When Covid-19 hit the US in March 2020, most of us entered a new reality. Being in IT, my team has not only had to find a way to support our external clients but also support their internal clients as well. Here are some of the takeaways and learning moments we have experienced:
Cloud and Digital Transformation is Beneficial
Now more than ever clients are moving their services to cloud technologies. With a vast number of employees working remotely or in a hybrid environment, utilizing cloud technologies has become massively important, even more so than it already was. Any way you slice it, today’s employees are not working in a traditional business environment.
Because of this, UCaaS, CCaaS, O365, Cloud Compute and Storage, Virtual Desktop and Virtual Collaboration services are being migrated to at a rate we have not seen before. Existing cloud projects that were slated for deployment in late 2020 / 2021 have been fast tracked to completion in weeks, not months.
Reducing IT Costs
Over the past couple of years, a lot of our clients have been tasked with reducing costs as much as possible. This has taken on many different forms, including re-contracting existing services in the effort to reduce costs, or cancelling portions of services.
Some clients have asked our team to look at existing services with all suppliers and find ways to aggregate services to a single provider to take advantage of economies of scale. In some cases, clients request to cancel services altogether or re-purpose assets to be more effective. Whatever the strategy, many businesses remain in a mode of scaling back, while still needing to increase performance.
The Importance of Redundancy and Resiliency
With most all employees working remotely, if there are services needed at the offices redundancies at your offices for VPN or SD-WAN have become more vital than ever. With a single threaded connection, employees are destined to do their laundry rather than work when there is a blip on the network.
Security is Being Reshaped
Most of our clients have seemingly strong security measures for their offices. With a remote workforce, there is the question of how to secure this environment. Enter Virtual Desktop, Zero Trust and SASE methodologies to help secure and address new security concerns.
At Technology Navigation, we have been working diligently with our clients to work through their own challenges during the pandemic and subsequent fallout. If you think you are on your own island through this new reality you are not.