How COVID-19 is Changing Enterprise IT Priorities

Nasuni’s Anne Blanchard talks about the impacts of COVID-19 on businesses, and how enterprise cloud technology is on the rise.

January 13, 2021

The changes brought about by COVID-19, including the rapid shift to remote work (and the need for enterprise cloud technology), have put unusual pressure on IT staff around the world. Budgets are tighter, staffing is reduced, and few can predict when, or if, office life might return to normal. So, how is enterprise IT responding? The Evaluator Group recently released a report comparing the results of two surveys on IT’s shifting priorities. The first round of surveys was conducted in April, the second in September, and several interesting themes emerged.

While many of the respondents said they’re still reevaluating projects and resetting their priorities, the follow-up survey found that large projects are starting to move forward again — especially those involving technology that supports the resilience and agility of the business and its end users. Digital transformation has become an even bigger priority, especially when it involves facilitating remote access, providing infrastructure in an agile, flexible way, or strengthening cybersecurity.

The massive changes in our work environments are also driving demand for new or transformative technology solutions. We’re seeing this in our own business here at Nasuni. In the last few weeks and months, more of our large customers have been expanding their Nasuni deployments, and an increasing number of new customers across industries are modernizing with Nasuni to finally move away from traditional file storage hardware and into the cloud.

3 COVID-related IT Priorities

Our recent success is consistent with the findings of The Evaluator Group. As of the September survey, the report cites three areas as having significant COVID-19-related momentum:

  1. Cybersecurity: Malignant actors have been taking advantage of the pandemic and the shift to remote work to launch coronavirus-theme phishing schemes, ransomware attacks and more. One third of the respondents in the report attested to an increase in cyberattacks, so it’s not surprise that Enterprise IT is looking for solutions that strengthen security or accelerate recoveries.
  2. VDI: While some of the respondents viewed the shift as temporary, and others believe it will be permanent, there is no denying the incredible uptick in demand for VDI solutions. One of our customers used VDI to move 1,500 global workers to remote access over a single weekend.
  3. Public Cloud: This should come as no surprise, but the report also found that cloud has become a majority priority. The need for flexible scale, fast deployment of IT resources, remote access for IT and remote workers, not to mention the use of cloud for DR and backup – these are all driving significant cloud adoption across industries.

The Slow Death of Data Centers

Another interesting finding from the follow-up survey: Data centers continue to be the biggest losers. Here at Nasuni we’re experiencing incredible momentum because our solution allows customers to leverage the cloud for faster recoveries, flexible scale, support for VDI and remote access, and more of the things IT values most right now. Sinking capital into a physical data center no longer makes good business sense – especially not when IT needs to justify every dollar spent. None of us know what the post-pandemic IT world is going to look like, but given The Evaluator Group’s report, and what we’re seeing with our own business, the future of flexible, OPEX-based cloud infrastructure is certainly bright.

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