In this video, Jessica talks about the cloud and how it might be the answer to support your remote workforce.

While the cloud seems like it's intangible, there's actually warehouses around the world that are full of servers that are dedicated to certain companies, applications and business needs. The existing infrastructure lives in a physical warehouse but the service itself is what makes it intangible.

Here are the 5 use cases Jessica discusses for utilizing the cloud in your business:

1. Data backup and storage: if you're still using manual hard drives backing up data or add extra files on an external hard drive, then the cloud can offer a much more efficient and secure way to store this data. On top of that, when you store your files in the cloud, it may come with a backup solution. For example, if your data is stored on the east coast, and your backup is on the west coast. If something happens to the east coast, you still have everything you need
2. If you have on-site servers and you don't need to for compliance or legal reasons, then a cloud-based system would be a great option. Whatever you own or manage yourself on-premise, your IT team has to continue to patch that server and make those updates so it's as secure as it can be. If you're in the cloud, this is automatically done for you, so your team gets back that time and doesn't need to spend time on this
3. Does your company have VPN access? A VPN allows you to connect to your company and connect remotely to all the files and applications you need. There can be a lot of lag time with login issues or latency. The cloud eliminates many of these issues and presents a more pleasant user experience and provides the most bandwidth.
4. Scalability. Scaling usually happens quickly and this can add a lot of weight to your infrastructure if it's not cloud-based, not to mention it's costly (capital expenditures). When you're cloud-based and add new employees, the equipment you need is pretty minimal and everything else is an operating expense. Additionally, you can give the new employee a few logins and they have access to everything they need. Again, this is a huge time saver.
5.  Cost. When using anything physically on-premise, they will be capital expenditures, versus the cloud which is an operational expense. With operating expenses, you have a more predictable spend.