John Murphy, senior vice president, products, EnterpriseDB recently reflected on the impact of COVID-19, including the shift in business practices and the renewed attention to what is really important. He sees an emphasis on flexible infrastructure, a heightened appreciation for employee skills and talent, and a sharp focus on containing costs as key trends that can be expected to continue.
"The impact of the pandemic has enterprises laser-focused in three areas: the flexibility of their technology infrastructure; cost, obviously more than ever; and their people’s talent," said Murphy. "The pandemic is stressing technology infrastructure in terms of its ability to sustain operations in times of rapid change, in this case with so many people working from home with greater dependence on remote capabilities, along with ability to handle greater volumes of online visitors. A lot of attention is being paid to continuity of business operations with fewer people onsite." In addition, he noted, with financial setbacks in so many sectors, including travel, food, and entertainment, companies are under pressure to optimize their technology spending like never before."
And, in terms of managing talent, the pandemic has radically changed the way people work, said Murphy. "Not all will be going back to offices like before the pandemic, which means companies will face new requirements to continue supporting remote work. Skills will be more important in this new distributed workforce relying on widely-deployed and accepted technologies, along with even more cloud workloads. More emphasis will be placed on having access to expertise no matter where it comes from so, for example, the DBA might work remotely with the backup insurance policy of an outsourced remote DBA service. This goes back to the need for sustaining operations with fewer people onsite and more attention to continuity."