The Covid-19 pandemic led to disruptions in many industries, and the IT industry is no exception. Fortunately, the IT sector was not negatively affected by the quarantines and lockdowns that completely halted many business operations.
Research shows that IT solutions shot up significantly as most organizations tried to modernize their systems to keep their operations running. Several trends, from the most notable to software license models, sprang up. Below are different ways the Covid-19 pandemic impacted the IT industry.
Sudden rise in the software development
Despite the challenges posed by the pandemic, most IT companies continued making strides, which saw an increase in the revenue generated. New products and services were created to help companies carry out their operations remotely.
Developers from all parts of the world saved their commute time. Time saved from various physical meetings and the commute time allowed the developers to focus on creating new software products. Developers had enough time to test their products and services, greatly improving the quality of products produced.
There was also great demand for quality IT products during the pandemic and this accelerated mainframe modernization. Companies got tools that could provide them with infrastructure and software for modernizing, migrating, and running mainframe applications. Businesses could easily improve shopping and robot delivery experiences.
New robust logistic systems for online shopping were created to support robots that hit the streets as demand for food delivery grew. Contactless delivery services were launched whereby goods would be picked up and dropped at the designated location. All these technologies were made possible by the sudden rise in software development.
Remote access software licensing challenges
As the pandemic hit most parts of the United States, most IT companies had to shut their operations for some time. When the situation worsened, and there were no signs that things would get better soon, IT companies had to adopt remote working. As a result, software licensing management tools became more important to most IT companies.
At first, most organizations had to improvise with the disparate trials of various software, but the processes were not fully efficient. Great features were lacking, and organizations couldn’t carry out their operations effectively. Most software products were not present in physical space, and employees risked using unexamined free trials.
Using free unexamined software products led to many hassles as companies’ assets were in danger of data breaches. The legality of the licenses became a major issue for most companies. Some licenses were not amenable to the remote setups, and some companies were forced to use them in a way that was not listed in the license.
Maintaining proper licensing in a virtual environment has become a huge challenge for most developers worldwide. Companies operating remotely were forced to exercise due diligence to ensure that the organization had purchased all the required licenses. Some of the licenses for virtual machines that were to be acquired during the Covid-19 pandemic include managed server licenses, guest OS server licenses, application licenses, and hypervisor licenses.
Acceleration of the cloud adoption
The challenges faced during the pandemic emphasized how significant cloud computing can be for business continuity with remote workforces. This influenced so many companies to adopt online productivity and other collaboration services. Cloud applications became vital to most organizations’ continuity as they aided in unlocking growth.
Automation cloud operations were also adopted, implying that organizations could increase their output and this meant an increase in the revenue and profit margins. Organizations that operate remotely reduce their disruptions greatly as automated cloud systems require little maintenance and human intervention.
Only organizations with robust cloud architecture that could deliver a great customer experience were able to manage the increased load. There were also difficulties with scaling public cloud models to handle increased customer demand. Digital events in the place of live meetings and other activities like streaming services added more stress to the already increased demand. There was also an issue with the cloud service offerings that were not stress-tested as they were not fully prepared to address threats.
Big data analytics and artificial intelligence
Due to the devastating effects of Covid-19 on businesses, there was a need to implement big data analytics to help different governments analyze and plan strategically. Without clear data, it’s impossible to forecast effectively, and sectors like healthcare were highly affected and couldn’t analyze the pandemic state.
New technologies were adopted to handle complex data sets that the traditional data processing systems could not handle efficiently. With artificial intelligence, the organization could analyze the Covid-19 situation in real-time. Most AI-enabled applications were used in hospitals to improve communication and other research operations.
Big data analytics and artificial intelligence are crucial in modeling virus transmission and emergency response analyses. Applications that could handle large data streams for early warning and monitoring were also developed.
Research shows that companies that invested greatly in using AI remained strong throughout the pandemic. In addition, AI systems were also used to hire workers from different countries to work remotely. This clearly shows how the Covid-19 pandemic led to many transformations in the IT industry.
IT innovations that rose during Covid-19
Even though the 5G network has not been adopted in many parts of the world, it’s one of the IT innovations that experienced huge growth during Covid-19. This network is acknowledged as the future of communication and is the cutting edge for the entire mobile industry, and companies see it as a big step towards increasing their business and improving overall revenue.
The 5G network provides super-fast download and upload speed that is five times that of 4G. Due to the adverse effects of the Covid-19, innovations around this network materialized very fast. IoT innovations rose greatly during the pandemic. Applications using the IoT were adopted to help in the prediction and treatment of various health issues. Personalized approaches related to medication and treatments were developed to handle the existing challenges.
Conclusion
The impact of Covid-19 on the IT industry has brought many drastic changes, with the positive effects being more than the negatives. Different tools were created to revolutionize the IT sector and enhance communication, as most of the organization’s processes were carried out remotely.
