The Future of Work in 2021: How Colocation Data Centers and The Cloud Support WFX

It’s been almost a year since the COVID-19 outbreak, but despite the promising vaccine development, the number of cases has only been increasing. Since the end of 2020, as a means to prevent the spread of the virus, numerous companies have announced that remote work would be a permanent option for their employees. Two tech giants, Facebook and Twitter, have started allowing most of its employees to request a permanent change in their jobs to let them work remotely. Facebook has even started making most of its US job openings available for remote hires and begun taking applications for permanent remote work among its workforce.

The Rise of WFX

A number of predictions of what the future work will look like in 2021 have been made. The founder and CEO of a digital whiteboarding platform for virtual collaboration predicts that work from home (WFH) will turn into work from anywhere (WFX) and this leads to a massive digital transformation. This prediction is based on the fact that the platform has doubled its user base from 3.7M to 9M since March 2020. Moreover, as the opportunities to travel is reopening, a lot of people will take the chance to work remotely from new locations: back at their hometowns, outside of urban centers, and even holiday destinations.

Most companies that have gone through shifts from work from office (WFO) to WFH since last year have allocated their time and resources for investing in technology that enables virtual collaboration. However, if WFX is something they are going for and anticipate in 2021, it is essential for companies to take a big leap and secure more significant and permanent technology upgrades, such as migrating their IT functions to a colocation data center or the cloud. Or both.

Colocation Data Centers & Cloud Services As Options

Colocation services offer the flexibility companies need to achieve a true digital transformation. Renting out servers at colocation services is a good choice for companies that prefer physical servers but with minimal maintenance and resources allocation. As they discard on-site IT infrastructure and share space at the colocation data centers, companies can fully stick to remote work and cut expenses at the same time. Also, with backup solutions and disaster recovery capabilities, colocation providers can help companies keep their remote workplace up and running no matter what happens. Moreover, colocation data centers, with network carrier neutrality and multiple redundancies built into its components including power and cooling system, can assist the cloud by ensuring 100% uptime reliability so that remote employees will always be able to access the servers hosting the data and applications they need to do their jobs.

Meanwhile, the cloud, as a remote version of a data center, provides a way to keep employees connected and productive, regardless of where they are working. Via the cloud, employees can constantly connect and share, and this is important to improve the quality of work produced and decrease the amount of time it takes to complete projects. Using the cloud for collaboration ensures enhanced control over projects, document accessibility and ability to work on projects from anywhere, easy coordination and work synchronization, real time updates for improved productivity and project timelines, and better facilitated communication. 

In brief, the implementation of WFX is very close to happening, and it’s time for companies to start preparing for the transformation and be in a strong position to remain competitive in the future. Utilizing a reliable colocation data center infrastructure with robust cloud connectivity allows companies to eliminate the needs of a physical office and keep employees productive wherever they work from.