The New Normal in IT

How the Global Pandemic Changed Information Technology Forever

Gregory S. Smith

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781119839774
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Leadership
• Index: Business

Learn how IT leaders are adapting to the new reality of life during and after COVID-19

COVID-19 has caused fundamental shifts in attitudes around remote and office work. And in The New Normal in IT: How the Global Pandemic Changed Information Technology Forever, internationally renowned IT executive Gregory S. Smith explains how and why companies today are shedding corporate office locations and reducing office footprints.

You'll learn about how companies realized the value of information technology and a distributed workforce and what that means for IT professionals going forward. The book offers insightful lessons regarding:

• How to best take advantage of remote collaboration and hybrid remote/office workforces
• How to implement updated risk mitigation strategies and disaster recovery planning and testing to shield your organization from worst case scenarios
• How today's CIOs and CTOs adapt their IT governance frameworks to meet new challenges, including cybersecurity risks

The New Normal in IT is an indispensable resource for IT professionals, executives, graduate technology management students, and managers in any industry. It's also a must-read for anyone interested in the impact that COVID-19 had, and continues to have, on the information technology industry.

PART I
The Postpandemic New Normal

CHAPTER 1
Lasting Business Impacts and Resource Sourcing After a Global Pandemic

Occurrences can be unpredictable. If we have to endure a cascade of rumpling coincidences, it's fate that dictates our lives, taking over the common procedure of “timing,” and, thus, sealing the bondage of our free choice. Once our choice is kidnapped and strangled to the core, fate checkmates our destiny.

—ERIK PEVERNAGIE¹

Introduction

As I start writing this text, there have been 144,108,248 Covid-19 cases globally with 31,873,253 in the United States and 3,062,945 deaths globally and 569,530 in the United States, respectively (see Exhibit 1.1).² I am relatively sure, as many public health professionals have discussed in the past several months, that there are far more cases and deaths globally as a result of various factors including improper counting, deaths occurring outside of hospitals, fatalities due to untreated fatal diseases such as cancer going undertreated during the height of the pandemic, and suicides. The global pandemic of 2020–2021 will go down in history as the most devastating impact on human life in our generation. The pandemic will have lasting effects on trade, commerce, travel, human behavior in business operations, and how employees work around the globe going forward.

Combine the likelihood that a fair percentage of the United States and global population will not opt to receive a Covid-19 vaccine with likely future variants that develop that make current vaccines less effective, this pandemic is long from over. CNN recently reported that 40 percent of U.S. Marines have opted to not receive the Covid-19 vaccine.³ The pharmaceutical maker Pfizer, which makes one of the Covid-19 vaccines, recently announced that for people to stay protected, they will likely need another dose within 12 months of their first pair of doses.⁴

Exhibit 1.1 The Johns Hopkins University of Medicine Coronavirus Resource Center

Source: The Johns Hopkins University of Medicine Coronavirus Resource Center.

From a historical perspective, smallpox remains the only human disease to be globally eradicated after killing 300 million people alone in the twentieth century.⁵ It took 184 years from the first-ever vaccine in 1796 to its eradication in 1980.⁶ Polio was almost previously eradicated except in Pakistan and Afghanistan until Covid-19 hit globally, which set back progress in 2020.⁷ However, cases are now on the rise and expected to climb even further in the coming months.⁸ “So far this year officials have tallied more than 200 cases of wild polio and nearly 600 cases of the vaccine-derived form of the disease.”⁹ Most of the vaccine-derived strains of polio are in Afghanistan and Pakistan, but now these rogue strains of polio are also turning up across much of sub-Saharan Africa, Yemen, Malaysia, and the Philippines.¹⁰

The combination of individuals opting out of the initial vaccine and those who don't take or have access to recurring booster shots with likely variants of the virus make for a longer-term cyclical Covid-19 transmissible virus. Combine this with the anticipated return of the annual flu virus in the fall and we have all the makings for cyclical resurgence and fear. Thus, the world will be dealing with a Covid-strained virus for years to come and, simply put, businesses, organizations, and universities need to adjust their operating environments including technology strategy to properly adapt and prepare for waves of reoccurrences. From a technology perspective, that includes more cloud-based solutions accessible via mobile devices. The traditional desktop computer will die a slow death as a result of Covid-19 as more organizations' employees leverage all mobile solutions including laptops, tablets, and smartphones.

India experienced a really bad second wave of Covid-19 in April 2021. According to CNN.com, “healthcare and other essential services across India are close to collapse as a second coronavirus wave that started in mid-March tears through the country.”¹¹ The article goes on to report that hospitals are running out of oxygen, beds are running low, and testing is nearly impossible to get.¹²

Impacts from Covid-19 on Businesses and Organizations

According to the consulting company McKinsey & Company, it could take various sectors more than five years to recover to 2019 level contributions to GDP.¹³ Specifically, the worst projected sectors globally that have the longest recovery period (up to 2025 and beyond) include arts; entertainment; recreation; hotels and food services; educational services; transportation and warehousing; manufacturing; and mining, oil, and gas extraction.¹⁴ McKinsey goes on to suggest that economic impacts across the globe could take one of three paths:

1. A quick recovery during which lower fatalities occur in younger people and working adults.
2. A global slowdown that assumes most countries are not able to control the spread of the virus, especially in heavily populated areas, affecting small- to medium-sized companies more acutely.
3. A pandemic and recession arise, assuming that the virus is not seasonal.¹⁵

During the early peak of the pandemic in 2020, there were 20,500,000 people who lost their jobs in the United States alone (14.7 percent) between February and April.¹⁶ The 10 most impacted sectors of the United States job m...