So far 2020 has been the year of change. The way we live, work and communicate has adjusted beyond all recognition in light of the Coronavirus outbreak.
As a result, social distancing, self isolation and working from home are concepts being talked about more than ever.
The latter, working from home, has long been a way of working for many of us. A significant proportion of my friends and acquaintances already work from home and personally I’ve been running my business from home for nearly 5 years. However, for millions, if not billions of people, working from home has suddenly become the new norm.
Companies that hadn’t previously embraced the idea of remote working will struggle to make the switch. Questions such as “how do we manage secure access to our network?” and “how do we provide access to our applications?” are now commonplace in company boardrooms across the world. Virtual boardrooms of course!
And this isn’t likely to be something that you can just ride out and expect to go away in a couple of weeks. Even the most optimistic predictions state that self isolation, social distancing and subsequently remote working, will be here to stay for months rather than weeks.
Rather than just “ride out the storm”, it makes sense to put in place a secure remote working environment that your employees can use time and time again for situations such as natural disasters, hardware failures, human error or sickness.
Fortunately, thanks to the cloud, it’s never been easier to configure remote working environments for you and your employees. Here are some of the services that AWS offers to help your team work efficiently from home.
A service that provides virtual Windows and Linux desktops that can be accessed anywhere and from any device. Your employees can login to a preconfigured remote desktop that is under your control as if it were in your office. Connection is secure and your team can use their own computers, phones or tablets to connect.
The Amazon version of Google Docs, which is all stored centrally on AWS. The service allows you to store and access virtually any type of file.
Providing your staff with a secure, simple way to connect to your cloud environment is incredibly important to protect your data and business. AWS provides AWS Client VPN which is an easy-to-use service that allows you to create secure connections to your AWS network from anywhere.
If you have a business specific desktop application that your employees use, you can use Amazon AppStream to package it and make it available via a web browser from anywhere.
If you run a call center, Amazon Connect is a service that lets you set up a call or contact center in the cloud, meaning that call center employees can work efficiently from home.
This barely scratches the surface of what AWS offers. There is a full suite of services to run all your IT infrastructure in the cloud such as servers, databases, storage, security and much more.
If you need advice or information on anything AWS related, please reach out to databasable for a free consultation.