Work from home will be the norm for the future, and this has been possible because of the one major factor driving this – The Cloud. The organizations who have not yet made the move to the Cloud are ruing. And considering the cost-effectiveness of this move, many small and medium enterprises have also either already made the move, or are in the process of doing so.
The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the way most companies work, perhaps forever. The need to maintain social distancing in the bid to stop the spread of the virus meant that all organizations had to necessarily work from home. Since the pandemic has been ravaging almost all countries around the world, the work-from-home option was the only way for organizations to continue their operations, and sustain their business.
Here is the best part; most major organizations have been able to make this shift, rather easily. Many of them already had a global, distributed workforce, and were using collaboration apps for their daily work and meetings. Employees had company-issued laptops with the necessary means and tools, and more importantly, these organizations have their important applications and data on the Cloud.
Also, many of these industry leaders have been harping about the remote work culture, and connected workplaces as the way forward, for a long time now. Last, but not the least, the home broadband connections of most employees have also been good and stable. Organizations have evolved rapidly to accommodate the issues being faced during the lockdown work from home scenarios, and are even reporting an increase in productivity!
Work from home will be the norm for the future, and this has been possible because of the one major factor driving this – the Cloud. The organizations who have not yet made the move to the Cloud are almost certainly ruing this decision as a result. And considering the cost-effectiveness of this move, many small and medium enterprises have also either already made the move, or are in the process of doing so.
There never has been a better time to move to the Cloud, any doubts that the IT heads were ruminating on about this move, no longer seem as valid. While country heads prefer to choose lockdowns in a bid to save lives over the economy, organizations are left with little choice but to ensure that work from home is enabled. But considering that you may end up getting more than you bargained for, and more importantly, will be sustaining your business, it is not so bad a deal after all.
As mentioned above, to successfully work from home, employees must have company-issued laptops and a good internet connection. The most important ingredient of all though would be the Cloud. The organizations must already have, or should, Cloud enabled on their applications, tools, and data. These things collectively will ensure and promote remote work culture. This is where FileCloud comes in with a perfect solution that more than meets the need of the hour for the organizations looking to make the shift to the Cloud.
The FileCloud infrastructure has a lot of the important prerequisites, in-built into its products such as FileCloud ServerSync, FileCloud Drive and Mobile Apps. Some of the powerful features enabling seamless work from home are:
This product will help you to quickly Cloud enable your existing File Servers easily, by providing secure, remote access to them from anywhere, using any device. There is no VPN or FTP required for this, and the installation for this can be done in minutes. The best part is that it honors the existing NTFS permissions on network folders and applies them to user access, saving you the time and effort to recreate the same on the Cloud. The FileCloud mapped drive automatically picks up the mount point in our systems and securely maps a drive to your network, that can be accessed from anywhere. Also, conflict management is built into this product, making it more attractive.
It is highly intuitive and people can easily learn and start working on the product and access their remote files as if they were local. The product comes with unlimited free client access, enabling you to share the confidential files with your required stakeholders outside the organization. However, you only pay for employee accounts and not client accounts. The best part of this whole arrangement is the maximum ROI you gain since you are leveraging your existing infrastructure, and yet gaining the flexibility of the Cloud.
User auditing becomes easy as the product has in-built logs to track the activities, and also comes with analytics to help you understand the client portal activity. Apart from this, you also get protection from email spoofing and ransomware attacks through its unlimited file versioning and branding capabilities. The foolproof security features in this include 256-bit AES SSL encryption at Rest, two-factor authentication, anti-virus scanning, recycle bin and endpoint device protection.
Perhaps, for those organizations that are looking to make a quick shift to the Cloud, there is no better solution than the FileCloud ServerSync product. This is simply Cloud-enabling your Windows File Servers and turning it into a powerful enterprise file-sharing, sync, and mobile access platform. If you are wondering about the existing storage and permission structure, then you need not. This product synchronizes the files and permissions stored on your on-premise Windows File Servers to the Cloud. How it does this is, by maintaining copies of files and permissions in sync between the Cloud and the on-premises storage. It enables a hybrid cloud approach that allows traditional LAN access when on-premise and the Cloud access when off-site or remote. This model offers a high availability as well as a high amount of flexibility for remote work operations.
Alongside this, you can also modernize your IT infrastructure and adopt the cloud for digital transformation without disrupting your current operations. This product can help you to set up branch office collaboration and disaster recovery as well.
Using this app from FileCloud, you get a virtual drive for your remote files and can access them as if they are stored on your local drive. With this product, you no longer need to sync the files to your local system. It comes with an easy to use interface that is easy to learn. It allows all file operations like open, edit, save, move, etc. But the beauty of the product lies in its auto file locking capabilities. It automatically locks a file on the server for when one user is editing it so that no other user can use it at the same time. This is a very useful conflict management policy that is implemented to avoid all conflicts in changes.
Another attractive option for companies from highly regulated verticals such as finance and healthcare is that they can limit offline copy of sensitive files on employee devices, using this product. Additionally, it can be used in a Terminal Server environment and is a great fit for companies with virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI). Also, for those working with newer laptops which have limited disk capacity, this is a blessing in disguise.
While it is obvious that FileCloud products seem to be highly flexible and cost-effective and can quickly help you become Cloud-enabled, please do take a look at the storage and client application limits. This table will help you choose the right storage option, and also gives you a clear idea about the workaround options available, wherever possible. If you do not find what you need in this table, you can also check out our comprehensive resources section. You may also write to us to know how we can help you with your Cloud-enabling considerations.
The University of South Carolina was seeking a file-sharing solution that would help students, athletes, coaches, and staff to share files and training videos among themselves and with people outside of the university. Considering the large and diverse user base, their challenges were many, that typically goes with educational institutions of such scale. They needed a simple and secure file sharing solution that would provide a greater level of control and have auditing capabilities for their administrators. Also on the checklist, was a system that could store large media files at a reasonable cost. They tried FileCloud for 15 days, and after a satisfactory trial rollout, they decided to go with Tonido FileCloud. The benefits they derived from this solution include:
ECi Software Solutions offers ERP business software, e-commerce software, and dealer management systems tailored for specific industries, boasting innovative solutions for small to medium firms’ to succeed in competitive industries and against the Big Box enterprises. As their work involved a lot of communication and sharing of data, they required a secure way to perform this task. Besides, due to the nature of their work, it was imperative that the data remained in-house and did not go through third-party data servers. Having total control over the files being shared and the ability to set expiration dates, coupled with an admin functionality of monitoring the data usage was also on their checklist while looking out for the perfect solution.
They found it in FileCloud and are happy with the following benefits from the switch:
