The workers of the future will be mobile
Improvements in hardware and communications technologies have led to an increase in the adoption of the Cloud and cloud-supported mobile devices. First, both the number of people with access to broadband Internet and the number of people with access to high-speed wireless Internet have increased dramatically. A recent study shows that eighty-one million people in the United States have broadband Internet subscriptions. Worldwide, 1.2 billion people have access to high-speed wireless Internet. The cost of high-speed Internet has declined as well. Before these developments, the Cloud, via the Web, would have been too slow for some companies or too expensive for others. But the Cloud is now both better performing and cheaper than most on-site IT infrastructures, it has become the logical and preferred hosting option for most companies.
Separately, the popularity of mobile devices, and smartphones in particular, have also increased. A recent Nielsen study revealed that the rate of smartphone ownership had risen above 50% among 18-34 year olds, regardless of income. The rate increases to 60% smartphone ownership for incomes above $35,000/year. Additionally, about 20% of Americans own a “tablet” computer such as an iPad. Hardware-related technological innovations have made the processing speeds of smartphones and tablets possible, but these devices would still be fairly unremarkable without high-speed, cloud-based applications and storage services enhancing them.
Combined, these trends (increased internet speeds, a maturing Cloud, and exploding mobile device usage rates) point to an increasingly cloud-centric office. Compared to dedicated on-site IT departments, cloud-hosted infrastructures are cheaper, faster, and secure, while offering increased mobility. The advantages of the cloud will only increase in the next few years, but the competitive gains to be exploited from the technology last only as long as a company beats the competition to implementing a well-architected and advanced private cloud.
IronOrbit has been building web-hosted IT infrastructures for companies of various sizes for almost 15 years. We have extensive experience hosting applications and orchestrating private and hybrid cloud deployments. IronOrbit specializes in offering these services to SMBs in the financial and medical fields, but we can customize them according the client’s requirements or directions. Some of the applications that we have hosted for clients include Quickbooks, Microsoft Office, Abacus, Peachtree, ERPs, and EHRs. The workers of the future will be mobile, or at least linked to rest of your organization via the Web—you need to make sure you have the right hosting services to keep them connected.