Cloud Benefits – Working from home
I base my argument for businesses to get on the cloud bandwagon from an article I read in the Globe and Mail.
The article states that there are real benefits for business and workers when people work from home. For example,
“…almost 90 per cent of people polled who work from home say it has made them more productive.”
“….businesses find it easier to hold on to employees who work from home because those employees tend to have greater work-life balance.”
“….And the fewer employees a company has working in the office, the less office space they need to pay for.”
“Workopolis estimates the average Canadian wastes 182 hours and $3,000 a year on costs related to working away from home.”
Cloud based applications can be a real backbone to these kinds of situations. The quality collaborative possibilities in the cloud alone (like Skype, Google Docs and the new Office), and its cost effectiveness, should be appealing for both business and worker alike.
So if cloud based collaborative applications enable employees to work at home and be more productive and happy, company costs to be lower, and commuting emissions to be less…does this outweigh other cloud downsides like security?
Posted in: Week 08: Files in the Cloud
jarvise 5:55 am on October 25, 2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
My brother has a consulting business in Calgary with an office space that seems to physically use a cloud concept. Hey have a few shared offices, but the meeting spaces, kitchens, bathrooms, secretary are shared with the other companies on that floor. They only use the office sometimes, working from home part of the time. There is something communal about the cloud that obviously provides economies of scale that provide benefits.
Emily
murray12 8:06 am on October 26, 2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Hi Emily,
So the collaborative applications your brother uses are enough to make him feel like he is truly part of a working community?
Kristopher 7:57 am on October 25, 2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Hi Murray and Emily,
I am a huge fan of the cloud as an off-site employee. It makes my day to day life so much easier and the systems become much smoother as a whole. For example, my colleagues find the network in the office to be somewhat slow on large documents that they are working with– this leads them to save a local copy and inevitably forget to upload the new document. With my stuff, I work directly in the cloud instead of having local copies. Cloud forces a bit more seamless a transition.
Emily, the concept that you describe is also known as hoteling (check out this information on hoteling http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotelling_(office) ); I have never heard of it compared to cloud computing, but that is a really interesting parallel.
Kristopher
Julie S 10:01 pm on October 25, 2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Interesting. Hoteling is popular in the field of consulting (my work industry) but the cloud isn’t so much because normally the consultant needs to work on the corporate LAN for security reasons. Isn’t it interesting that using cloud computing can be faster than a companies LAN. I wonder if we will get to a critical mass where the cloud computing data transfer speeds will start to degrade as LANs do when there is too much data transfer for the bandwidth available.
murray12 8:12 am on October 26, 2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Hi Kristopher,
I know what you mean about files being much slower to open and edit on a server. I spent countless hours waiting for my report card documents to load while I was working on them a few years ago. It really ruins your momentum and train of thought. Then I realized that I could just load them on a USB and take them home, much faster. But, as you said, I always need to make sure I remember to upload to latest version to avoid confusion.
Julie S 2:22 pm on October 26, 2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
some companies I have worked for have a policy against using USB drives. I guess this isn’t a problem in the school system?
mcquaid 2:24 pm on October 26, 2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
I couldn’t speak for all, but it’s A-OK in mine. In a gov’t department like Veterans’ Affairs, they are outright banned.
murray12 11:56 pm on October 28, 2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Hi Julie,
Do they ban USB drives because they think someone will accidentally load a virus or something from their home computer?
Jim 1:32 pm on October 25, 2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
@murray12
Thank you for posting that info from the Globe and Mail. I thought I might mash it up a bit:
“…almost 90 per cent of students say it has made them more productive.”
“….schools find it easier to hold on to students until graduation who work in the cloud because those students tend to have more flexibility in their schedules for work and school.”
“….And the fewer computers a school has in the building, the less computer equipment they need to support, repair and pay for.”
These changes I made to the G&M quote are completely fictional but I think it illustrates how cloud computing can have an impact on many levels in schools. I think each of the changes I made would be predictable, reasonable outcomes of widespread cloud based computing in a school district.
Julie S 9:59 pm on October 25, 2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Excellent remix of the G&M quotes. It actually sounds better from an educational side than the business side.
murray12 8:13 am on October 26, 2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Great mash up Jim!
Everton Walker 8:36 pm on October 25, 2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
The security issue is a major concern even though there are trusted hosts out there. However, I will be very skeptical about the information I give up for storage. Many persons are of the view that this cloud concept is designed to provide governments better access to what individuals are engaging in. To them, it’s more of a security measure to facilitate global policing.
Everton
murray12 8:18 am on October 26, 2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Hi Everton,
Do you think it would matter to these people if governments were only monitoring what an IP address is looking at, rather than the monitoring the “person” (name, address, etc.). Or, is their concern that governments are monitoring without permission, period?