There is no doubt that without the current technology in place, the economy would have been in serious trouble right now. Thanks to the amazing technology and IT engineers which maintain and configure this technology on a daily basis, our economy has not had to come to a complete halt throughout the pandemic. While non-technical staff have been able to go home and work in a way which allows them to work just as efficiently as they would in the office, IT engineers around the world have been working harder than ever to get these remote solutions in place as fast as possible.
How cloud solutions have had an impact
With secure cloud solutions widely available, businesses have been able to take advantage of the clouds very efficient and reliable resources. With remote cloud solutions taking a matter of hours to fully configure, it has not only made it possible to quickly adopt the cloud but also for businesses to have a cost-effective remote working solution in place urgently. Many cloud providers have seen a huge increase in revenue throughout the crisis due to the demand being higher than it has ever been.
Businesses which would never before consider the cloud or even remote working have adapted very quickly to the new way of working and more than half are sticking with the remote solutions. This not only shows how much businesses underestimated the clouds value but it also shows that it is indeed possible for businesses, large and small to have a reliable cloud solution in place which opens many doors.
Internet backbone
Throughout the first lockdown, the internet backbone was struggling in the UK due to a severely high amount of bandwidth usage from the majority of UK homes. Business lines would usually have a higher usage during the day with home users having a higher usage at night if they decided to go on the internet at all however, with video conferences, large file transfers and many more high bandwitdth consuming services all taking place from millions of homes, internet providers simply melted. You may have noticed throughout the last half of 2020 while roaming around Manchester that there was an enourmous amount of work being carried out by ISP's, while we can't be certain the increased work was due to the realisation of the need for a better infrastructure, we can assume it was.
With many ISP's such as Hyperoptic now being able to provide gigabit ethernet connections to and from homes throughout the UK, we should hopefully have a very bright future ahead and there is no doubt COVID has brought the deadline forward for such speeds.
Cyber attacks
Throughout lockdown there has been an increase in cyber attacks due to organisations opening up their networks to be accessible from anywhere, this is down to rushed on-site IT solutions being pushed out. With the pressure on to allow an entire remote workforce into a company network within a week or two, many vulnerabilities have appeared which has led to significant attacks throughout 2020.
So why is this actually a benefit? Well these attacks would have happened eventually as the victims of such crimes were probably ignorant towards elements of cyber security previously. With these attacks happening sooner rather than later, it allows more organisations to be more aware when it comes to cyber security. With more companies taking increased action to protect their customer and business data, not only does the general public indirectly benefit but also the employees of those businesses benefit as their data will be more secure going forward.
Overall 2020 was an amazing year to realise the true potential of the technology we can take advantage of today, without it, we would be in a much deeper hole going into 2021. There has been an increase in cyber security awareness, a refreshed look into how technology is benefiting the world and a push for more people to become talented IT engineers. There is no doubt that 2020 has completely changed people's views on certain technologies for the better and this will hopefully lead to great breakthroughs in the near future.
