Ah, summer! In many areas of the world, this is a season to celebrate. Wherever there are beaches, forests, or unique sights and landscapes, populations surge as tourists descend.
Cap Rouge, Cabot Trail, Nova Scotia. Source: Tom Wilson.
Sadly, though, many of the globe's loveliest areas are ghost towns come fall. As visitors leave, local populations often settle into a dreary and financially meager winter.
Which presents an opportunity for enterprise clouds.
By supporting remote workers, cloud services (public, private, or hybrid) have already enabled some of those tourists to resettle year 'round in their favorite spots (yours truly included). With secure access to corporate networks, these remote workers not only help their companies reduce costs, they boost local economies through spending (if I don't say so meself).
Of course, skeptics might say the benefits of telecommuting have become a kind of litany, especially for vendors of office software, mobile devices, or videoconferencing gear. You know how it goes: Operating costs are reduced; carbon footprints shrink; employee satisfaction and productivity increases; blah, blah, blah...
For instance, deployment of secure VPNs hosted in the cloud enables many companies to extend the option of remote work to more employees. Cloud-based, virtual "sandboxes" support remote mobile devices. And public, cloud-based storage, backup, and disaster recovery can meet the needs of some remote workers.
There is also the argument that virtualization, thin clients, and other techniques used in cloud services make for better performance, which further enables employees to work effectively from a distance. In the "old days," remote log-ins could be fraught with response time delays. Nowadays, there's no requirement for cloud-based data to actually traverse the network. What's more, provisioning services to telecommuters is further streamlined, and various cloud techniques can ensure efficiencies in resource allotments and even keep down licensing costs.
What's not to love? Perhaps the occasional loneliness of working at an outpost in the mountains? Then again, nature's beauty takes the edge off that for workers in many holiday destinations -- at least until summer ends.
I don't doubt that at all...but I my point was that telecommuting is appropriate for a certain kind of individual. I can't imagine it works well for everyone.
Even today, I am sure there are managers who view the workplace as an environment in which to instill discipline for its own sake, rather than an environment in which the organizations goals should be met.
@jabailo I agree with you about one's presence in the cubicle being no guarantee of better work. That's the 1950s mentality the article referred to that still prevails in many managers' minds -- even those born decades after that time.
The feed is obviously recorded...just in case the company needs to build up evidence you click the wrong menu button 3 times in a row when you meant to click something else in a program. Firing takes months because management must stock pile evidence of mistakes first.
Yes, some companies have a policy of building up a file to justify firing. I suppose it's somewhat better than just offering vague reasons like "it just didn't work out" as if it's the end of a personal rather than business relationship.
I find this hard to believe. For example, a person who is in a cubicle with high walls is not "seen" by anyone. Well he might be seen by ten people at a meeting, or in the elevator, or on the campus...but are those situations where his work is being viewed that would encourage promotion?
Contrast that with a business that uses social media and teleconferencing heavily. Here I can set up a profile where people can learn intimate details about me and my work...just like when using Facebook casually.
Also if a business has one or more offices I am far better able to interact with the web than just sitting in a solitary cubicle.
Additionally, there are all the liabilities of an office like bullying and harassment. The web becomes an equalizer where the work and ideas speak louder than the way aperson looks or his ability to downshout others.
And what about management interaction? Well, you can spend years in a cubicle waiting ti be heard or you can send an email or post an idea publically...like those in the real world have been doing for the last 20 years.
And as a side note, more and more evidence has come out about sitting in front of a screen being damaging for health. How much better to continally work from home but be able to get up, walk around, take lots of breaks even if you end up working far beyond the bell at 5pm!
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Precor, which makes exercise equipment for gyms and homes, needed to transform itself into a cloud services provider in order to keep up with the changing demands of its customers.
Like other leading technology-using businesses, Walmart is starting to look like a vendor in its integration of the latest technologies to serve its customers. That's what led it to buy two Silicon Valley cloud startups this week.
IT executives are worried about business units that use social media, Dropbox, Skype, and other public clouds without working through IT. This "cloud sprawl" creates concerns about security, compliance, and other potential problems for the enterprise, according to a study.
Cloud computing helped Netflix score a big win this week, meeting a thousandfold increase in demand and driving the Internet video service provider back to profitability. It provided Netflix with "availability, scalability, and cost savings," chief executive officer Reed Hastings wrote in a letter to shareholders.
New tools like laptops, tablets, smartphone, and wireless connectivity let us work from San Diego to Katmandu, and anywhere in between. But time management remains a problem.
Multi-tenant clouds assure security for clients, but not necessarily for their ideas. Here's one thing you should discuss with your cloud provider before you sign on.
Businesses helped neighbors with Internet access and mobile device charge-ups during Sandra. Following that example, enterprises should consider preparing Internet disaster plans to help the public during disasters.
Enterprises are discovering that using social networking within the secure setting of a SaaS provider's network gives them an unusual opportunity to freely collaborate with partners, suppliers, and even competitors.
All the recent hoopla about cloud security overlooks an important point, which is that it's not strictly a cloud problem. The linkage of online services into cooperative chains creates the risk, and only biometrics and federation of providers can save us.
Microsoft's recent decision to bundle its Office software with business partner offerings indicates that cloud software may be in the news, but licensed packages are still in demand for failover.
With 24/7 processing and business continuation paramount, more organizations are considering having three datacenters, where primary and secondary datacenters are in their immediate region and a third is in a remote geography. Why? To avoid repercussions of a major disaster that could hit every IT resource in a specific region.
Cisco's rumored sale of Linksys suggests we may have problem with innovation and profit at the edge of our Internet, and that could be critical to the evolution of many Internet-delivered services.
New York's Metropolitan Transit Authority is conducting a pilot test of digital kiosks to guide subway users to where they want to go more efficiently and at lower cost.
The whole Amazon.reader debate is a double-stupid. It's stupid to think that there's any e-book buyer who doesn't know Amazon's URL, and it was stupider to let ICANN launch the whole free-form TLD initiative to start with.
While NFC's original goal was to enhance mobile commerce applications, it is finding its way into a number of other uses, which is creating both opportunity as well as challenges for IT departments.
Enterprises would like to move to cloud computing but are hesitant because they are concerned about providers’ ability to secure company data. Here are some tips that help to ensure that if breaches occur, the business is not left holding the bag.
Edmunds separates customers into segments based on the info it collects on its site and from partners, and uses that to push out custom content, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
The automotive website uses propensity modeling to target ads and customer registration forms, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
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