There are few parts of business that the Covid-19 pandemic hasn’t impacted, in some cases creating pervasive and long-lasting change. While no one knows exactly how our lives will emerge from this upheaval, for businesses it’s clear that long term survival depends on agility. Entire workforces have been mobilised in a matter of weeks. Employees – even the Luddites among us – have had to adopt new ways of working and many are in no rush to return to the traditional office!

IDC forecast that 2019 would be the year when enterprise IT spending by departmental managers overtook spending by the IT department itself. Cloud-based on-demand services have become the norm by lowering barriers to technology purchases and enabling cost centre managers to quickly and easily deploy the software of their choice. Flexible subscription contracts gave access to an almost unlimited bank of resource to accommodate seasonal and periodic spikes in demand.

With increasingly draconian measures worldwide aimed at keeping people at home to quell the spread of COVID-19, companies of all shapes and sizes and across the majority of industries are finding themselves in the same situation – how to equip and empower their workforce for mobile working. More than 5 million companies around the world will experience an impact at a cost to the global economy exceeding US$1 trillion.