But what do you need to do to work smarter in the cloud?
Utilize Thin Clients to Keep It Cheap
One of the primary benefits of the cloud is saving money. To do this businesses utilize what is known as “thin clients.” Thin clients are small, compact desktop terminals that are used solely for accessing the storage and hardware present in a data center. With supported providers, thin clients provide scalable desktop performance at a low overall price to the business. Of course, investing in thin client machines isn’t always necessary. If your business is upgrading to a cloud solution, simply using your older computers works just as well, saving you the cost of upgrading to new hardware.
Take Advantage of Your Newfound Mobility
Because the cloud is defined as an external server, using a cloud IT solution in business means that you aren’t tied down to any one piece of hardware or any one location. This is known as “platform independence” and “location independence” since cloud applications can be accessed from a wide variety of supported, Internet-connected platforms. Real-life examples of these independencies include a worker doing their work from home or a supervisor using their smartphone to monitor their business while travelling abroad. Once a cloud infrastructure is established, your only limiting factor is an Internet connection. Utilizing this will allow you to work smarter in the cloud.
Get Everyone Onto a Common Platform
The cloud is versatile and has a diverse selection of applications and enterprise suites. That being said, your team needs to be using the same ones. For instance, if your business rolls out a Google Apps for Work deployment, everyone needs to be using Google Apps and shouldn’t be trifling with Office 365 or another platform. Of course, your business is still welcome to use multiple applications. It’s just important that they’re using the same ones. Alongside an office solution like Google Apps, you may want to use a communication solution like Hipchat or Slack.
Try New Things Together
A common mistake among business users is staying with what’s comfortable, as opposed to moving onto newer, better things. Email has been a staple of business communication for decades, but nowadays cloud-based communication solutions like Slack are revolutionizing inter-team communication. Even once you’ve adopted the cloud and started using new office and communication applications, that doesn’t necessarily mean you should stop trying new things. The flexibility of the cloud as a platform means that new, innovative applications are always being made. The nature of the world of business means that those remaining on the cutting edge of these new things will benefit the most. To work smarter in the cloud, stay ahead of the curve.
Use Automation Where Possible and Maintain Logs
One benefit of cloud and web-based applications is that they can often take advantage of interconnectivity. This is because web services use APIs that allow other sites and applications to interact with them, and among the applications you can use are those that take advantage of automation. IFTTT is one such example, and it can be used to synchronize certain functions across web applications.
Additionally (and this applies to cloud office/cloud storage applications), it’s important to keep logs. Services like Google Drive and Dropbox will automatically save older versions of files as they’re modified by various employees, and enterprise versions of these applications typically save these logs for longer periods of time.
Conclusion
Combined, these approaches to your team’s IT plan will allow you to utilize the full breadth of what the cloud has to offer. To work smarter in the cloud, one most utilize it to its full extent. It was my intention that this article would give you an idea of how to do that. How has the cloud helped you in your professional life? Sound off below and let us know.
