This week’s cold snap may increase the pressure on an already sluggish UK economy, but the dangerous weather conditions have proved to be a godsend for the Cloud Computing industry.
According to the Federation of Small Business, more than 20% of UK workers failed to make it to their offices on Wednesday morning, as big snowfalls blanketed large regions of the country. According to the FSB, the cost of lost productivity could run into the billions.
Rebecca Clarke of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) told our sister site HR Zone it was unreasonable, and bad for morale, for employers to expect their staff to travel in dangerous conditions. She advised that a combination of common sense and modern technology could help employers lessen the economic impact of the freeze.
“Many companies that have put in place the technology and management practices to allow home working, reap the benefits at a time like this. The crude millions-of-pounds estimates of the cost to the economy of bad weather often don’t take into account the millions of motivated workers who will be remotely working.”
Cloud Computing and outsourcing suppliers did not need to be reminded of sales potential provided by the weather and flooded the media with thinly veiled sales pitches.
“It's clear that when snow falls from the clouds the UK's infrastructure can't cope,” said Rob Lovell, CEO of cloud infrastructure provider ThinkGrid. “Businesses need to look at the Cloud Computing model, as it enables people to work from anywhere, and therefore organisations can ensure that workers are able to continue working as normal even though they can't get into the office.”
Feedback from developers via the Cloud accounting group on AccountingWEB.co.uk backed the broader claims with some tangible evidence. Bristol-based Pearl reported that while offices might be deserted, “From our logs it looks like most users are still managing to crack on with business as usual… If you’re stuck at home with all your information on the computers at work, you’ll appreciate how nice it would be to access everything remotely.” To exploit the situation, the company offered a three-month 75% discount for anyone who signed up on 6 January.
“It's an easy point for cloud vendors to score from that perspective,” admitted Xero’s UK managing director Gary Turner. But he and other developers pointed to the broader advantages not just for flexible work arrangements, but for business continuity.
KashFlow founder Duane Jackson circulated an email extract from a customer who suffered power failures on their main server. “Our server disks have been wrecked by power failures. We had a (dodgy) UPS attached to the server which didn’t work,” complained the user. “We have currently had two days where none of our staff could effectively work and will have at least a further half a day, assuming that the drive can be copied and data repaired. We therefore have been unable to do any book keeping whatsoever, nor work on anyone’s accounts from Sage (server based). The only work we can do is on KashFlow. One up for SaaS!”
Xero’s Turner used to be managing director at on-premise accounting software house Pegasus, where the company’s corporate governance rules required it to have a disaster recovery plan in place that included an alternate site with pre-loaded servers holding line of business applications ready to be switched live should unthinkable happen.
“This was a major cost and undertaking that online applications can certainly mitigate massively,” noted Turner, who added that after the company was taken private, the new management disposed of the disaster recovery facility.
A few weeks later, the server room at the company’s Kettering headquarters was submerged under four feet of water by the floods of 2007.
Just a little reminder from first-hand experience that snow and cold are not the only factors that should be considered in a Cloud versus on-premise benefits and risk assessment.
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