Reaching for the Cloud
I have always been an advocate for the “working from home” business model. Obviously, there are some jobs where this simply isn’t possible, such as working in a warehouse or in manufacturing. However, for many jobs where remote work has made sense in the past, many companies have been hesitant to pull the trigger for one reason or another. Excuses include things such as productivity concerns, ability to manage employees, and disruption of culture.
Enter in 2020 and the COVID-19 pandemic. This has made all companies who have positions that could theoretically be done remote, make the leap. COVID-19 has in a way forced a decision on many employers that they have in the past been hesitant to make. And it seems that many companies are realizing from this experience that having a remote workforce is a feasible business model, potentially allowing them to be even more profitable in the future.
Having a remote position allows you access to a much larger talent pool. This allows you to hire the best qualified person for the position wherever they are located, whereas before you may not have received applications from folks that did not want to move. It also helps you retain talent, as people will not have to leave their job if they need to move. In addition, productivity appears to be the same if not better, which is contrary to what many would have believed.
Taking it one step further, these companies who once had large office spaces for their employees and their business’ IT infrastructure are questioning the need for this expense. Many large companies are already shedding their large corporate offices and I believe many more will do so in the near future.
I envision a new office environment, not to dissimilar to co-working spaces that exist today, where there are a few offices, some conference rooms, and open collaborative workspaces. This would allow remote workers to have a place to come if they need to get out of the house or hold a meeting with fellow coworkers. This model saves the company money while still providing a collaborative workspace for its employees when needed.
Moving to this “work from home” model also radically changes how a business manages it IT. Although “the cloud” has become more and more popular in recent years, COVID-19 has sent the demand for cloud services through the roof. Not only do companies now need to provide their IT infrastructure to their employees at home, they are being pushed to move all of their IT services to the cloud as their on-site services are reduced. It no longer makes sense to have their large office buildings, especially just to host IT infrastructure.
In a lot of ways, this is a natural transition that is being expedited. Businesses who host their IT infrastructure in the cloud no longer have to worry about regularly upgrading their equipment and employing folks specifically to maintain the servers. The costs are also easier to justify, as you don’t need to invest in physical equipment, you just pay for what you need. This “pay by the drink” model also provides maximum flexibility—allowing businesses to flex up and scale down their cloud services as the business demands. In addition, many cloud services are much more secure than locally-hosted solutions and provide multiple backup points for disaster recovery.
At ComputeHub, we embrace and welcome this transition. We want to help businesses further leverage cloud options to drive their successes. We offer flexible cloud computing options for businesses that need compute-intensive machines for use cases such as data analysis, application hosting, and software testing. Our pricing model is straightforward, and you only pay for what you use. You can spin-up an instance, run your use case, and then tear it down and only pay for those resources during that period of time. This gives you maximum flexibility and keeps your costs down.
We would love for you to give us a try. We know we are a startup and we have a lot of work still to do to make our platform better, but that is why we need your help. We want your feedback as it will help drive the direction of the ComputeHub platform. That is why are currently offering $30 in credit to use on our platform and you do not need a credit card to sign up. So, what do you have to lose?