By 2020, 83% of enterprise workloads will be running on the cloud. Cloud-based time tracking will be a fair share of those workloads. Whether a company has already started to migrate to the cloud or will use time tracking as its point of entry, you don't want to dive in without mapping out a strategy.
One of the great benefits of cloud computing is the 24/7 availability of your data. Even better, the data isn't simply available to you, but can shared to any other systems for integration with your cloud-based time tracking solution.
To enable seamless integrations with other systems, you know where and how your data is stored. This is just the data in your time tracking system, but also where and how the data you want it to integrate with is stored. These infrastructure and database issues will impact how easily data can be shared from system to system.
Most cloud-based environments are either entirely on the public cloud or part of a hybrid environment. That means the security standards for how your data is stored and the standards of security for the systems feeding into the environment are linked. How do they secure data during transmission? How do they secure data when it's at rest?
Expand your cloud strategy by incorporating a physical time clock backed by cloud-based middleware into your solution environment. The cloud-based middleware streamlines the data flows between the local terminals and your time tracking solution. It also simplifies the software and configuration management of the software installed on the terminals.
With cloud-based middleware, you can store configuration templates and the customer-specific configurations. Take advantage of the cloud architecture to push out software and configuration updates. Whether it's additional time clocks getting installed or a new configuration a customer wants installed on all their terminals, the cloud makes updates simple.
A cloud strategy isn't just about infrastructure. Its purpose is to ensure your company can leverage new technologies for competitive advantages. Much of what the new value streamlined integrations provide are more sophisticated opportunities to glean insights from your cloud-based installation through ubiquitous access.
At ATS, we've built a portal as part of our cloud-based terminal middleware solution. The portal gives your team and your customers complete visibility into the status of every time clock deployed. Instead of the terminal integrations seeming like a black hole until data reaches your system, now a cloud-based portal lets you see where a terminal may have gone offline impacting your integration.
The terminal middleware portal can also serve as a reporting dashboard where your business analysts and customers can analyze their terminal installations. Real time reporting can provide insights on utilization of specific terminals or find user anomalies. This type of reporting can help your customers optimize their installations and resolve data anomalies quickly.
There's a big difference between running your system on the cloud and executing a cloud-based strategy intended to maximize the value of being on the cloud in the first place. Planning out a strategy ensures your customers reap the benefits of cloud technology at every point in your solution's environment.