This is what corona means for your IT department
Due to COVID-19, also known as the corona virus, certain tech trends have been shifted into high gear. Others, on the other hand, are being revised.
That is happening now, all at the same time. One of the trends that now poses challenges is working remotely. But what does the corona virus mean for your IT department?
And how do you respond to the fact that more and more employees will be (mandatorily) working from home? We will tell you all about it in this blog.
Good news and less good news
Let's start with positive news first. Because luckily the number of corona infections is decreasing in China! It therefore seems that all the measures taken have had an effect.
According to the Chinese health commission, the peak of the epidemic in the country is over. In time, a vaccine will be made available, and this virus will be manageable.
But unfortunately, we are also dealing with bad news. And that relates to the present. At the time of writing this blog, there are already more than 200,000 infected corona patients in the world.
Media coverage is mainly about people who have died or are sick. But also about fear and panic, cities in lock down, cancellation of flights, cancelled events... and we are not yet even talking about the economic impact, not to mention what it means for our industry.
Accelerated IT trends due to corona
The impact of the corona virus is clearly visible in the IT industry. The demand for chat and video software is huge right now.
Various software packages are also being temporarily offered for free to facilitate working remotely.
In addition, the Google I/O developer conference has been cancelled, Microsoft decided to turn its annual MVP Global Summit into a virtual conference and Amazon employees are being asked to test their VPN connections in the office, for the sake of preparedness.
In fact, a number of industry companies indicate that the corona outbreak is the test case for replacing traditional office work.
Twitter thus launched their work-from-home policy. Chief HR Officer Jennifer Christie told BuzzFeed News that the corona virus will have lasting effects on the way their employees now work. For example, she expects people who were reluctant to work from home to become accustomed to it.
And managers who thought it was impossible to manage a remote team will find ways to do it. Therefore, it is expected that the trend of decreasing work in the traditional way in the office will now really take off.
These are the measures you can take now
Do you have doubts whether your IT department is well prepared for the corona virus? Then you would do well to look at the measures that you can take right now.
Consider, for example, providing the necessary hardware such as laptops and telephones. But also look at the software: does everyone have access to the right programs? And what about security? Is there a secure VPN connection?
In addition, the continuity of your organization is important. Because what do you do with employees who are a single point of knowledge?
If a System Administrator gets sick, is there anyone who can handle that work? One solution that provides continuity in this regard is to work with an external party for support. In doing so, you also build up a knowledge base in the long term, on which you can always rely.
When users work from home, you have to realize that the problems that normally occur in the workplace now shift to home. Can they still receive support from the Service Desk?
This goes beyond the action instructions to which Service Desk employees were accustomed. Because what do you do if a user, for example, does not have sufficient bandwidth?
If you have not yet arranged this, it is certainly not too late. As long as there are staff on the work floor, there is time to organize this properly.
For advice on how to deal with the corona virus as an IT department and what it takes to facilitate working remotely, you can contact us by filling the form below without any obligation.
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