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What To Look For In A Hosted Virtual Collaboration System

2016-05-11by Anand Srinivasan

Remote working and virtual collaboration is no longer the future; it is already here. According to a recent study conducted by PGI, an overwhelming 79 percent of knowledge workers already work from home in one way or the other. The Bureau of Labor Statistics notes that overall, nearly 23 percent of American workers already do at least a part of their work remotely. Several other reports, including those from The New York Times, have been chronicling the exponential rise of remote workers over the past decade.

From a business point of view, this mandates fresh investments into technologies that can facilitate the requirements of a remote workforce. Studies have shown that inefficient collaboration can undo the benefits of remote working and can bring down the ability for businesses to innovate and be productive.

While there are a number of cloud-based virtual collaboration tools available in the market today, they may not be for everyone. Many large-sized enterprise businesses still prefer a hosted solution that would ensure higher security and better control over data access and privacy. There are quite a few great options here — Adobe Connect and Bitrix to mention a couple.

A hosted virtual collaboration system, however, comes with a fresh set of challenges to the System administrator. There are a number of factors to take into account while picking a software — the server infrastructure necessary to host the product, cost, distributed server capability (for a global workforce) are some of the more vital requirements. Besides these, there are a number of other features to look for while deciding on a virtual collaboration tool that you can host on your own server.

Security Infrastructure

Large businesses face security threats from potential hackers all the time and it is important to pick a robust solution that can thwart such attacks. One of the best ways to go about this is to pick a product that has been certified by authorized third parties.

One certification to look for is FedRAMP that is a joint collaboration between the Department of Homeland Security, Department of Defense and General Services Administration and is thus something one could trust.

Integrations

IT departments across enterprise businesses routinely get requests from the various departments within their organizations about product customizations to suit specific business needs. This is only possible with a virtual collaboration tool if it comes with developer SDKs and APIs that would enable the customer to tweak and deploy custom integrations. Make sure your provider offers these features.

Mobility

When it comes to remote working, mobility, and virtual collaboration go hand-in-hand. While Android or iOS apps that can enable members to access tools from their smartphone are a vital requirement, the self-serve tools from providers may not always be suitable for a hosted environment.

Developer SDKs and APIs mentioned above can always be used to build your own native smartphone apps. Another way to do this would be to look for a solution that is responsive and may be accessible over an internet browser. This makes sure that the various collaborators (including those outside the organization) may access the systems without having to download or install any new apps or software.

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