The necessities of Covid-19 made companies rethink their priorities regarding managing their workforce. As a result, remote work shifted from being a short-term quick fix to a  long-term solution for increased efficiency and productivity. And in the post-pandemic world, work has become more partially remote, aka hybrid, than fully remote.

Hybrid Work Defined

A hybrid workplace blends both virtual and on-site arrangements to give employees the flexibility of dividing their working hours between the office and home. As a result, the employees enjoy more autonomy and life-work balance while remaining more engaged and productive at work. 

So, Why is Hybrid Work Relevant?

A Salesforce post says, “today’s hybrid workplace would soon be called just “the workplace”. A survey of 278 executives by McKinsey revealed that the surveyees planned to reduce their office space by 30%, indicating an increased acceptance of remote work, be it partial or otherwise. Cloud technologies and the right online tools would enable your employees to access data, connect with their colleagues from anywhere, and get their work done in a networked environment. 

The McKinsey study “The postpandemic future of work: Hybrid, remote and what’s ahead” surveyed 100 executives across multiple industries and geographies say that 9 out of 10 companies would go for a blend of remote and on-site working. As work culture gets increasingly hybrid, companies need to ensure efficient online tools are in place to enable their employees to collaborate and communicate seamlessly to get their work done. Organizations need to enforce the specifics required for a mix of remote and on-site work on a permanent basis to keep their hybrid workforce productive. 

Read more: Tips in Building a Hybrid Workplace for the Future

Benefits of a Hybrid Workplace

A hybrid workplace brings quite a few benefits to the table. 

1. Flexibility at work leaves workers happy

Increased flexibility and reduced commute would help employees enjoy a better work-life balance.

2. Reduces operational costs

Hybrid workplace solutions reduce the cost of real estate and office supplies considerably. The money saved on rentals can be invested in technology, marketing, etc.

3. Increases productivity and efficiency

Working from the comfort of their homes and flexible working hours have proven to increase employee productivity and efficiency.

4. Boosts employee engagement

A hybrid working model boosts collaboration among your remote teams, thus keeping them more engaged at work. 

5. Offers location independence

A hybrid work model will essentially have a remote work infrastructure in place, enabling your workforce to work from anywhere in the world.

6. Enhances company culture

A blend of remote and on-site work would motivate your employees to remain more productive and engaged and proactively contribute toward the company’s goals and culture. On-site working days can hold face-to-face meetings and build interpersonal relationships among employees.  

Post-pandemic, companies are increasingly opting for a hybrid working model on a global scale. The Accenture study “The Future of Work: Productive Anywhere” says 83% of the 9326 employees surveyed agree that a hybrid working model would be optimal wherein they get to work remotely for at least one-quarter of their working hours. This calls for adopting smart digital workplace solutions marked by flexibility, scalability, and connectivity to stay efficient and competitive. As remote work evolves into hybrid work, companies must reimagine their digital workplaces to stay competitive. 

Read more: How Can Your Business Be Future-ready to Embrace the Flexible Work

How to Reimagine Your Digital Workplace to Nurture a Hybrid Work Culture?

1. Choose the right set of digital tools 

Your business needs the right set of digital tools and technologies to support hybrid work. You need to choose a smart digital workplace solution well-equipped with state-of-the-art communication, collaboration, and remote technology tools to connect your entire workforce to support a hybrid culture. The platform should enable a seamless and secure flow of data across multiple departments, thus connecting your geographically diverse employees. It should also have smart analytical tools like custom dashboards to get intelligent reports on the progress of projects. As the digital workplace comes integrated with all the tools required for your business operations, your employees needn’t waste their precious time switching from one app to another.

2. Connect employee experiences to business outcomes

Make sure that new technologies enhance employee experiences. Modern tools integrated into the digital platform should recognize your employees’ efforts. Care should be taken to put your employees at the center of the design so that your digital workplace solution transforms how people collaborate and communicate to get work done and meet business goals. Employee surveys help realize what your workforce actually needs to get their work done efficiently. Integrate productivity tools on your digital platform to boost employee performance. The architectural elements should be synced to delight the end users, viz., your employees, while serving to meet goals smarter and faster. Better employee experiences help boost business outcomes.

3. Create a great workplace experience

Your employees deserve a good on-site experience whenever they report to their physical offices. This is very important to make your hybrid working model succeed. Better on-site experiences lead to better in-person collaborations, which boosts better online collaborations among your employees. On-site events should support virtual events to delight your employees. Good on-site experiences make the office a place your employees would love to go.  

4. Build digital fluency

Digital fluency is vital to meet business goals as well as enriching employee experiences. You need to leverage technologies to offer training programs for all segments of your workforce to upskill them.   

In short, the pandemic and multiple lockdowns have caused companies to revisit their long-term business strategies and revamp their business processes to make them hybrid compatible. An April 2022 study of 800 business leaders, “At Work: The 2022 Workplace Trends Report,” says 77% of the companies surveyed have adopted a hybrid working model and that an “at will” hybrid policy has gained momentum. 

Read more: How to Keep Your Remote Teams Connected

To Conclude

You need the tech support of a smart digital workplace solution for your hybrid work model to succeed. This is where an efficient digital platform like InfinCE comes to your aid. InfinCE can support and improve the performances of your hybrid workforce in more ways than one. Here are a few:

1. InfinCE has efficient office and collaboration tools to help your remote teams collaborate efficiently, share files seamlessly, and improve their productivity.
2. It keeps your data private and safe on a secure, private virtual cloud.
3. The curated InfinCE application marketplace offers a multitude of both commercial and open-source business apps from multiple vendors to suit your unique business needs. 
4. Single sign-on access enables your geographically dispersed employees to have unified access to your data.
5. InfinCE offers seamless IT infrastructure management from one place to help you manage your information assets with ease and scalability.
6. It comes with a pool of varied collaboration tools to help your teams connect with each other as well as external contacts through live individual and group chats; secure file sharing; audio and video calls, etc.
7. Helps improve your business efficiency by simplifying your data analytics with the help of custom dashboards and tiles for enhanced visibility and productivity across all departments.

InfinCE is, thus, your one-stop technology solution that caters to anything and everything your hybrid workforce needs. Get in touch with our experts to know more.  

The COVID-19 outbreak caused a variety of instabilities across the globe, especially for businesses. Enterprises rushed to think of alternative options to ensure their survival. This led to the rise in the adoption of various forms of technology in every industry. Shifting to the enterprise cloud platform emerged as one such effective solution, which allowed businesses to ensure the smooth running of their operations.

Businesses that struggled to operate due to high operational costs, variations in the supply chain, and fluctuations in logistics after the pandemic are now able to function smoothly with the help of cloud-based architecture. Yet again, while there are myriads of benefits to adopting an enterprise cloud platform, choosing the right one is not that simple. Firstly, you need to ensure that the cloud solution you choose is the perfect fit for your company by evaluating its cost, security, flexibility, and application complexity management.

Read more: Choosing the Right Digital Workplace Software for Your Company

Different types of Enterprise Cloud Solutions

While thinking about an enterprise cloud platform, it is worth noting that there are three different types to choose from – public, private, and hybrid. Each of them varies in its capacities, strengths, and features. Here is a quick look at how the cloud platforms differ from one another.

Private Cloud

As the name indicates, private cloud infrastructure is designed for a single organization. All its components like software and hardware resources are owned and managed by the business. Some well-established organizations even develop their own cloud architecture, while others hire reputed cloud service providers to administer the cloud infrastructure and its resources for them. In either case, the entire cloud platform is exclusively used by a single entity.

Public Cloud

Unlike the private cloud, public cloud platforms allow multiple subscribers to use their resources, and it can be any number of users depending upon the cloud service provider. In the public cloud architecture, the third-party provider manages the infrastructure and its computing services, which are accessed by organizations on-demand over the internet.

Hybrid Cloud

A hybrid cloud model combines both private and public cloud services to give you the best of both worlds. This allows businesses to manage confidential business data on the private cloud while deploying less sensitive applications and workloads on the public cloud. Moreover, the workloads can be moved between cloud solutions as per the needs of the business.

Read more: Why Should Modern Enterprises Rely on Private Cloud Platforms?

Devising the right strategy to choose a Cloud Infrastructure

If you do not make the right choice about the type of cloud solution for your business, it could incur more costs when managing it. Therefore, you should do a proper case study of your business requirements to see which enterprise cloud platform caters to your demands aptly. Some quick points to consider while developing an enterprise cloud strategy.

Control

If you are going to assign the workloads across your organization over the business cloud platform, you need to ensure that you have complete control of the dashboard. At the same time, if you are not fond of managing the cloud resources and the infrastructure and do not have an in-house IT team for that either, then going for managed cloud services would be the better choice.

Workload

Hybrid cloud gives you more flexibility in terms of dividing the workloads between the private and public cloud. Simultaneously, you can also scale the resources and shift between platforms when the costs fluctuate. This means having a well-planned strategy to ensure effective management of the cloud resources when the need arises.

Security

Ensuring optimal data security is crucial for every business, especially for those that deal with confidential customer and client data like payment records and financial details. That is why it is essential to do a thorough assessment of the compliance and security policies of the cloud before adopting the solution for your organization.

Operational Costs

If you are a small-scale business starting to use an enterprise cloud platform for the first time, then it might be quite challenging to determine which one would be a cost-effective solution for you. Yet again, it is important to consider the operational costs of the cloud platform and ensure that you can bear that without any hassles.

Application Complexity

Each type of cloud solution has varying degrees of complexities around handling the IT infrastructure. Therefore, you should evaluate how to integrate the cloud solution into your existing processes to ensure effective deployment. Likewise, you should also consider whether you would be using it for legacy applications or server-less workloads to devise the right strategy.

Flexibility

Being a business owner, you cannot always expect the same amount of customer responses every day. It may be relatively low on some days, while it may turn unbelievably high on other days. So your cloud environment also needs to have the flexibility to respond to these variations. This is another reason why hybrid enterprise cloud platforms are growing in popularity these days.

Read more: What is Hybrid Cloud Identity and Why It Matters for Your Business

Why is it essential for enterprises to move to the Cloud?

Enterprise Cloud Platform is not a new concept; it was introduced in 2006 with the launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS) as the first-ever enterprise cloud storage service. However, over the last decade, the enterprise cloud has rapidly become an innovative solution for businesses that look to future-proof their operations and drive efficiency. Within the short span of about 15 years, the enterprise cloud grew to be an essential asset for all kinds of businesses, with security and flexibility being the main driving forces for its adoption.

In today’s business environment, where every piece of information is stored in digital format and shared among concerned parties via digital channels, data security is a concern for all. Being exposed to cyberattacks would certainly damage the reputation of the business, not to mention the financial losses it can create. This is where enterprise cloud platforms like InfinCE can help with their robust security features and allow organizations to bolster data security.

In addition to providing specific tools to monitor and ensure high-end security, enterprise cloud also allows organizations to have a reliable disaster recovery plan. So even if adversity strikes, be it a service outage or a natural disaster, you can rest assured of getting things back on track quickly when all the essential data and services are managed on the cloud. Meanwhile, migrating to the enterprise cloud platform will also pave the way for innovation and trying new things at minimal expenditure.

The success, efficiency, and end result of adopting an enterprise cloud service invariably depend on many factors. Yet, the scenarios mentioned above and points would help you to formulate a practical strategy and make an informed decision for your business. So, to make the next move for your business, talk to our experts today!

Embracing cloud technologies is one of the typical components of digital transformation. According to a Gartner report, “By 2024, more than 45% of IT spending on system infrastructure, infrastructure software, application software, and business process outsourcing will shift from traditional solutions to the cloud.” This statement speaks aloud how cloud computing is becoming the most disruptive technology for businesses in this digitally forward era.

As with adopting any technology, moving to the cloud also requires having a robust plan. Most organizations move to multiple clouds to make the most of the technology and have the utmost flexibility. This is where the hybrid cloud comes into the picture, as it facilitates all the demands of such enterprises by providing paramount agility and cost-efficiency. However, it is also seen that a hybrid cloud infrastructure can create many security vulnerabilities if it is not deployed properly.

Read more: Top Cloud Trends Your Enterprise Should Pursue to Succeed in 2021 and Beyond!

How to Deploy a Hybrid Cloud Approach Perfectly

Hybrid cloud infrastructure merges the workloads on the public and private cloud to allow enterprises receive the best of both models. This gives businesses enhanced flexibility to shift their cloud and on-premise workloads as and when required. Hybrid cloud is also a better option because it allows organizations to have better control over their data. Companies can store their sensitive data on the private cloud while they can manage the other workloads on the public cloud. At the same time, they can have a unified platform to configure and manage the capabilities of both and enjoy simplified administration.

It is a known fact that cybersecurity concerns are on the rise, which is why enterprises that move with their digital transformation strategies also need a reliable approach to avoid cyberattacks. Reports say that most of the data breaches in recent years have been due to the misconfiguration of cloud services. In fact, it comes only second to hacking. Although migrating to the cloud allows businesses to prevent that by outsourcing the services to a reliable partner, it does not make the cloud totally protected from cyberattacks. That is why cloud services providers are stressing the need for adopting identity and authentication approaches to improve security.

Read more: 6 Ways InfinCE Simplifies IT Infrastructure Management For Enterprises

How IAM Can Bridge the Gap in Cloud Security 

Identity and Access Management (IAM) can be a vital ingredient in protecting access to resources and data in a hybrid cloud environment. With a hybrid cloud identity strategy in place, businesses can rest assured that only the right people with pre-defined, secure digital access can use the resources and data. It is like an authentication authority for the hybrid cloud infrastructure, with capabilities like Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) and Single Sign-On (SSO), which reinforce cybersecurity. Apart from that, hybrid cloud identity can also allow for seamless experiences for the employees and customers, in turn leading to improved overall productivity.

Cloud SSO can reduce the usage of traditional passwords, which can not only provide a better employee experience but also decrease the costs of password resets. On the other hand, IAM in the hybrid cloud can help to boost customer satisfaction and loyalty rates by providing secure, password-less logins and unified profiles. At the organizational level, IAM helps to monitor user access to the distributed resources over the public and private clouds. Administrators can set specific rules for users and grant them different levels of access based on their job roles and requirements.

Who Needs a Hybrid Cloud Identity and Access Management Solution?

A hybrid cloud IAM solution can also be integrated and deployed at any level, regardless of whether the data and resources are stored and managed on the public cloud or in the on-premise data center. However, it is essential that enterprises identify their IT and business requirements before deploying hybrid cloud IAM so that it fits their needs in the best way. Ensuring this alignment between the varied demands of the company will be a key defining factor in the efficiency of a hybrid cloud IAM solution.

Read more: How InfinCE Cloud Orchestration Platform Can Be A Game Changer For New Business Owners

Companies That Operate Globally

Large enterprises with branches all over the world usually have a huge suite of applications that they use on a daily basis to manage their workflow. These apps and resources can have complex requirements and may require re-architecting to make them compatible with the hybrid cloud infrastructure. Therefore, such organizations retain some apps to be managed in on-premise data centers while deploying others on the public cloud. This makes it imperative for such enterprises to ensure high-end security on both ends to keep their data and resources secure.

This is where hybrid cloud IAM becomes the preferred option by allowing the company to secure applications at every level as necessary. When defining Identity and Access Management (IAM), Gartner says that “Enterprises that develop mature IAM capabilities can reduce their identity management costs and, more importantly, become significantly more agile in supporting new business initiatives.” With a hybrid cloud IAM solution, they can integrate and secure local workloads while defining enhanced security for the resources on the cloud.

Companies That Need to Comply With Regulatory Requirements

Many enterprises need to fulfill specific regulatory requirements, especially if they are doing business on a global scale. This can range from local regulatory norms to national data residency requirements. According to a Gartner report on market trends and cybersecurity, “Personal data privacy has become an intangible asset in this data era. Protecting privacy by standing on the consumers’ side is a differentiator to build a strong brand for any company that is in the consumer business.”

As hybrid cloud IAM is built to support data sovereignty, it allows such companies to host and store their data required for a specific location in that region, while managing globally intensive data on the public cloud. Meanwhile, they can also define user access and control over the data access, usage, and sharing with a well-designed hybrid cloud IAM strategy in effect. That in turn allows such businesses to ensure compliance on every level without compromising on customer expectations.

Companies That Look to Reduce IT Costs

As businesses are becoming increasingly digital-dependant, the IT and admin teams are required to deal with a wide variety of requests. At the same time, they may have to work with limited resources while having to deliver a broader range of requirements. With a hybrid cloud identity plan in place, businesses can save significantly on IT operational costs while not having to cut the quality or amount of support they have been providing to their customers.

Hybrid cloud IAM allows enterprises to handle the challenging use cases efficiently without having to break the bank for the same. It can facilitate centralized identity management on the enterprise level as well as across multiple clouds while providing the tools to automate and maintain the IAM solution. In other words, hybrid cloud identity allows organizations to free up their IT staff from managing infrastructure, which helps them to focus on other higher-value activities.

Read more: Why InfinCE Digital Workplace Should be Your Remote Work Companion

Start the Hybrid Cloud Journey Today

Having a smart digital transformation strategy is what businesses need today to stay competitive in the industry. As migrating to the cloud can be described as a stepping-stone toward digital transformation, enterprises need to realize the flexibility a hybrid cloud infrastructure can provide. Know more on how a hybrid cloud identity solution can boost security, improve productivity, and deliver seamless experiences for the employees and partners. Connect with us today, or Sign Up with InfinCE for free to experience infinite cloud for your business.