UPDATED 21:37 EDT / MAY 23 2020

INFRA

IT’s moonshot moment: Five lessons for organizations from the pandemic

Covid-19 has ushered in a new global dynamic. In just days, a booming economy, crowded freeways and well-stocked grocery stores became an eerie collection of empty offices, deserted freeways and barren store shelves.

If they were lucky, workers were given a few days’ notice that they would need to move from their traditional workplace setting to shelter-in-place conditions at home. In some of the worst cases, employees were told to take everything home immediately because the office would be closed by the end of the day.

Either way, we have learned a lot moving through this abrupt shift in work setups. These early lessons are significant because as experts warn us, this winter could see a resurgence of COVID-19 with a repeat of mandated shelter-in-place conditions. These five lessons can provide the basis of a comprehensive checklist for future preparations:

Mobility is no longer optional

On the surface, this may feel like the “death of the desktop computer,” although it is more than that. This pandemic highlights the importance of connectivity as well as the ability to work. For years, the mobile work environment was defined as Wi-Fi connectivity, but that alone doesn’t mean that employees can be as productive remotely as they are at work. After all, a computer touchpad may not be as productive as a mouse and moving from a multiscreen desktop configuration to a 13-inch laptop screen may quickly slow productivity.

In fact, for some, the new home office may look less like an office and more like a broadcasting center. For example, in moving to remote teaching, educators have learned that most in-classroom technology didn’t move to a remote teaching environment. Technology such as classroom projectors suddenly had to become reimagined as an iPad tethered to a computer to broadcast into a Zoom conference call.

For hospitals, mobility has meant having the ability to extend the network connectivity to hastily constructed triage tents in the parking lot. For quick network expansion, Wi-Fi remains the technology of choice for providing quick, secure and inexpensive connectivity.

As employees return to the workplace, the corporate Wi-Fi network will be the backbone for testing and preparing the workforce to become mobile quickly with tools and technology. Investing in corporate Wi-Fi infrastructure will help you and your employees be ready for the next quick workplace reconfiguration.

That means that organizations can no longer overlook their Wi-Fi infrastructure. “It works fine” is no longer going to be good enough. It is your testing ground. It is time to make it a robust testing environment.

Digital transformation is essential

I’m using the term “digital transformation” to mean movement from on-premises computing, storage and applications to cloud-based services. The cloud has long offered cost advantages over on-prem solutions and COVID-19 has demonstrated several additional operational advantages.

First is the ability to add capacity quickly on-demand. Whether it’s storage or compute, the cloud has been very adept at offering seamless scaling of resources for applications. As infrastructure seamlessly scales, user experience does not degrade, allowing employees to continue with their activities regardless of location, demand or time of day.

Second, the cloud offers application redundancy and resiliency. This ensures business continuity should an organization experience additional or compounded disruption, for example, an office is damaged because of a tornado, flood or other natural disaster. The cloud helps protect the health and safety of the IT department while keeping the organization up and running.

Finally, the cloud offers a secure and reliable data storage and backup. Data is perhaps the most valuable resource any organization has, as it contains critical information about employees, customers, sales and strategy. Having data secured in the cloud ensures that employees can access the information they need to do their job, anywhere, anytime, anyplace.

IoT is key to monitoring an empty workspace

Just because employees are working remotely doesn’t mean that companies don’t need to keep an eye on their buildings and offices. The “internet of things” enables IT and OT or operations technology professionals to monitor facilities continuously with no one physically present.

Door sensors and video cameras can provide remote insight to in-building activity. This type of remote monitoring is critical if buildings or offices need to be shut down and secured for decontamination. Environmental controls can provide financial savings by ensuring that HVAC systems and lighting controls systems are turned off when a building is unoccupied.

Flood and fire sensors and specialized air monitoring sensors can provide early, remote warning to the possible loss or damage of company resources. With Covid-19, not only have employees vacated their traditional office spaces, but we have also seen offices and factories closed down due to the possibility of contamination. IoT has the potential to help with contact tracing, as badge swipes can help identify who was in the building at the time of the infected employee, as well as ensure that no one enters the building while waiting for decontamination.

Remote management

If COVID-19 has taught us anything, it’s that if IT resources cannot be remotely managed, they are of limited value.

Everything must be capable of remote management. COVID-19 has provided us with a unique period of time to appreciate remote management because earlier disasters were relatively short in duration and did not affect all aspects of the economy. One doesn’t have to go to all that far back in time to remember other instances when remote management was vital: 9/11, various anthrax scares, Hurricane Sandy, tornados and the Loma Prieta earthquake in California.

Going forward, IT systems need to support remote management from any secure device, at any time, from any location. IT professionals know that the only downtime should be planned downtime; now they carry the challenge of maintaining this standard remotely.

Security

Security was a challenge before this pandemic, as the corporate edge was already being stretched by remote workers and sales teams. Now, the corporate edge is, well, everywhere, and never has security been more important.

In our new world, corporate network security must dynamically stretch to many more remote locations, new devices, the cloud, as well as a vast array of new sensors, cameras and other edge devices. No longer will mere firewalls suffice; rather, IT must be ever diligent in network, data and resource monitoring.

Here artificial intelligence, machine learning and predictive analytics will play an ever-increasing role. These new technologies are not only constantly and vigilantly looking for anomalies, but they can respond to ensure that systems and data are secure. Given the legal and regulatory requirements on customer and employee privacy, organizations will need to continually invest in and upgrade their network security capabilities. After all, while IT security needs to be right 100% of the time, the bad guys only need to be right once.

The future

The first half of 2020 has been a challenge for everyone. For IT, 2020 has been something of a “moonshot” moment. In a very short period of time and with little forewarning, IT successfully moved employees and work out of offices, classrooms and existing facilities into homes, apartments and cabins.

It hasn’t been easy, but just as getting the first man on the moon wasn’t easy, both have produced several significant lessons. This pandemic has given IT the opportunity to act, to learn and ultimately grow.

If we listen to epidemiologists, until we have a vaccine COVID-19 may come back as part of the normal flu season, which means IT departments may once again have to move employees quickly out of their traditional work environments and into remote work locations.

So, between now and then we need to invest, plan and prepare for a future that may be a repeat of the early days of this pandemic. If we are fortunate enough to avoid a repeat in the fall, at least we will be ready for the next disaster or pandemic.

Michael Serrano is director of product marketing at network infrastructure provider CommScope Inc. He wrote the article for SiliconANGLE.

Photo: 242447/Pixabay

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