COVID-19 AND ITS IMPACT ON DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION
The coronavirus outbreak has changed everything. The risk to human life is the greatest fear, the bearing COVID-19 has had on the world cannot be overlooked.
Stock markets have crashed, airlines are experiencing irreparable losses and several small and medium businesses are shutting, schools are closed because they do not have what it takes to survive in this uncertain world.
Even though pandemic exacts a bitter toll on the economy, it is catalyzing digital transformation across business models, channels, and touch points.
Pre-COVID-19, private and public organizations were on a journey towards a digital model, travelling at varying speeds. But the scale of the pandemic has forced a dramatic acceleration, both in the speed of change and the required investment in digital transformation.
Underlying this shift is the need for greater organizational agility as well as closer ties with customers in a changing world order. The process of digital transformation, however, is complex and long-drawn-out for businesses as well as consumers.
Surviving in these challenging times is not easy, mainly because of the challenges COVID-19 has brought:
With no digital strategy in place and no tools or infrastructure to get employees to work from their homes, businesses are struggling to survive, online education is struggling.
Enabling effective real-time communication and collaboration across different locations, time zone sand languages has become a pressing issue.
Ensuring employee and student productivity, enabling teamwork across the geographically dispersed workforce, and driving innovation seems like a distant dream.
Overcoming intermittent or poor home network connections means enterprises or schools need to devise solutions that work in offline and low-bandwidth situations.
Therefore, everyone is switching to online mode. Where there has been resistance in the past from some sectors in moving towards connected workflows, the pandemic has left no option for them but to adopt some of these digital technologies. And as they adapt to the new ways, they are now seeing the benefits and necessity of transitioning. Overall, the industries are also becoming more aware of the value of accurate positioning for decision making.
The Covid-19 pandemic has led to an inevitable surge in the use of digital technologies due to the social distancing norms and nationwide lockdowns. People and organizations all over the world have had to adjust to new ways of work and life
An increase in digitalization is leading firms and educational institutions to shift to work-from-home (WFH).
Blockchain technology will become important and will entail research on design and regulations. Gig workers and the gig economy is likely to increase in scale, raising questions of work allocation, collaboration, motivation, and aspects of work overload and presenteeism.
Workplace monitoring and technostress issues will become prominent with an increase in digital presence. Online fraud is likely to grow, along with research on managing security. The regulation of the internet, a key resource, will be crucial post-pandemic.
Internet traffic is generally 25% to 30% higher than usual, and what we do online is also changing. Internet usage often increases in a typical month; for Akamai that’s usually 3% growth, in the last month it’s been 30%.
In March 2019 their peak traffic was 82Tbps; this March 2020 it was 167Tbps and the sustained daily traffic rate is higher than last year’s peak for March.
Internet exchanges in Amsterdam, Frankfurt and London saw 10-20% increases in traffic around March 9 2020. The exchange in Milan had a 40% increase the day Italy was quarantined.
Usage of the Windows Virtual Desktop service has tripled:
Azure usage increased by several million cores in March 2020.
Meetings in Teams are going up at an exponential rate: from 560 million minutes on March 12 2020 and 900 million on March 16 2020, to 2.7 billion on March 31 2020.
Google Meet has 2 billion minutes of usage a day.
Skype has 40 million daily users (up by 40% from February to March) with Skype to Skype calling minutes up 220%.
Perhaps looking for a more personal connection, twice as many people are turning on video in Teams now and video calls went up by over 1,000% in March.
Azure Stream meetings are getting larger: Microsoft had to raise the limit from 10,000 to 100,000 users in one meeting.
In the U.S. alone. All the video conferencing is changing internet traffic patterns. Upstream traffic is up by 30% in the U.S. in March, according to Nokia; in some parts of Europe the average per consumer upstream has gone from a peak of 1.1Mbps to 1.7Mbps since the beginning of March (and it stays at those levels for long periods of the day.)
Gaming traffic is up, but according to Nokia it’s eclipsed by people just browsing the web; web traffic is generating more traffic than anything except streaming video. And Akamai’s traffic suggests that not only are existing video streaming subscribers watching significantly more but that new subscriptions are rising, too.
The COVID-19 outbreak has led to revised growth forecasts for the global economy.
Every aspect of our lives has been affected by the outbreak. Its impact on economic activity is extremely broad: from dramatically diminished consumer discretionary spending to a freeze on business activities including capital budgets, hiring, and a reduction in everything but essential operational expenses. Even so, it is clear that under the current conditions some businesses may become more critical to our lives and could face an increase in demand, such as in the case of the information and communication technology (ICT) industry. During the global pandemic, digital technologies have become a critical enabler of connectivity facilitating the continuity of our regular lives and connecting people more than ever before. As cities and countries have been asking the population to stay at home, more people have turned to their computers and smartphones as a lifeline and tools to substitute their in-person activities online. Some of the habits may continue in the “new normal” ˗ or at least until a long-term solution to the current challenges, such as a vaccine, is found. Hence, the need to access a reliable digital infrastructure has become increasingly important, and certain aspects of ICTs are critical in a period of isolation, such as increased ICT opportunities from telework, telemedicine, food delivery and logistics, online and contactless payments, remote learning and entertainment. In line with this, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) gathered leading ICT economic experts to exchange views on the latest research and analysis on: (a) the economic impact of COVID-19 on digital infrastructure; and (b) the contribution of the said infrastructure to building social and economic resilience in the context of the pandemic. The findings and conclusions provide a concise and actionable report of potential initiatives within the digital economy space to increase social and economic resilience.
CONCLUSION
The digitalization is on its peak, and it will continue to grow with time. During the time of Covid-19 digitalization has faced exponential growth as everything is being done on internet from watching a movie to attending an online class.
The best is yet to come.
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