The COVID-19 pandemic destabilised entire economies in a matter of months during the tumultuous year of 2020.
In the aftermath of the first wave, companies exist in increasingly uncertain business environments and have to navigate many unavoidable realities.
One of these realities is having employees work remotely from home due to stay-at-home orders.
Businesses all over the world have had to adopt work-from-home models to mitigate the risk of spreading the infection, and many will continue to operate this way for the foreseeable future.
Some industries, such as the tech industry, have been particularly proactive with adopting remote work practices.
Google recently announced that its global workforce could choose to remain at home and work remotely until the end of 2020. Twitter has gone so far as to let employees decide when and if they choose to return to its offices.
The frenetic circumstances caused by the pandemic have created the perfect environment for a mass transition to cloud computing.
We’re already seeing it happen in real-time—without using collaborative services like Zoom, Webex, Microsoft Teams, and Slack, it would be near impossible to work from home.
We’re going to take a look at the current status of cloud computing,and how it changed and will continue to change due to work-from-home policies in 2020.
Moving to the Cloud in 2020
In order to facilitate a work-from-home model, companies across the globe increased their use of cloud-based systems, tools, and assets.
McAfee’s Cloud Adoption and Risk Report: Work From Home Edition found that cloud service usage in every industry increased by 50percentoverall compared to the start of 2020.
However, some industries had to incorporate more changes than others for a smoother transition to remote work.
For example, the manufacturing industry increased its cloud usage by 144percent, while the education industry had to do so by 114percent.
Construction and real estate increased its cloud usage by 63percent, while governmental organisations and financial services increased their cloud use by 45percent and 36percent, respectively.
Greater Demand for Collaboration Services
Among all cloud-based services, the greatest increase was seen in the use of collaboration services, as we all reoriented our lives around applications such as Webex, Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Slack.
Here’s a breakdown of the most used collaboration services:
- Cisco Webex usage increased by an astronomic 600%.
- Zoom usage increased by 350%
- Microsoft Teams usage increased by 300% increase in usage.
- Slack usage increased by 200%.
Cloud computing has proven itself to be a lifesaver for businesses during this challenging time.
However, if not secured properly, the use of cloud-based systems opens up companies to cloud misconfiguration risks, which can significantly compromise their operations.
With that in mind, it’s recommended that you consult a professional IT consulting company to implement a robust cloud-based solution for your business.
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