Gregory S. Smith - The New Normal in IT

Simply put, we had a great strategy with a traditional IT disaster recovery and business continuity plan but got lucky on the timing of the Coronavirus pandemic. If the pandemic had hit us earlier, the negative impacts would have been felt with increasing severity in 2019, 2018, and 2017. Not all organizations were lucky, and many CIOs paid a heavy price for their organizations not being as prepared as they could have been for a once-in-a-lifetime global pandemic. This text will provide readers with factual information from CIO, CISO, COO, and CEO contributors, as well as researched information on what worked and didn't work, lessons learned, and how organizations are changing their IT strategy for the future so that when another global pandemic, or other significant business disruption or regional emergency affects their geographic corridor, the impacts will be far less than the Covid-19 pandemic.

To close this chapter out, I advise CISOs, CIOs, to CEOs to take a hard look at their organizations over the past year and a half and ask hard questions regarding what they'd do differently to prepare for a long-term revenue and staff impacting issue like a global pandemic. While I hope that we never experience the severe health, economic, and organizational impact of Covid-19 again, I'm adept enough to know that we've had worse in the past and will continue to have challenges that rise to a global response in the future. That said, I have the following predictions and recommendations regarding topics in this chapter.

Organizations should continue their adoption of cloud services postpandemic and integrate where possible through encrypted application programming interfaces (APIs) and web services.

Best practice organizations will not reduce their online meeting tools as the pandemic winds down and should prepare for the next office disruption (such as the flu or wave of additional Covid mutations). The office of the future will be cloud-based and leverage a highly mobile workforce.

Organizations should look for ways to optimize the use of online meetings for optimum staff productivity. This may include a review of the frequency, duration, and planning approaches for meetings in their organizations.

Organizations should consider incentives to bring employees to corporate offices that optimize the time they are there versus working remotely to keep worker productivity high.

Companies should consider hoteling solutions and supporting applications that maximize the use of their likely reduced corporate footprint of the future. Many organizations should consider downsizing their corporate offices to save money, and to keep employee turnover low and productivity high.

The United States and global economies will recovery quite well in 2021 and into 2022 as long as inflation remains low, vaccine adoption remains high to obtain herd immunity, country level unemployment benefits start pulling back to promote unemployed and underemployed individuals applying for available jobs, and virus mutations are still protected by the mainstream vaccines on the market.

On June 8, 2021, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the United States had over 9.3 million jobs available. 85 Growth in the U.S. job market will continue to improve in 2021 as unemployment benefits slow in Q3 and will continue to slow into 2022 as the economy attempts to recover to pre-Covid-19 employment levels.

Vaccine booster shots may be required every 8–12 months after the initial vaccine shots were administered. Unfortunately, the data and recommendations change frequently. Pfizer recently announced that immunity from its vaccine is waning and recommends a third dose between 6 and 12 months after initially being fully vaccinated. 86 Unfortunately, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) disagrees. What a public health and relations nightmare for consumers and businesses. Who is right? Time will tell us the real scientific answer on the frequency and need for booster shots. That said, Americans and citizens around the globe will likely falter in keeping current on booster shots, fueling virus variants for years that circulate via global travel.

The coronavirus will continue to impact countries and companies around the globe for years, especially in countries with low vaccination rates. As of July 2021 and according to Our World in Data, Gibraltar leads the pack with the highest percentage of their population being fully vaccinated. 87 Malta (79.34 percent), Iceland (70.24 percent), Seychelles (69.29 percent), Cayman Islands (69.24 percent), San Marino (67.18 percent), United Arab Emirates (66 percent), Bermuda (62.68 percent), Bahrain (60.14 percent), and Israel (60.04 percent) round out the top 10 most vaccinated countries. 88 The United States ranks nineteenth at 47.69 percent fully vaccinated. 89 Unfortunately, there are over 60 countries that have very low vaccination rates, which include the Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Ukraine, Egypt, Jamaica, Pakistan, Venezuela, Nepal, and South Africa where less than 5 percent of their population is vaccinated. 90 It is a heavy challenge to vaccinate 9 billion people across the globe. As a result, countries with low to moderate vaccination rates must prepare for waves of resurgence of the Covid virus variants and waves of potential full remote work for their knowledge workers.

Corporate employees will demand more flexible working environments (hybrid in office/remote) from 2021 forward.

Corporations will greatly rethink their corporate offices of the future in both look, feel, safety, and size.

Residential real estate outside of major cities will continue to rise from 2021–2024 as more employees move out of expensive apartments and homes in and surrounding major cities for less expensive housing.

Traffic in and around major cities in the world will ease slightly over the next several years as more knowledge workers take advantage of working from home a percentage of the workweek.

Corporate real estate will change, likely with a glut of corporate clients selling or subletting (if they can) space at a reasonable, albeit less square foot cost due to an anticipated shrinking corporate office footprint.

Online meeting tools are here to stay as organizations will maintain them in a hybrid office/remote work environment.

Companies will spend more on technology (cloud, collaboration, security, and mobile devices/applications) in 2021 through 2024 as organizations become less reliant on corporate data centers and on-premise solutions and workers leverage mobile computing devices that are capable of accessing both cloud and on-premise applications and data.

Telehealth options for patients offered through medical providers will continue, albeit at a lower rate than during the height of the pandemic. Customers (patients) will leverage these tools where appropriate instead of driving to doctors' offices for routine or minor issues. This trend of reduced driving to the office, grocery store, doctors, and so forth will persist as consumers reduce their driving-cost footprint. Hosting of telehealth with elastic cloud solutions will likely scale down to less concurrent usage than during the pandemic.

Major fast-food restaurant chains across the globe will retool their businesses to offer less in-person dining and more options for mobile ordering and pickup. Automation will heavily come into play as chains like McDonald’s and Yum! Brands use automation to reduce costs, mainly labor, resulting in a small to moderate labor reduction for this portion of the food services sector.

Snow days in America are gone. Schools and likely businesses will leverage mobile devices and world-class secure remote access solutions, including voice, so that corporate workers can work when there is inclement weather, whatever it is. Global businesses will likely follow the American model because it will increase productivity in organizations that leverage technology to work from anywhere.