Digital Transformation Accelerated - Thank You COVID

It is during the darkest moments that we must focus to see the light - Aristotle Onassis

As we enter the new year 2022, we have by now got used to seeing disturbing news all round, be it in terms of a new wave about to hit us, or about booster doses, absence of social distancing, etc. Sometime back it was about the Delta variant, availability of vaccines,etc. Media, both print and online is flush with such news.

I personally believe that it’s not all that bad. There are a lot of positive news that we all could take pride on. 2021 was the year in which our sports team did us proud in the Olympics, be it our Hockey team ( both men and women’s team), Neeraj Chopra with the Gold medal in Javelin, Boxing team, Badminton team, and of course the Cricket team who continued to scale newer heights of glory through the year capping with the win at Centurion (being the first Asian team to do so).

In the DataCenter/ Infrastructure / IT space we have seen a sudden acceleration of Digital Transformation initiatives across organisations, both large and small. Whilst organisations were already taking baby steps towards movement to the Cloud for non critical initiatives, the pandemic has only accelerated this transformation. Most of the organisations today have a newly created role for a leader to drive the Digital initiatives.As they say, necessity is the mother of invention. The lockdown has forced organisations to reinvent their businesses and operating model and a direct fallout of same could be partially listed below ;

• Improved Market opportunity for security vendors- as users are working from home and accessing the corporate applications (either in DC or in Cloud) from their homes, there is an increased need to secure the end point devices. Corporates involved in these solutions could see improved revenues .
• With Work from home becoming all pervasive and Flexible Work becoming the New Normal, employees are able to spend more time with their families and also be more productive . Whilst some amount of Zoom / Teams fatigue did set in, it was still better than the time wasted being stuck in traffic jams enroute to Office or whilst travelling to meetings.
• Huge increase in business for online service providers be it food delivery apps like Zomato, Swiggy, etc. or Online Grocery providers like Bigbasket, Grofers, etc. Similarly for the health service providers who have really stepped up to provide relief to the medical needs of the people.

Whilst there have been many more positives in multiple other industries enabled by innovations in the IT sector and Digital Transformation initiatives by the Corporates, I have just tried to list some of them above which should give us a positive feeling and am sure the new year would only enhance the same and make our lives even more simpler and easier enabling us to lead a happy and contented life. I was just reading an article which mentioned that the Indian economy is quickly moving to be a trillion dollar economy and the huge amount of pent up demand is only waiting to get unleashed. So, relax, erase all negative thoughts and let’s all look forward to welcome the New Year which am sure would be good for all of us.