It’s no secret that business leaders everywhere continue to try and understand all that has happened in 2020, and furthermore, how it will impact everything that will happen in 2021. If the first year of this decade is any indication of what the rest may hold, we may be in for a wild ride.

After so much adjustment over the last several months, many changes have transpired as everything from our jobs to how our kids go to school, the way we shop or dine, and many other facets of our day to day lives have moved in digital, remote, and virtual ways. 2020 taught us that nothing is guaranteed to stay the same and to be prepared to change our approach, forecasts, and strategies at a moment’s notices. While the rest of the 2020s lie ahead, here is what Connectria is keeping our eyes on.

Digital Transformation

Trend: Throughout 2020, many companies focused efforts on accelerating cloud adoption in the wake of the pandemic in order to enable remote work. We spoke with several customers in 2020 about virtual desktop solutions in the cloud to support a remote and widespread user base. Therein lies a significant shift between physical spaces and virtual ones. Furthermore, Gartner is forecasting public cloud spending to grow 18 percent in 2021.

Concern: Where some companies thrived others slowed down, as business wasn’t as prosperous during the initial months of the pandemic. The concern remains focused on the longevity of your business, security, and the scalability of options chosen in response to change necessitated by the pandemic. In the post-pandemic world of 2021 and beyond, the questions you need to ask are if things were done in a rapid way or the right way? Have you taken on too much? What can go back and what needs to continue moving forward?

Opportunity: With digital transformation accelerating due to COVID, 2021 could be the year where companies look for service providers to help augment where they’ve grown into. Companies might find that they went too far, or they didn’t do it the right way, or they have new challenges that they can’t meet and now need a service provider to help.

Headcount

Trend: Much like digital transformation, retirement has also been bolstered by COVID. In the third quarter of 2020, 3.2 million more Baby Boomers retired than those who were retired in the same quarter last year, according to Pew Research. With the average retirement age in the U.S. right around 61, and the average age of an IBM Sys Admin around the same, put two and two together and your IT department should be prepared.

Concern: Finding a replacement with the right expertise can be challenging. Pair that with trying to decide the best time to execute digital transformation plans, and you end up in a bit of a predicament. You can either go the route of attempting to rehire and fill in the skills gaps or choose to work with a third-party provider for remote monitoring and management services.

Opportunity: Connectria offers remote services that act as an extension of your IT team to support your workloads and provide the expertise you need. Also, if this past year has pushed conversations around digital transformation and Sys Admin retirement to the forefront, Connectria has a new hybrid architecture that may be right for you. Whether you need support for a retiring admin, need help with cloud migration, or want to get the most out of your public cloud, Connectria’s robust expertise in IBM, cloud migrations, and both public and private cloud environments can support your unique needs.

Cloud Reliability

Trend: Many companies that rely on the cloud, and there are a lot of them out there, have come to expect at least one major outage per year. Say, for example, last month’s AWS outage. A single outage has, in some ways, become part of the cost of doing business and it’s interesting that an outage like this has become almost expected, it’s bound to happen at least once. What is also interesting is the way an outage like this happens. Typically, it isn’t the service that you would expect, but rather something else causes the outage and then a system goes down momentarily due to the interconnectedness of AWS services.

Concern: If you’re using one service, you’re probably using another five behind it. What usually breaks is one of those dependent services. It becomes interesting to explore how the architecture of AWS is laid out and how companies that utilize those services, and are reliant on that architecture, cope with any widespread effects of one small failure in an underlying component.

Opportunity: Ultimately this presents an opportunity for conversation around multi-region disaster recovery. If we know that an event has a high probability of happening every year, it makes sense to plan for it and to have a solution ready. For example, being able to flip the switch over to a region that’s not affected by that operation.

Looking Ahead

This past year we have all learned a lot and we will continue to learn more in the new year. Above represents just a small fraction of the many trends, concerns, and opportunities that will influence our decisions ahead and throughout 2021. What is important is taking time to reflect on the year we have had in order to make better decisions and strides ahead.

Contact Connectria for answers to your biggest questions in 2021. We are here to put your needs first. While many things have been affected by this year’s pandemic, what we should prepare for next is our post-pandemic world. No matter where you are, we are here to support your unique journey and get you where you want to be.