Crisis breeds innovation. Now is the time to modernize
Author: Will Grannis, Managing Director, CTO Office
Future relevance and success for both established and emerging organisations will be determined by how effectively they take advantage of technology today.
It's been said so much that it feels trite, but we are facing an extraordinary time. Around the globe, people are working to protect public and economic health, shifting businesses and societies to rise to the occasion and navigate a changing world. The pandemic is impacting almost every individual and organisation on the planet.
This is also the first global pandemic that has taken place in the cloud era. We are seeing the impact that technology can have to help build solutions and provide resilience in the face of uncertainty, from tracking and allocating critical resources like ICU beds and ventilators, to delivering critical government services like child welfare and judicial systems remotely, to shifting manufacturing lines to produce goods like ventilators and masks.
The speed at which these shifts are taking place is astounding. For example, New York State experienced unprecedented digital traffic for web-based unemployment services as a result of COVID-19, and Google Cloud helped them scale to meet this demand in just over 48 hours. Yahoo Finance shifted overnight to delivering eight hours of live broadcast remotely. Entire global workforces pivoted to remote work in a matter of days. Under normal circumstances, these shifts are likely to have taken years.
As a result of the pandemic, we are seeing the acceleration of some trends. For example, the explosion and normalisation of remote working, telemedicine and digital banking, as well as the accelerated digital transformation and migration to the cloud to provide flexibility, to pivot quickly and to optimise costs. And new trends are emerging. Organisations are doing everything that they can to lessen the burden of COVID-19 on public health, the economy and society. Technology is playing an important role in that shift – from contact tracing and exposure notifications, to medical research, to mechanisms to support the global economy and help businesses of all sizes pivot, weather the storm and emerge stronger than before.
Crisis tends to breed innovation. As we saw during the last recession, companies that invest through a downturn position themselves best for the future. The cloud provides opportunities to optimise costs while innovating and scaling.
As the world changes, greenfield opportunities are emerging. The influential companies of the next decade and beyond are being determined now. Those that can reimagine their business with the most effective use of technology innovations will be the ones to succeed.
Established companies are pivoting their entire organisation, quickly. The most successful organisations will use this time to evaluate their lines of business, optimise and reimagine their operations, and take advantage of technology in order to tackle new markets and scale. It's too late for incremental change; now is the time to modernise.
And similarly, we'll see many new challengers emerge during this time. Digital natives are less encumbered by legacy IT systems and technical debt, and it's easier now more than ever to start a company. Many iconic companies were founded during times of adversity. Now will be no different.
How we respond to this moment will shape what the future looks like. Future relevance and success for both established and emerging organisations will be determined by how effectively they take advantage of technology today.
Google and Google Cloud have a strong innovation reputation. We're partnering with organisations to provide a platform for success. At Google Cloud, customers have access to leading cloud technology like Anthos to manage their hybrid and multi-cloud environments, the leading machine-learning framework in TensorFlow Enterprise and innovations like confidential computing to provide security for the most sensitive workloads. From infrastructure, databases and storage, and data and analytics solutions, to things like machine learning and artificial intelligence, quantum computing and ambient computing – let's build the future together.
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