The effects of COVID-19 are real and significant on a global scale. We have all been impacted in very meaningful ways, and it has required all of us to rethink how we operate on a daily basis from work to education to entertainment. The first thought on the forefront of our consciousness at Micro Focus is about the safety of our employees, customers, partners and others impacted by the virus. Secondly, how can we help?
Over the years, Micro Focus has encouraged organizations to digitally transform so they can impact differentiation, growth and scale, profitability, risk mitigation, customer satisfaction, and speed to market. Those all remain, but because of this pandemic, companies are now fast-tracking digital transformation for a more-important reason: to help #StoptheSpread.
Does it impact IT Strategy?
What is happening around the globe is affecting how and where we work, and that is forcing technology executives to adapt to a new paradigm. The four core pillars of digital transformation that have recently emerged as top priorities as organizations fight to deliver differentiated and compelling experiences or outcomes are still front-and-center, but new questions are starting to surface in light of the changes we are all facing:
Organizations realize they must act fast on each of these items to help ensure continuity of business. And technology vendors, like Micro Focus, are putting customers first and quickly responding with special offers to help provide business continuity throughout the coronavirus crisis – often with pre-packed solutions to streamline response, free trials, and/or deeply discounted professional services – to help their customers evolve.
Success Stories Already Emerging
The good news is, from an IT perspective at least, organizations are already starting to adapt to our new reality. Success stories abound on how organizations are evolving historical processes, practices, and procedures. Here are a few customer stories I have heard about in the past several days:
– A federal judicial body with 10,000+ users was able to quickly and easily pivot to remote working during lockdown.
– A power supplier successfully built a Network Dashboard to stress test their remote network connectivity to prepare for large-scale employee homeworking.
– Multiple health-related organizations are embedding our predictive analytics technology to monitor and help track the spread of COVID-19.
– A Swiss bank was able to prepare for increased cloud usage by taking steps to deploy or maintain its virtual machines required to onboard the increasing load.
– An Australian state government agency helped facilitate remote working capabilities for its staff so they could continue working and provide vital services to customers.
– An Austrian engineering company “was told on Friday that the vast majority of staff needed to work remotely the following Monday,” and it reports that it had 95 percent of its team using virtual collaboration tools – in accordance with GDPR requirements – within minutes.
– Here at Micro Focus we were able to shift our annual major customer event from live to virtual in the span of only a couple weeks, and of course, we are all following the CDC guidelines to protect our employees, customers, and partners.
Success stories don’t even have to be big to be significant. Some of my co-workers are sewing masks for first responders in their spare time, others are doing grocery or pharmacy runs for their elderly neighbors. The combination of all of these stories is inspiring and important to keep in mind as bad news continues to emerge.
Getting Started
While this pandemic continues to bring waves of change and uncertainty, it has also cemented the need for human connection – which has required everyone to embrace a virtual reality. The time to adapt to a new working paradigm is now, and the majority of organizations are moving quickly.
An old coach of mine used to say, “be quick but don’t hurry.” This truism applies not just to the baseball field, but also to adjusting to major changes. A sense of urgency is often a good thing – perhaps no more so than now – but moving hastily can also introduce unintended risk.
A possible scenario where this can surface right now is in adopting a rip-and-replace strategy with respect to IT, as starting fresh may seem like the fastest path from point A to point B. However, it’s important to remember that many of the core business systems you will need to address likely have additional processes and IP built around them, and may serve as a system of record. A better scenario to balance speed and risk management is a modernization strategy that bridges existing and emerging investments and technology.
Micro Focus delivers solutions that are open, integrated, and generally backwards compatible, so you can run your business in an agile way that is adaptable to today’s scenario. If you’d like to learn more about how Micro Focus can help you adapt to the current situation, click here.
We’re here to help, and we’re all in this together.
