Covid-19 to Digital Transformation

For many Americans and who stayed in the middle east, corona virus crisis calls to remind 9/11.

When 9/11 happened I was in Kuwait, earlier all non-Kuwaiti or non-arabs were all same, it doesn’t matter whether you are an Indian, Egyptian, Syrian, Pakistani, Lebani, Palastini, Jordani , europian or American. After 9/11 the entire way of life changed, Indians were in high demand. The belief that Indians are harmless became more factual. when I was supporting IT for the American military base in Kuwait and the middle east region, Pakistani, Syrian, Palastini and many more nationalities are not allowed to enter the base. Even you are from Cisco or IBM doesn’t matter, not allowed. After that, so many Indians movements happened to many large companies and a paradigm shift happened for many other regional and nationals.

Now Corona reminds me the same, now new paradigm shift started, it may impact each one of us, whether we like it or not.

You’re riding a wave, you’re on a surfboard. Don’t complain about the wave or gripe. It’s not going to change. Pay attention to it though and adapt.

The paradox of online communication will be ratcheted up.

large events may get cancel even after Corona story over and conference calls and web meetings becoming a communication

We didn’t have to think about the things that once focused our minds—nuclear war, oil shortages, high unemployment, skyrocketing interest rates

In India and around the world, the impact of the coronavirus pandemic is not limited to a few sectors but is evident across all stakeholders of the economy. the total loss from the impact is estimated to be $1Tn.

The COVID-19 crisis could change this in two ways. First, it has already forced people back to accepting that expertise matters. It was easy to sneer at experts until a pandemic arrived, and then people wanted to hear from medical professionals. Second, it may at least move them back toward the idea that government is a matter for serious people. the economy might shock the public enough back to insisting on something from government other than emotional satisfaction.

Religious worship will look different, Churches and masque may end up on Zoom or similar, temples online darshan may get popular. With maybe AR.

In the age of digitalization, it is paramount to collaborate remotely from anywhere at any time. The forced quarantines in many regions will lead to behavioral changes and result in higher adoption of remote working tools in the long term. Companies are encouraging employees to switch to virtual meetings using solutions such as video conferencing and teleworking. To continue meetings without disruptions, several companies are exploring technologies such as BYOM, or Bring Your Meeting

Regulatory barriers to online tools will fall.

-         COVID-19 will sweep away many of the artificial barriers to moving more of our lives online. Not everything can become virtual, of course. But in many areas of our lives, uptake on genuinely useful online tools has been slowed by powerful legacy players, often working in collaboration with overcautious bureaucrats. Medicare allowing billing for telemedicine was a long-overdue change, for instance, as was revisiting HIPAA to permit more medical providers to use the same tools the rest of us use every day to communicate, such as Skype, Facetime, and email.

A boon to virtual reality.

-         Revived trust in institutions.

-         VR allows us to have the experiences we want even if we have to be isolated, quarantined or alone. Maybe that will be how we adapt and stay safe in the next outbreak. I would like to see a VR program that helped with the socialization and mental health of people who had to self-isolate. Imagine putting on glasses, and suddenly you are in a classroom or another communal setting, or even a positive psychology intervention

-         No more real big universities, most of the medium going to be virtual, difficult time for parents as difficult to adopt the new technologies, and of course for the professors.

The Government becomes Big Pharma.

-         Telemedicine may boom and rich people may get specialized hospital or ward,

-         Home-based Doctors visit (you remember old days, family Drs used to visit our homes?)

-         Virtual Doctors (bot-based, analytics Doctors)

-         Many doctors may lose their job or salary may get reduce.

o  As of now due to Corona, most of the people not visiting the hospital, so the EnT and many other departments almost empty or no patients. Big hospitals cutting down their costs for the Doctors, this may increase in the future. The Revenue-based model may work.

o  Online Doctors may increase drastically, you may find many doctors app similar to Practo and many more you may see.

The rules we’ve lived by won’t all apply.

Travel and event-based opportunities may get digital.

-         Digital hologram, 3d , virtual reality

-         Private jets and share jets (similar to ola) may pick up heavily. In recent times, Australian based private jet companies are overbooked due to this virus.

LMS

-         Learning going to be hit as most people may prefer digital medium, some of the companies come up with “pay as you go” and the medium is video contents, integrated with AR, AI and ML similar to Netflix experience.

Stores

-         Online sales and associated with localized versions may be a new hit.

-         This corona gave a lesson that, you are local, not global, so all your grocery, vegetable needs you have to get it in local stores, this online experience can bring, local with global kinds of stuff.

The Supply chain may get localized.

-         Since the global supply chain may get interrupted, local supply becoming essential, so the local supply chain may get organized in a digital way.

Food

-         A Lot of food sales going to be there, but mostly take away, so again digital experience. Online food going to increase after this virus issue

Bot

-         Some robots are lending a helping hand in the battle against the corona virus, facilitating conversation between infected patients and hospital staff and delivering necessities, including medication. But at least one robot vendor has used the outbreak to push the abilities of its “service robot,” an automaton that can be programmed to answer questions, quiz people on their health, and give tours.

Air purifier

-         Soon most of the houses and areas going to fill with air purifier or similar devices, as the marketing strategy to promote virus/germs free house.

Thermal imagining

-         augmented reality glasses can be fitted with thermal imaging to make this process more seamless

-         some companies are moving quickly to integrate or advertise their existing thermal imaging capabilities. The technology scans a person from afar and estimates what their temperature is, so some think these systems could spot fevers and ultimately infected persons. We’ve already seen this integrated into facial recognition cameras in China, but now it’s showing up elsewhere

-         next time when you go mall, transport, hospital or temples, you may find thermal imaging process systems everywhere.

high-tech disinfectant devices

-         similar to handwash, sanitary liquid, tools to disinfect surrounding areas, including high-tech electrostatic spray guns, like for flight seats, train seats even in office seats

Hats

-         hats that come fitted with protective “screens” that are meant to block someone spitting or sneezing into your face

Container

-         A shipping container that might be useful during a “corona virus quarantine.” (keeping all kinds of stocks, including ready with Zoom & Netflix.

BCP/DR

-         Few companies already started real BCP/DR, which means real people BCP/DR.

• Open source may increase, Kubernetis, containers, microservices, similar usages going to be very high.

o  In case if something happened in the country (example Japan), they can ask the country (USA) to operate their operations.

o  Parallel CEO, CFO, CIO and operations heads will be there and a 70% 30% model may work.

o  From January to August Japan may operate, Sep to Dec USA may operate, in this way, any natural / any disaster the company can operate without much disruption.

Local but Global

-         Many manufacturing companies may start to having internal guest houses within the manufacturing and the majority of their employees can operate in isolated mode. Even the country shutdown or any disaster, the operation still runs.

-         Global companies may enable virtual operations/offices across the globe, so the operations can run seamlessly.

Elections and similar

-         Electronic voting may start, due to non-social gatherings.

-         Based on OTP or authoring and authenticated methods, people can vote via website or email or a similar way.

Microsoft Teams, Cisco WebEx and similar services including Zoom offering free services for these difficult times, may increase and companies going to invest more in collaboration tools for remote working/working from home.

-         Large video conference unit sale may shrink, simple desktop based conferences sales may increase significantly

VPN

-         VPN based services (inhouse or cloud-based services) may increase for small and medium companies.

-         Large enterprises may be started to reduce the VPN and move to SAAS based models going forward.

Virtual desktops

-         The Organisation largely going to adopt Citrix / vmware based desktop solutions, since the remote working environment for employees, partners and vendors enabled in a secured way.

Entertainment

-         Movie theatres may start to shrink and private theaters may increase

-         Online streaming becoming more hits, we may find many Dish / Cable companies switching into Streaming media

-         Many live events may start without physical social gatherings.

-         Many private (for rich people) parties may start online (sharukh / Priyanka may come for specific special online events).

-         Few companies may come up with AR with hologram solutions

-         Laser TV may increase and any device TV concept may come. (smart tv becoming office also happen in ulta/jugad way)

Work from home/remote work may get a new dimension.

-         These are abnormal times, people are struggling to work from home, and it’s not the normal situation. There are kids at home, and there are child care issues. Even when you work from home, the best practice is to get out and socialize. This is the opposite of that.

-         Once workers get a taste of it and managers to see that, yes, work-from-home employees are often more productive, it will become the newer normal

The biggest problem is, many senior leaders had no clue about what is work from home/remote working and many of the employees also not aware about work from home/remote working. So for the supervisors, it is a new experience and they think, work from home means the resources are available continuously, so mostly they don’t plan anything, they just call or reach out the employees anytime and employees also working like P1 ticket (in IT world P1 ticket is priority one ticket, if any major incident happened), but the problem is, the employee also can not run like this, so soon the work culture may be started to change, work from home may increase drastically, even after normal days.

ISP

-         ISP becoming essentials

-         Traffic prioritization and shaping need to be put in place for core business applications during prime hours, which includes video conferencing for business and personal use. This would effectively be the opposite of net neutrality, as an emergency measure

-         Internet video streaming traffic should be prioritized for essential news providers, and the government should provide incentives for them to broadcast their content (and for home-bound citizens to consume it) over-the-air (OTA) so that additional bandwidth can be freed up. Remember the antenna and devices with built-in tuners? It may be an appropriate time to shift some programming back to the airwaves, and even bring back the DVR, so that programming can be transferred to devices during off-hours when networks aren't saturated.

-         Future bundled solutions for one-stop (you can get most of the services directly from ISP)

Cloud

-         Azure and Redmond's ability to develop software for iOS and Mac rapidly, I believe Apple will finally bury its hatchet with Microsoft due to synergies that only an existential industry crisis like this can bring clarity to.

-         At the same time, containerized remote Windows desktops will be a significant revenue driver for hyper-scale cloud provider

-         Cloud business may increase now, but strong players only survive.

iOT

-         Now many manufacturing, including Pharma, focus on end to end automation, so without IoT it is not possible.

Security systems (mostly government or large enterprises)

-         Drone with thermal-based sensors

-         Cctv with image recognition and with thermal-based sensors

-         Multiple government mobile apps

-         Chatbot for addressing any questions.

-         Tracking people using sensors/recognition images.

-         Smartwatches

Environment

-         Environment getting cleaner and IoT based tools will be enabled to monitor the cleanliness.

So be alert, awake, accept the facts, and if we keep on looking at the brighter sides of life, the longer the crisis lasts, the larger the opportunities are and the bigger the chances are of actually making changes to our deeply rooted habits and convictions.