[New Wave] Cloud Technology Enhancing Productivity in Remote Work

Recently, the number of companies seeking remote work and remote collaboration solutions has been increasing. The advancement of cloud technology has played a significant role in enabling work to be carried out without greatly affecting productivity, even when employees cannot go to the office. It has become common to use corporate collaboration tools as cloud-based Software as a Service (SaaS).

The biggest advantage of cloud-based services is that you only pay for what you use. For example, Amazon Chime, a video conferencing service, is free for one-on-one meetings, and for larger groups up to 100 people, it costs only $15 per person per month. There is no need to set up separate equipment for meeting scheduling, recording, phone connection systems, or traffic management.

Low-cost carrier (LCC) Ryanair conducts video conferences through Amazon Chime with over 200 airport operations teams. Arizona State University in the U.S. is conducting classes that combine video lectures and phone calls. This is a case that can be benchmarked for students affected by class delays and other disruptions.

While a work computer is essential for remote work, productivity drops if a temporary laptop is used when the company computer cannot be brought home. Desktop virtualization (VDI) technology, which has been used for a long time, addresses this issue. When the VDI system is on-premises and offers low computing power, making expansion difficult, cloud services can help. Costs are also paid monthly based on usage, making it ideal for large-scale remote work. Amazon used Amazon WorkSpaces for 25,000 remote call center employees, achieving an annual cost saving of $17 million.

However, there are challenges that cloud desktops cannot easily solve. This includes software requiring large-scale computing (CPU) or memory, such as CAD/CAM, MATLAB, and Photoshop for 3D design and simulation. In such cases, application streaming technology can be used, allowing these software programs to be installed on virtual servers and accessed via a web browser. Samsung Engineering adopted cloud services to provide design software like Hexagon to employees and partners worldwide. This enabled the establishment of a global collaboration model while reducing operating costs by 30%.

Regarding the recently highlighted call center issue, Amazon created a cloud service that allows call centers to be built within minutes with just a few simple clicks, based on its shopping mall operation experience. Anyone can visually design customer response flows and handle interactions through omni-channel platforms such as voice, web chat, and mobile messaging. Recently, various artificial intelligence (AI) features have also been integrated. Los Angeles County in the U.S. operates a cloud-based resident center, reducing counselor call volumes by 17% within a few months. When call volumes were high, wait times of 40 to 50 minutes dropped to under 4 minutes, improving public service satisfaction.

Cloud-based work services have now expanded to include infrastructure that is difficult to build or migrate, such as video conferencing, virtual desktops, large-scale software execution, and call centers. Additionally, more functions are becoming available in cloud environments. Cloud technology has established itself as a technology that not only enhances work-life balance but also provides high productivity and business continuity.

Yoon Seok-chan, AWS Senior Tech Evangelist