Is Transitioning Back to Work Causing a Nightmare for the IT Department?

Published On: July 12, 2021

Once upon a pre-pandemic time, your employees came into the office every day. Then, along came COVID-19, and that dramatically changed working paradigms. In many cases, “brick and mortar’ offices or stores became ghost towns – empty spaces for which you were still paying. And now, this is changing again.

Physical Space Changes

Many offices and stores have re-opened, but are all the employees physically back at work? Based on what we hear from our clients and colleagues, it is very inconsistent. Employees have become accustomed to working from home, and they feel it is more productive to do so. Many forgot how nerve-wracking it is to commute to their offices, or even how difficult it could be to schedule a day for their water meter to be read.

Many hard-hit businesses have been forced to downsize (if they could terminate their lease on office space). Business owners began searching for office space in new locations for less money. As a result, we see “For Lease” signs on many city blocks.

Staff Changes

We also see “Help Wanted” and “Now Hiring” signs wherever we go – restaurants, convenience stores, post offices, construction sites, and office suites. If you think about it in grim terms, more than 600,000 people have passed away in the United States; ten percent of the population got sick, and some of them are still experiencing “long haul” symptoms, which, while not necessarily debilitating, have given them pause to think about future exposure. Medical experts also believe that a fall or winter surge or even another pandemic is possible. (Do not discard your masks.)

Is Transitioning Back to Work an IT Nightmare?

Companies that did not previously have a BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) policy will be implementing one, and IT will have to make sure that these devices are secure. It is one of the many things that IT will have to confront as employees return to corporate offices.

Regarding IT departments, moving to smaller offices means moving servers and landlines. This could be the perfect opportunity to move your datacenters to the Microsoft Azure Cloud. Either way, the transition to smaller space or to the cloud falls to IT. Let us explore the cloud a bit further.

Datacenter Transition to the Microsoft Cloud Platform

The Microsoft Azure Cloud is the cornerstone of the Microsoft Cloud Platform.* It is the world’s leading cloud computing service for building, testing, deploying, and managing applications and services through Microsoft-managed datacenters. Powered by Microsoft, delivered and supported by Queue Associates, the platform provides more than 100 services for building, deploying, and managing your applications in the cloud.

Collaborating in Challenging Times

Since Queue Associates‘ corporate headquarters are in New York City, we were proactively prepared for a catastrophic event. There are also Queue offices in alternate locations such as APAC and EMEA, whose offices closed during the pandemic. Fortunately, everyone within our organization was available during the pandemic, and our business continued as usual thanks to modern technologies, such as the Microsoft Cloud, which includes Microsoft SharePoint.

SharePoint is the world’s leading Web-based collaborative platform. It enables organizations to share and manage content, knowledge, and applications. Of course, it is not quite the same as popping into a colleague’s office and chatting about a new marketing campaign idea, but be that as it may, SharePoint was a lifesaver for us during the pandemic.

Was our IT team plagued with connection problems and upload speed issues? Yes. Queue’s IT team did heroic duty keeping us in business.

“Be Prepared”

It is the motto of the Scout movement, which, in various languages, has been used by millions of Scouts around the world since 1907. And they are our parting words to you. Be prepared… for change. Safeguard your company’s physical and digital assets. Make sure that your Disaster Recovery (DR) plan has been updated. Finally, plan for growth with the understanding that circumstances beyond your control may impact that plan.

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*As an aside, I find it interesting that even though we are discussing a cloud platform, we use the word “cornerstone,” which conjures up images of “brick and mortar” facilities. But what else would we call it? Foundation? No, that is just as concrete (pun intended). I went to the Merriam-Webster thesaurus and could not find a better word.