC, A coupld of deaths in several nations, millions sitted at home, Economies at stand still, jobs lost, companies closed …in as much as many are trying to keep the operations going, in this part of the world many firms and companies have hosted their ICT infrastructure in-house, I have seen this myself in many mid-size organizations as they wanted to have the servers etc. very close to them and need to see on a daily basis, The fact remains either they don’t understand the concept of Data centers or they don’t trust such implementations…

But the reality on ground put many of us to think about the unforseen and unthinkable circumstances in developing nations, all the respective governments has announced full lockdowns, offices are forced to work remotely from home for non-critical staffs, but majority of these companies are still forced to run the offices as the ICT infrastructure still remain inhouse.

Let’s talk about Nigeria, how many percent of working population depend on public power to run our business? we all know the answers to such questions, same situation in many growing economies, though the availability is much better and stable.

In our own case, without diesel powered electrical generator nothing works, with such economic down time and uncertainty , do these companies still need to take these overheads of maintaining these ICT infrastructure in house and go through the stress of uptime and downtimes?, who knows how to manage these critical infrastructure and provide the respective IT people of these companies with remote access and remote support When majority of the staffs are working from home?, why would any company need to run a high capacity generator which consumes like 25 to 40 Litters up to a 100 Kva Gen based on load.

Also let’s be mindful that the stable public power supply is hardly 10- 15% of a day in many parts of the country. So, if we do a basic cost analysis, we get the following numbers below:

Added to this is the related operational cost and efficiency gained under such situations, it is always advisable to have the critical ICT infrastructure hosted on Data centers or on local cloud to have the business managed without such serious impacts.

After COVID – 19, business models will change, it will be more inclined to digital and remote service delivery models, more complex business solution will emerge which will add value to the existing business solutions. We need to be ready to get there 100%.

This situation is a learning curve for all of us and it also puts more emphasis on the Business Continuity Plans.

I read an article by Ernest Sampera of vxchange.com discussing on data centers and colocation servers, it got to me that in this time of unforeseen pandemic and the corona virus episodes the world is currently experiencing and Given these trends, it’s important to consider the role data centers can play in the virtual workplace. The first question, of course, comes down to what kind of data center solution an organization is utilizing. A private facility that manages a company’s infrastructure on-premises will face different challenges than a colocation solution that offloads much of the responsibility for managing that IT stack to a third-party provider.

In either case, however, data centers are important to the virtual workplace because they serve as a central point of access for data and essential business applications. When remote employees log into the network for the day, they will typically be utilizing assets that are located in a data center environment somewhere. By making that process as streamlined and secure as possible, organizations can get the most out of their virtual workplace arrangements. Colocation data center services provide a number of services that make remote work much more viable for an organization looking to reduce costs and undergo a true digital transformation.

1. Outsourced Data Center Infrastructure Management

Operating a private data center is a major undertaking for any organization. Even if a company is able to shift away from physical office space, it still needs to store its data and applications somewhere. While some businesses have shifted to a purely cloud-based solution, others prefer to store their essential systems on physical servers that allow them to retain control over their assets. Colocation data center infrastructure offers efficient power and cooling that helps control costs over time, especially compared to private facilities that often lack the latest in energy-efficient technology. More importantly, quality colocation providers 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 “cut the cord” and eliminate the infrastructure and support footprint that’s keeping their virtual workplace tethered to a location.

2. Direct On-Ramp Cloud Access

A carrier-neutral colocation environment provides the connectivity options that allow tenants to access the leading cloud service providers. Cloud computing is an absolute necessity for remote work because it allows employees to access key applications and data as well as collaborate with other people in the virtual workplace. Colocation data centers make it easy for organizations to set up the cloud environments that facilitate remote work, whether that means direct on-ramp access to a single cloud provider or shifting between several platforms within a multi-cloud deployment.

3. Uptime Reliability

Data availability is one of the greatest challenges facing the virtual workplace. If remote employees aren’t able to access the data and applications, they need to do their work, they’re going to spend a lot of time sitting around waiting. Since the virtual workforce is geographically distributed, losing access to the network means that productivity grinds 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. Colocation data centers with superior reliability records and almost 100% uptime SLAs ensure that remote employees will always be able to access the servers hosting the data and applications they need to do their jobs

Amidst this Pandemic, Businesses still have to thrive, work must go on and we have to find ways to go ahead with our normal daily official obligations. In conclusion:

Businesses and organizations have to find solutions to Overcome the Challenges of Remote Work with Colocation for staffs and key business applications while we are isolated in times of the Corona Virus Pandemic.

For companies looking to explore the potential of the virtual workplace, colocation data centers should be considered a necessity. Leveraging a secure, reliable data center infrastructure with robust cloud connectivity allows them to step away from making (or maintaining) the capital investment in their own facility while also making it easier to do away with a physical office. If everyone can log into systems hosted on servers in the data center, there’s no need to have them come to a centralized location.

As organizations seek to realize more virtual workplace benefits, the services provided by colocation data centers will likely become more central to their IT strategy. Colocation offers the flexibility they need to achieve a true digital transformation. With the incentives for shifting to remote work growing each year, companies that align their IT networks with those needs will be in a strong position to remain competitive in the future.