Key insights from a survey have been released that have found among various other results; that businesses are heavily modernising, scaling toward digital and enhancing existing processes as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. The survey of IT leaders has found some interesting statistics, carried out by CensusWide and Centrify. Some of the statistics are as follows:

• In companies with over 500 employees, 73% of them have started to accelerate their plans to migrate to the cloud and they have started to support a shift to remote working thanks to the coronavirus pandemic
• In terms of IT modernisation, 81% of businesses have increased modernisation processes
• 48% of all companies in the survey have explained that cloud migration plans have been accelerated
• Automation using AI has also increased in 32% of businesses with over 500 employees

The survey was commissioned to understand how any such dynamics of things ranging from IT investment to operations management have shifted over a period of six months; largely looking at the bulk of time during the coronavirus pandemic. The larger the enterprise was, the more important they needed to be securing as much remote access as possible to internal systems and files in order to maintain business continuity – something that may seem quite obvious when first looked at. But when put under the microscope it was very interesting to notice some of the major tasks including remote access and updating company or website privacy policies which affected businesses of all sizes.

 

Some of the further key insights from this survey included:

There was an overwhelming majority of enterprises that transformed their overarching cybersecurity approaches over the previous six month period. A huge 83% of the larger businesses leading all organisations; it was quite a promising aspect to see that more and more companies are now focusing on the security needs of their business’ online and infrastructure spaces.

In addition to this, we can also see that there were almost half of businesses surveyed (48%) that chose to accelerate their migration into cloud based platforms and file systems thanks to the pandemic; unsurprisingly the large businesses lead the way with this initiative. This was seen in the fact that those companies with over 500 employees were most likely to specifically accelerate cloud migration with 73.5% of organisations with more than 500 employees doing so to support employee remote working.

This further supports how larger enterprises now reprise mainly of being “cloud-first” with the efficiency and productivity benefits realised by those businesses who are able to work remotely without much interruption.

Furthermore, almost half of all businesses (49%) and a huge 81% of the larger scale enterprises found that they had to increase the speed of their IT modernisation as a result of business interruption. Some of this digital and IT adoption came through from using more cloud-based services (59%), creating a flexibility for a remote workforce (57%) and bolstering cybersecurity (40%).

Another interesting outcomes was that it was found that a large number of businesses were maintaining their entire IT teams; with a huge 63% of respondents finding little to no impact on their IT teams which was testament to the importance of those teams in ensuring help keep the business running throughout Coronavirus. The hope is that following this, businesses will have budget and drive to now grow cybersecurity and wider IT development programmes; with 25% of all businesses surveyed expecting to maintain an entirely 100% remote workforce.

These movements and changes in the way in which businesses work are encouraging for the future of the way in which we work – many businesses have completely changed the way that they do things firstly as a result of the coronavirus pandemic but are now actually benefiting from these changes, as they realise future efficiencies and productivity as a result of the changes that they were initially forced into during the lockdowns.

It is an often used quote but the mother of invention truly is necessity. We can see in the number of businesses that have switched to Zoom meetings, have grappled with user access remotely to secure file infrastructures and the ability to “work from anywhere” – this has sparked a mini-digital revolution when it comes to businesses forging forward with transformation, through cloud computing and bespoke software development.