The Covid19 pandemic has upended life as we know it. The year 2020 is likely to be remembered as the year when remote work became a reality for millions of people globally. With the total number of global coronavirus infections exceeding 40 million in Mid October 2020, the end of social distancing efforts does not seem to be coming any soon. A direct result of this contagion is that businesses and their employees worldwide are facing tremendous challenges in maintaining business continuity. In these troubled times, cloud computing has emerged as a literal savior in ensuring business continuity and is experiencing substantial growth in adoption.

How is cloud computing helping people and businesses stay connected?

While many companies are finding it difficult to adapt to the new normal, enterprises that had opted to invest in a robust cloud computing infrastructure ahead of this pandemic are functioning well. Cloud computing helps employees and co-workers collaborate and communicate safely with each other in a remote environment.

There are some specific ways that cloud computing is helping manage businesses during Covid19 times. These are:

a) Enabling a remote workforce to stay connected with each other

Since March 2020, governments worldwide started enforcing lockdown orders on the population of entire cities, counties, and countries. As a result, there has been a surge in the use of video conferencing tools and virtual meeting software within a short period. In June 2020, Zoom reported a year-on-year increase of 169% in its total revenue due to the accelerated adoption of its platform globally. 

A direct corollary to this has been a massive spike in demand for internet bandwidth globally. Such spikes in bandwidth demand have never taken place before. In such cases, cloud computing has proven to be a veritable savior as it is easier to handle unexpected spikes in bandwidth usage in a cloud computing scenario.

b) Providing easy access to online data backup solutions

In industry verticals like healthcare, where data is the primary asset, management and storage of data can be prohibitively expensive if on-premise servers are used. In such a scenario, cloud computing can assist you by providing access to online data backup solutions that are quickly scalable. However, a direct result of the adoption of online storage solutions is that large enterprises have started using online services such as Dropbox and Google Drive. 

While such services are convenient to use, there are inherent security risks using such third-party file sharing solutions. Data is usually taken outside an organization's IT environment, which implies that it goes beyond its control.  A solution to such a security problem is provided by Centrestack, which provides a cloud file server that enhances file server mobility and simplifies remote access to data.

c) Enabling collaboration efficiency among team members

Before the pandemic, business collaboration used to involve face-to-face interaction in a central office environment. Such collaboration and engagement was critical in ensuring that business objectives were achieved by large teams. With the pandemic forcing millions of office workers to work remotely, companies' leaders struggle to create a similar level of engagement between team members. 

Cloud collaboration applications help in increasing efficiency and enhancing productivity. Such applications let individuals share or edit projects concurrently in different locations. Many such applications also have in-built communication tools and access control rules that allow selective access to information.

In conclusion

Covid-19 has brought about a paradigm shift not only in human behavior but also in the way that businesses have accelerated their adoption of cloud computing. Such a trend is expected to increase over the next few months as more and more organizations see the inherent benefits of cloud computing.