Browse Definitions :
Definition

remote office/branch office (ROBO)

Remote office/branch office (ROBO) is a corporate business site located at some distance from the organization’s headquarters or main office.

Generally a ROBO is a smaller office than the company headquarters and located in another town, state or country.  A ROBO may operate similarly to the main office or may be a separate business unit or provide some specialized service. Companies also sometimes have separately-located offices for importing, exporting, retail locations, service, taxation or other legal reasons. A business typically considers opening a ROBO when employees must travel to a specific location frequently or when it is the most effective way to serve a profitable market.

External offices can present additional challenges for IT, to ensure that data is backed up and secure and systems remain operational. Remote offices may lack experienced IT onsite and have less backup hardware.  A ROBO usually has no dedicated backup and recovery staff, and the employee responsible for that administrative area generally performs those tasks as a secondary responsibility. That situation can result in less-than-optimal practices that, in turn, result in problems with data integrity and recovery.

Centralized backup, which involves automatically replicating data from remote sites and sending it over a network to the main location, is one approach to solving remote backup problems. Cloud backup, which replicates remote site backups to the cloud, is an increasingly popular solution because it allows an organization to keep the most recent backups on-site for fast restores while sending a copy off-site for disaster recovery.

 See also: SOHO (small office/home office)

This was last updated in May 2016

Continue Reading About remote office/branch office (ROBO)

Networking
Security
  • security posture

    Security posture refers to an organization's overall cybersecurity strength and how well it can predict, prevent and respond to ...

  • ISO 31000 Risk Management

    The ISO 31000 Risk Management framework is an international standard that provides organizations with guidelines and principles ...

  • voice squatting

    Voice squatting is an attack vector for voice user interfaces, or VUIs, that exploits homonyms -- words that sound the same, but ...

CIO
  • Whistleblower Protection Act

    The Whistleblower Protection Act of 1989 is a law that protects federal government employees in the United States from ...

  • skunkworks project (Skunk Works)

    A skunkworks project, also known as Skunk Works, is an innovative undertaking, involving a small group of people, that is outside...

  • digital innovation

    Digital innovation is the adoption of modern digital technologies by a business.

HRSoftware
  • talent network

    A talent network is a group of interconnected people with similar professional skills.

  • employee onboarding and offboarding

    Employee onboarding involves all the steps needed to get a new employee successfully deployed and productive, while offboarding ...

  • skill-based learning

    Skill-based learning develops students through hands-on practice and real-world application.

Customer Experience
  • virtual assistant (AI assistant)

    A virtual assistant, also called an AI assistant or digital assistant, is an application program that understands natural ...

  • Microsoft Dynamics 365

    Dynamics 365 is a cloud-based portfolio of business applications from Microsoft that are designed to help organizations improve ...

  • Salesforce Commerce Cloud

    Salesforce Commerce Cloud is a cloud-based suite of products that enable e-commerce businesses to set up e-commerce sites, drive ...

Close