The world of cloud-native ways of working accelerated at unprecedented speed last year due to the significant change of circumstances brought on by the impact of covid-19: digital transformation by force majeure.
What was truly fortunate was that the technology necessary to support the change was there, so the forced change of working culture was relatively easy to deploy. If a global pandemic had struck only five years earlier, the ramifications would have been far greater with internet connectivity, video conferencing and remote accessing technologies being far less advanced, if existing at all.
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First, gone are the days when we must explain the advantages of a more digitally connected workforce: it’s easy to access a shared data set from anywhere, allowing for better accommodation of the variety of domestic and professional scenarios.
Second, the hybrid workplace has not only saved the day throughout the pandemic and kept us productive, it has also proven its intrinsic value, contrary to fixed assumptions derived from the industrial age that productivity can only ever be guaranteed when one arranged one’s office to resemble a factory assembly line.
And finally, at last, the workplace caught up with the technology already present in our personal lives, where streaming services (Spotify, Netflix), video chatting (Skype, WhatsApp) and online communities (Facebook, Minecraft) have already become commonplace – not because it wanted to, but because it suddenly had to.
Explore the opportunities
What other opportunities sparked by the pandemic can be found ?
If you have embarked on your cloud migration, then consider doubling down on it by reviewing your working processes and company structures to become leaner and more efficient.
‘Avoid copying and pasting the old folder structures into the cloud and explore different approaches to allow for working more efficiently’
Thomas Lindner
Avoid copying and pasting the old folder structures into the cloud and explore different approaches to allow for more efficient working. There are cloud-native ways of working that only deliver business improvement when culture change is a natural part of the digital transformation process.
If you find yourself with a raft of modern Software-as-a-Service solutions, whether it be for brain storming, mind mapping, task management, resource management, or video conferencing, then take a step back and review your technology stack and combine tools that may otherwise be doubling up and costing you unnecessarily. Software has already overtaken hardware to become the biggest technology expense and it is worth the effort to consolidate and optimise what you already have at your disposal to achieve better outcomes.
If you have arrived in the new world of external sharing and super teams with a raft of external members working on your company’s systems, it is important to remember that your company data is no longer protected by a firewall surrounding your office on-premises infrastructure. Instead, realise that your business information is only as safe as the most compromised individual and their respective endpoint devices. Cyber security always becomes top priority once you recover from a significant breach, not too dissimilar to the need to maintain social distancing once you fell ill with a viral infection.
Seize the cloud
After an exceptionally busy and eventful year, our technology optimism has been strengthened further because in almost all cases it made living through the challenges we faced collectively less painful.
The ability to stay connected during times of enforced social distancing was bridged with technology like never before, enabled specifically by cloud storage, computing and data services.
We may not be chasing clouds in 2022 as much as we did the throughout the last decade with many businesses now committed to cloud adoption: it is a sign that we must continue to make best use of the positive aspects that have presented themselves over the past challenging months.
The adage of ‘never letting a good crisis go to waste’ will only be achieved if we avoid a mere lift-and-shift approach and embrace what it takes to becoming true cloud-natives in 2022 by following the aphorism carpe nubem.
Thomas Lindner is associate director of consulting services at managed service provider Nittygritty.
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