Business Continuity, Flexible Working and Adaptive Infrastructure: Five Actions for When the Economy Reopens Following COVID-19

Nearly two-thirds of respondents (IT and business leaders) believe COVID-19 has changed their organisation forever. The sentiment is even across Asia, Europe and the US markets. Nearly 80 per cent of respondents have some employees who cannot work from home due to IT issues. COVID-19 has also changed the corporate IT strategy. Some businesses have put their current plans on hold and are now addressing the more pressing needs of keeping the IT ‘lights on’ by provisioning for an unprecedented level of remote working and moving more workloads to the cloud.

Businesses are accelerating the final migration of data onto the cloud at a time when consumption of this data outside the firewall, from a personal device, is at an all-time high. Nearly 70 per cent of respondent businesses and IT leaders believe COVID-19 has increased ‘Shadow IT’, which is where employees circumvent official policy.