Panicked responses to the
infamous COVID-19 have triggered strange, yet substantial adaptation in remote
collaboration innovations in work places all around the world. It’s not
however, just large companies that are suffering in the wake of panic. Some SMBs
are also taking cautionary measures for employees to work from home to avoid
any chance of virus spreading among the staff.
An Ideal Remote
Working Environment
In hindsight, businesses have
been heavily deploying tools such as Microsoft Team, Zoom, Slack, and other
remote team collaboration tools for employees to leverage during this difficult
time. However, the more concurrent users working online simultaneously, the
heavier the resources and loading these service providers have to allocate. Consequently,
we have to ask ourselves again, does a good remote and team collaboration
environment only constitutes of the applications mentioned above, or there
should be more to it? The answer should be more complex than a yes or no.
An ideal remote working
environment is more than just utilizing collaboration tools provided online.
The entire IT infrastructure, including networking and storage systems, needs
serious reforms in order for businesses to ensure they have the capacity to
host multiple users simultaneously, and to provide a stable and secure workflow
for employees to operate remotely. Traditionally, companies leverage
traditional file server such as Windows file server to store and sync company
data, unless employees access the file servers using VPN, this framework
conventionally was designed only for delivering services within the company’s network.
Thus, that is why so many companies utilizes the hybrid cloud infrastructure
such as the most common combination of Windows server and public clouds drives.
Of course, this common practice often is being viewed as overly complicated,
not to mention the added complexity in terms of unstructured and duplicated
data, and resource allocation when adapting third party team collaboration
tools. Having a sophisticated on-premise server with built-in remote access may
definitely help with eliminating issues with remote team collaboration,
unstructured data, and various security issues.
Remote Team
Collaboration Tool - Network Attached Storage
With the recent rising demand
in not just corporate remote collaboration mechanism but also stable and secure
IT environment, a network attached storage (NAS) may just be the solution for
businesses struggling with the problems mentioned above. Solution such as Synology
NAS offers built-in collaboration tool that allows employees to edit
files concurrently, and instant messaging app for team communication.
Additionally, such solution
resonates the benefits of both Windows server and Google
Drive
Last but not least, what may
come as a surprise is the cost benefit that businesses may experience. The
accumulative expenses contribute by the Windows server Client Access Licenses
(CAL), public cloud storage license, and SaaS licenses may be drastically saved
when deploying solutions like Synology’s as most features mentioned are
completely license free.
With a solution that meets
all of the criteria for working remotely, SMBs and enterprises may still
operate normally even during a difficult time with so many employees work from
home protocol without blowing up the budget out of proportion With COVID-19
stirring up so much uncertainty globally, the primary task a company should
prioritize is to provide its employees a complete and consistent team collaboration
infrastructure to not only ensures the continuation of the business, but also
safeguards employees’ and their families’ wellbeing.
