IT spending increased dramatically and major changes were
made to keep up with the new normal
Before the pandemic, the trends in business IT were more or less moving in the same direction for years. The focus was on moving to cloud computing slowly while most companies still had desktops as the primary device for their employees (68%) (source: Wi-Fi in the Workplace and Beyond, Feb 2018). Video conferencing services, such as Zoom and WebEx, were already widely adopted by most businesses (69%), but only half of them used these services frequently (SWZD State of IT 2020, Sept 2019).
Companies were clearly trending toward off-site computer infrastructure, and that laid the groundwork for much of the shifts that took place in 2020. IT budgets were not slated to change too much and most companies did not anticipate major shifts in spending. For all intents and purposes, 2020 was going to continue along the same trajectory as other years, but then the pandemic caused major changes.
The COVID-19 IT Shift
As lockdowns took place globally, many companies had to quickly change their IT operations on the fly, and this sparked a deluge of crisis IT spending. For most companies (61%) the crisis increased their IT spending, and others reported that they would continue to spend more than expected (39%) (SWZD Pulse Survey, April 2020).
This IT spending makes sense because few businesses were ready for how COVID-19 would affect their tech, with only 14% of companies saying they were ready for a public health crisis. The major issues that companies faced were: they needed a better work-from-home plan (23%), they needed additional hardware (17%), or they needed additional software (11%) (SWZD Pulse Survey, April 2020).
Here’s how Microsoft and Zoom fared in 2020
with the high demand for remote solutions
%
Increase in MS Teams usage
x
Increase in MS Teams usage
Source: Microsoft
M
Increase in daily active users
between December 2019 to March 2020
Source: Zoom
The New Normal
Remote work is far more prominent today than ever before, and we’re seeing many companies readily adopt and incorporate this new normal into their operations moving forward. This trend is unlikely to change in the foreseeable future, as most IT professionals (80%) want to continue working from home at least part time, and many businesses (50%) will likely keep flexible work policies even after the crisis ends.
The biggest issue related to working remotely is poor internet connectivity. 72% of businesses said that internet bandwidth currently limits remote worker productivity. Home internet connections need to improve so that they can support all operations that modern offices rely on to be successful.
Source: Spiceworks Ziff Davis