htl White Paper

5 business advantages of
cloud-enabled working
practices

Key benets for all businesses which ow from the trend

for cloud-enabled home and virtual oce working

www.htl.london
Introduction
Some powerful driving factors

The growth of home-based working and virtual oces has been advanced by some powerful driving factors:

Consultancy and self-employment/LLP/LC

Experienced practitioners often outgrow conventional full time employment. The trend for highly skilled people taking the
consultancy route in their careers increased signicantly as a result of the Great Recession. When companies are trimming
headcount then entrepreneurially minded people often seize the opportunity to market their skills directly on their own
terms to anyone that needs to plug in specic capabilities or high level skills.

No bricks companies

The trend for virtual companies without a geographical centre has been enabled by high speed internet, the proliferation
of cloud-based business services and the desire for more physically and nancially ecient ways of structuring a business.
Home working avoids routine travel costs, makes more time available to be more productive and eliminates the signicant
costs associated with permanent, geographically dened places of business.

Work - Life balance

Mid-market and enterprise executive positions as well as smaller entrepreneurial businesses are likely to demand more of
owners and key stakeholders as well as workers at all levels. As a result, 50+hour weeks are not uncommon. Whether for
established businesses trying to execute retention strategies or for individuals seeking to break free of the chains of
conventional full time employment, the desire to achieve a better Life - Work balance is a signicant factor in providing
exibility as to when and where work is actually carried out.

Disruptive and of benet to all

These facets driving the trend for home and virtual oce working are quite disruptive to established businesses. In terms
of choice and price, they have increased competition; created some complexity for management; and increased xed
costs, such as salaries for key workers that businesses wish to retain.

However, on the upside, some excellent benets cascade out of the trend for home and virtual oce working. In this
guide, we discuss ve advantages which all businesses are able to exploit.

40 Beaufort Court Canary Wharf London E14 9XL Email: [email protected] Phone: 02070936000 www.htl.london
1. Geographic exibility
The ability to work from anywhere on a suitable internet connected device. Stuck at A&E for six hours with a poorly child?
Simple, use an iPad mini with a folio keyboard and connect to business cloud services over 4G by using your smartphone
as a personal Wi-Fi hotspot.

Transport services disrupted due to industrial action or the wrong type of rain or snow? Login to the rms hosted
desktop system from home. It has never been easier to put time that used to be dead and buried to better use.

2. Real-time in oce experience

Todays remote workers connecting using VPN technology over broadband or ADSL lines to on-premise oce IT systems
are likely to encounter two problems which make working remotely frustratingly slow or even impossible in some applica-
tions.

Firstly, consumer broadband connections have a contention ratio of 50:1 - that means they may be shared. Clearly trying
to work remotely over a connection that is shared with up to 49 other broadband users is likely to cause network speed
issues.

Secondly, performance is limited by the IPSEC VPN (Virtual Private Network) protocols. Essentially the data being transmit-
ted between the servers located in the oce and the remote device has to rapidly undergo encryption and decryption and
consumer broadband routers are budget devices with poor capabilities in this respect.

Users will typically report that the system is slow, and unresponsive. The slowness can often result in data corruption as
client applications have diculty talking with the servers.

A hosted desktop solution removes these issues. Both applications and data remain on the server, and the desktop view is
redirected to the end users device. The amount of bandwidth required is relatively small and the transmission is encrypted
by the server. There is no risk of data corruption and typically users can experience a fast experience even with a slow
connection.

3. Instant DR
Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity (DR & BC) using systems maintained on-premise is often patchy and unreliable
at best. When it comes to DR and BC, why do businesses tolerate uncertainty?

Private cloud and hosted desktop solutions are able to eliminate IT infrastructure from the place of business and put it in
the data centre. This single act facilitates the capability for almost instant recovery from a disaster situation. Business data
is replicated to a secondary data centre which enables instant continuation of business services should the primary data
centre go oine.

40 Beaufort Court Canary Wharf London E14 9XL Email: [email protected] Phone: 02070936000 www.htl.london
4. Productivity
Few would argue with the assertion that happier employees are more productive and have the potential for better
retention. Ensuring the work - life balance works for both the rm and employees is likely to be a critical element in
making the workplace happier.

All C-level executives would like to think they can trust employees. Certainly, people whose remuneration packages are
indexed to performance, such as sales, are likely to be self-starters that just get on with the job. However, not every
remote worker is likely to be paid on results and not everyone is a self-starter.

And just how productive should an employee be? Monitoring the activity of remote workers enables companies to
measure and analyse productivity. This typically takes the form of a high-level overview such as login and log out time,
active time etc, although some employers may choose to log more detail such as emails and attachments, apps and
websites used, le access and copying, and keystrokes.

Of course, any such monitoring activity needs to be sensible and managed with tact to prevent the rm coming into
conict with the workforce.

5. Security
In hosted desktop environment, the endpoint security of network access devices can be strengthened by using dual or
multifactor authentication, where anyone accessing the network needs to provide username, password and something
else. This might be a One Time Key (OTK) from a digital device or the answer to a question to which only the user knows
the answer.

Monitoring the activity of workers provides a veriable audit trail of actions of every system user, whether working remote-
ly or in the oce environment. This data can be collected and forensically examined in the event of a security breach or an
incident that warrants further analysis.

Using an unsecured computer at home or in an Internet caf that may be stued full of viruses, ransomware other
malware nasties? Network level anti-virus prevents the business network being penetrated and minimises the risk of a
cybercriminal attack.

Data leakage, something that often results from the use of shadow IT - any of the multitude of free internet services such
as Dropbox which employees may resort to using unocially - means the company loses control of its data. Appropriately
designed security measures backed by policies enable the rm to stay in control of Personally Identiable Information,
(PII), IP and commercially sensitive data.

Summary
The cloud has been the biggest technology trend of the last decade and an enabler of home and virtual oce working. It
has transformed the eciency of business technology to provide benets for all businesses, even those that may have
been aected by the disruptive forces that have been unleashed.

For no bricks companies and businesses with xed geographical places, cloud-based systems such as private cloud and
hosted desktop solutions, enable full productivity and collaboration and are able to accommodate virtually any permuta-
tion of remote and mobile working.

40 Beaufort Court Canary Wharf London E14 9XL Email: [email protected] Phone: 02070936000 www.htl.london
Why is HTL Support a preferred technology
support provider?
HTL provides a range of services to support the use of technology in todays businesses. Whether it is infrastructure and
user support, internet connectivity or voice communications, we provide the high degree of personalised service.

We are very proud to be able to say that we oer impartial advice because we are independent of suppliers, vendors and
manufacturers. Ultimately, this enables clients to obtain more value from business technology.

The cloud has been a disruptive trend, but it has levelled the playing eld somewhat and put the latest rst class technolo-
gies within reach of companies of all sizes. Formerly, the cost of technology was a key determining factor that enabled
larger companies to outperform smaller businesses. Bigger companies with deeper pockets could simply buy better tech.

The cloud squashes the cost of provisioning technology and puts highly exible, reliable and secure technology tools at
the disposal of all businesses.

About HTL Support

HTL Support was initially founded in 2009 by Managing Director Justin Dean, to provide specialist IT support and IT
consultancy services to nancial services sector clients. Since its launch, HTL has rapidly evolved to oer a full range of
cutting-edge, integrated and exible products and services to a worldwide client base across all industries. Our experience
and professionalism has been endorsed both by our clients and by many of the world's leading hardware and software
manufacturers.

All companies need to know that their IT support provider is not going to let them down when it comes to important
projects. We will always nd the right solution and are equally happy either functioning as project managers for your
internal IT department or providing an experienced team to work under your own IT Director or project leader.

Further reading
Serviced Cloud
Microsoft Oce 365 Solutions
https://www.servicedcloud.com/microsoft-oce-365

Serviced Cloud
Hosted Desktop Solutions
https://www.servicedcloud.com/cloud-solutions/hosted-desktop

40 Beaufort Court Canary Wharf London E14 9XL Email: [email protected] Phone: 02070936000 www.htl.london