For the first time that anyone can remember, the entire corporate world is staying home.

With mandatory “shelter in place” orders because of the coronavirus pandemic covering not only the United States, but a sizable portion of the world, corporate executives are no longer running for airplanes or hailing cars between meetings. They are home, but they’re still communicating.

Over the course of the past three weeks, theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s video studio, has conducted more than 20 digital interviews with key executives from small firms to major global businesses, such as VMware Inc. and Red Hat Inc. The conversations covered a lot of ground, but a few clear themes emerged.

1. The show must go on

Spring is usually a busy conference season in the tech industry and most companies have scrambled to move from large, in-person, weeklong events to shorter, more focused virtual content presentation platforms. What’s notable, given the challenges of shifting from one complex production to another in a very short period of time, is that many of the previously planned conferences are moving forward.

Red Hat will hold its annual summit as a digital experience at the end of this month. The open-source software company SUSE has announced that its major event, previously scheduled to be held in Ireland, will now be a one-day virtual experience in May.

In some cases, pivoting to a virtual event can actually boost overall participation. When Gremlin Inc. saw that its annual fall Chaos conference would likely be canceled, the organization reengineered a new event called Failover 2020, scheduled for April 21.  Chaos ,which is still planned to happen later in the year, attracted 1,000 attendees in-person and via streaming in 2019, but one Gremlin executive indicated that the new event has seen a major jump in projected enrollment.

“We are approaching 7,000 registrations, and we have over 30 partners signed up,” said Alberto Farronato, senior vice president of marketing at Gremlin, during an interview earlier this month on theCUBE. “We shared the idea with a dozen of our partners, everyone liked it and all of the sudden this thing took off like crazy.”

However, the show may not go on for everyone. Google LLC has yet to announce plans for Cloud Next and completely cancelled Google I/O, both of them signature developer-oriented events. The cancellation of DrupalCon led to the announcement that the loss of revenue may doom Drupal Association, and O’Reilly Media closed its in-person events division last month and laid off 75 employees.

Although virtual events may not generate as much money as elaborate live gatherings, they cost a lot less too.

“I know how much it costs to put on a conference for 10,000 to 15,000 people and I know how much it costs to put on a virtual event,” said Jeremy Burton, chief executive officer of Observe Inc., during a conversation with theCUBE. “The economics are astounding in their difference. Many businesses are going to have to reinvent how they engage and interact with their customers.”

2. Tech embraces role as digital first responders

In response to the crisis, several tech firms have begun offering products and services for free. Cisco Systems Inc. has made its Webex video collaboration platform free during the pandemic in all countries where it’s available.

OutSystems Inc. launched a program with its partners to sponsor ideas for assisting local communities dealing with the health crisis. In conjunction with Deloitte LLP, the company created a full logistics system to manage all the supplies within 16 municipalities, including ventilators, masks and personal protective equipment, according to Paulo Rosado, founder and CEO of OutSystems. And VMware Inc. announced free trials of Workspace ONE and other services to assist in work from home solutions.

“Be a first responder to the first responder,” said Sanjay Poonen, chief operating officer of VMware, during an interview with theCUBE. “Be a digital first responder.”

The tech community response has not been solely confined to corporate organizations either. Sole proprietors or tech employees on their own have pitched in during the global emergency as well.

With most of the world working from home at the moment, the attack surface for malicious actors has expanded significantly. That led Rachel Tobac, a noted cybersecurity expert, to offer her services for free to hospitals and healthcare organizations around the globe.

At SUSE, members of the organization’s far-flung open-source community have also moved to support local efforts.

“We have employees in Italy who created virtual classrooms,” SUSE CEO Melissa Di Donato said during an interview with theCUBE. “We have an employee in the U.S. who dedicated 30% of his bonus to his local school, and we’ve had our entire Nuremberg, Germany office give all of their lunch vouchers to the homeless. We’ve got a lot of amazing employees here in the open-source community.”

3. Communication is focused and frequent

Without the interruptions of travel, impromptu hallway conversations or frequent business events, house-bound tech executives suddenly have a lot more time on their hands to communicate. And they’re taking full advantage of it.

“I’m on teleconference calls eight or nine hours a day, with prospects and customers all over the world,” Frank Slootman, chairman and chief executive officer of Snowflake Inc., said during an interview with theCUBE.

What should dialogue with customers include during this highly unusual time? It should be focused on key elements such as expense management and cash preservation along with anticipating the next move, according to John Chambers, former CEO of Cisco Systems Inc. and co-founder of JC2 Ventures.

“It’s about how you interface with your customers as they change from their top priority being growth and innovation to their top priority being cost savings and the ability keep their current revenue streams from churning,” Chambers said during an interview with theCUBE. “How do you make your big bets for what you want to look like as you move out of this market?”

Executives are picking up the pace of communications with employees as well. When Paul Cormier was named president and CEO of Red Hat following the elevation of Jim Whitehurst to his role as president of IBM Corp., the move triggered a new communications schedule for Cormier within Red Hat.

“From the employees’ standpoint, we’ve really picked up the video, all-hands video conferencing,” said Cormier, during an interview with theCUBE. “I had an all-hands meeting three days ago when I was announced, and in my new role, I committed to them we’re going to have an all-hands every two weeks.”

4. This may last awhile

Most of the executives interviewed were reluctant to offer any definitive opinions about how long the impact of the virus on business and the personal lives of people around the world may last. But there were hints in several of their remarks that this may not end anytime soon.

For his part, VMware’s Poonen would only offer that “it may be five, six months, it might be a whole year, I don’t know.”

Other executives indicated a belief that the ongoing crisis could last much longer than people think.

“We may be doing this for a very long time,” Dustin Kirkland, chief product officer at Apex Clearing Corp., said during an interview with the CUBE. “I think we’re in for the long haul, this is going to be the new normal for quite some time.”

Another hint for the potential timetable could be found among signals sent by Microsoft Corp. last month. The industry giant went farther than any other company to date when it indicated that all of Microsoft’s in-person events would likely be canceled through June 2021.

The full interviews with executives are available on theCUBE and SiliconANGLE’s Video Exclusives section.

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