COVID-19: Five Recommendations for Enterprise IT Leaders

Market analysts at Omdia have been assessing the COVID-19’s impact on the global data center and IT industry. Cliff Grossner, senior director of research for Omdia’s Cloud and Data Center Research Practice, has put together this list of recommendations for enterprise IT decision makers to help them adjust to the new reality. After reading Cliff’s recommendations, be sure to visit Omdia’s dedicated page for free resources the analysts are offering to help practitioners and vendors deal with the challenges presented by the pandemic.

Recommendations for Enterprise IT Decision Makers

Accelerate cloud services adoption plans. The agility and rapid response needed to keep the business operational during times when employees must change work patterns can be significantly improved when essential services are delivered from the cloud. Key use cases are automation, remote operations, disaster recovery, and Virtual Desktop Services. Key connectivity technologies include SD-WAN for cloud on-ramp.

Invest in remote working for the long term. The pendulum has swung far to acceptance for remote work, and the equipment spend to outfit remote workers at home. Budgets need to be revised for the long term, as the new normal includes an accelerated remote workforce with increased equipment and services supplied in the home and a potential to trim spend in offices. Key technologies for connectivity include SD-WAN and Application Delivery.

Invest in automation and disaster recovery. The need for unattended running though automation software and remote mote monitoring has been made apparent by COVID-19 and will become a new norm for operating data centers for business continuity. Additional investments in DR should include testing of the DR plan and evaluation of cloud services focused on solving this problem. DR now includes the case where employees are sheltered in place and cannot travel to work locations.

Do not rule out delaying nonessential projects for 12 months. The long-term effects of COVID-19 in permanent shifts in business operations is still being assessed along with the potential for a global economic slowdown that is likely to last three years: 1.5 years to vaccine and 1.5 years post vaccine for habits and new business birthed to replace those that could not survive. 

Accelerate edge computing deployments. New technologies will be needed to support remote workers and automated operations and could be candidates to benefit from low cost of capital. This will likely include additional edge located sensors collecting more data and compute capacity to process the data. It is easy to imagine an acceleration of edge computing deployments.