Fatima Hussain

At the time of writing this article, 4 million cases are reported for the novel Coronavirus (COVID19), with 300K casualties and almost 2 million recovered, around the globe. COVID-19 has badly affected our daily lives; however, we anticipate wider impact in the longer run.

COVID-19 has not only shaken the healthcare systems, but has also paralyzed the work norms due to both ‘work from home’ and ‘no work’ norms. COVID-19 does not seem to be just a health threat, as we struggle to work remotely and try to sustain our jobs while managing our personal and social lives. We also expect a major shift in social, economic , financial and technological paradigms as the aftershocks of COVID-19.

Furthermore, we anticipate a major shift in enterprise culture and work ethics in the future. During this COVID-19 crisis, industries and enterprises have modified and adjusted their operations to run virtually. Industries have invested finances and efforts to get technology working for innovative ways of collaborative operations and efficient virtual communications, with added cyber security measures in place. After all these successful adjustments for virtual connectivity, industries might question the need of a physical infrastructure. Since we have experimented with virtual businesses successfully, physical infrastructure might seem to be a luxury and industries might want to completely transform to a virtual setup.

This shift in mindset is not only anticipated at the enterprise level but can also be seen at the institutional level, daily shopping, and entertainment etc. Sudden transformation is seen in educational institutions to online teaching. There is an increased demand for online shopping more than ever to maintain social distancing. This transformation requires strong and reliable communication infrastructure, in addition to virtual private networks, devices and software, and thus putting technology under trial. This also leads to increase in demand of cloud infrastructure services, internet services and communications equipment. As these services are important for seamless connectivity and efficient utilization of virtual services.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ (Accessed on May 18, 2020)