Nothing is linear in the technology space. Major transitions happen very fast and are exceptionally difficult to predict. Everything looks easy to explain when looking back – that is, there is always a way to explain why new technology capabilities or business models eventually reached an inflection-point.
But not this time! It took a global pandemic to challenge the notion of “after-the-fact” rationalization. Even with the benefit of hindsight, the challenges business and organizations are facing today would not be easy to explain away.
Two opposing forces are becoming more and more recognizable. On one hand, there is a blistering acceleration of already established trends, such as digital transformation and cloud adoption. And on the other hand, there is unprecedented disruption that’s making many organizations and their business models highly vulnerable or even at risk of extinction.
To manage this unprecedented transition, organizations need a completely new approach and IT is at the very heart of this change.
In IT, the need to redefine business resiliency is stunningly clear. From disaster recovery, to business continuity solutions, data center redundancy, cloud backups, threat detection and mitigation, etc. – until today, resiliency meant ensuring that applications and data would be always available and secure.
But the 2020 events did not impact applications and data. Instead they disrupted the workforce and the workplace, two very different dimensions of every organization. Suddenly, we found ourselves needing to enable our employees to work from home, ensure a safe return to the workplace and settle into a new normal. But even that’s not sufficient, because nobody knows what new normal means.
To thrive in an ever-changing future, we need to redefine business resiliency by reimagining and redesigning our workforce and workplaces to adapt to change at any scale across organizations, technology investments, and business landscape.
Our workforce and workplaces need to be adaptable, productive, and provide a trusted experience for employees, customers, and partners. We need to enable our workforce to work from anywhere, and ensure our workplaces are always trusted environments.
It’s both a technology and a cultural change. But one thing is clear – the days of “IT as a cost-center” look like a thing of the very distant past. Cisco is here to help IT leaders drive their business forward as they tackle transformation in unpredictable times.
Learn how Cisco is connecting your people, securing your business, and automating your processes in an evolving digital landscape.
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