According to a recent poll, 85% of employees believe they could do their jobs remotely. Since 2005, the remote workforce in the United States increased by 173%, amounting to about 5 million employees. Allowing staff to telecommute can increase employee engagement, foster loyalty, and increase productivity – and companies are realizing these benefits.
Whenever the question of working remotely comes up in organizations, management’s first concern is how much effort it will take to enable work from home for their staff. Even if the company doesn’t implement a formal work from home strategy, giving staff remote access to company information can improve productivity. The simplest way to start is to create a shared cloud drive that employees can access from any device.
How Creating a Shared Cloud Drive Improves Remote Access
Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) allowed secured access to company data while enabling staff to access the corporate network from a connected device. However, even if a company invested in a VPN, maintaining it created additional overheads for the IT department. They had to limit how many workers logged in remotely as a VPN could only handle a certain amount of simultaneous connections. If more employees required access, the company would need additional licenses, making VPNs an expensive solution for remote access.
Using existing shared drives with a cloud file server that grants access to employees using their network credentials is a more efficient solution for enabling remote work. As most staff are already familiar with using mapped network drives, making these available from a cloud interface can solve many of the concerns the management may have.
Employees who work inside the office network can map a network drive by navigating to the file or folder and using the path to bind the drive to their credentials. They can choose which drive letter they want to assign to the folder and should use the full Universal Naming Convention (UNC) path, including the domain name. This will provide access to the shared drive from their PC’s file explorer.
5 Benefits of Triofox’s Shared Cloud Drives
Triofox’s private cloud migration capabilities give organizations the ability to set up remote sharing of their mapped network drives. It doesn’t require additional hardware or appliances on-premises, interfacing directly with the company’s file servers instead. Unlike other cloud storage solutions like OneDrive, Dropbox, or Google Drive, Triofox integrates with the company’s Active Directory (AD) to enforce existing file and folder permissions. Employees can access their files from a mobile device or browser, helping them remain productive from anywhere.
Here are five ways Triofox improves remote working with shared cloud drives.
1. Familiarity Across Devices
Most employees know how to use mapped drives and shared folders in the office network. Usually, with a remote access solution like a VPN, it requires training staff on how to use the technology. With Triofox, the company can replicate the same office experience on mobile devices or web browsers. Staff won’t end up navigating around an endless maze of drives and folders.
2. Reduced IT Overheads
Triofox is easy to deploy and has an intuitive interface that doesn’t add additional burdens to the company’s IT department. By inheriting access permissions from the company AD, Triofox doesn’t require any additional administrative load from network security professionals. The protection of the internal network extends to the cloud drives.
3. Collaborate Productively
File management capabilities like versioning and automatic locking increase staff’s capability to work concurrently and efficiently. Triofox also reduces the cost of compliance by generating an audit trail of every shared file’s change history.
4. Scale Effectively
With Triofox, the on-premises infrastructure can host all the cloud accessible data, allowing firms to scale with ease. It also allows firms to be cloud-ready and transition their data to a public, private, or hybrid cloud deployment.
5. Secure Yet Accessible Data
The rise of cloud services offered a solution to firms but also increased their attack surface. Security professionals experienced with working in a closed corporate network didn’t have the skills and expertise to deploy their infrastructure to the cloud safely. These concerns hampered private and public cloud adoption in organizations until a solution presented itself.
Triofox combines the hardline security infrastructure of an on-premises deployment while enabling a scalable cloud access model. It leverages the existing security layers built into the company servers and group policies (including NTFS permissions) to keep information safe, yet accessible. After the company configures the solution, staff can access their shared drives from a web or mobile interface.
Enable the Remote Workforce with Triofox Cloud Shared Network Drives
Using Triofox to enable remote work in companies can speed up the implementation without compromising any of the corporate network’s security. It provides companies with a flexible solution that adds a layer of remote functionality to their existing file servers.
With more organizations now depending on staff to be productive while working from home, Triofox streamlines the company’s deployment strategy and establishes a robust, cloud-ready ecosystem for future resilience. You can try Triofox as a free cloud storage solution by signing up for a trial period.