Five things I’ve learned about the effects of COVID-19 on IT Organizations (A Customers Perspective) Part Two

“As I was writing this, I realized it was getting too long for a single blog post – so to keep it more readable decided to publish as a series.”

Table Of Contents

• 1. Find a business partner not a vendor (Value not Price)
• You are Here-> 2. Understand Supply Chain (be in tune with your partners business)
• 3. Explore XAAS Offering (as a service offerings)
• 4. Rethink your Architecture (evaluate your infrastructure)
• 5. Consolidate / Automate

Disclaimer: I always try to be as agnostic as possible but please note I reference programs that my employer are offering as an example.

Perhaps an area that I personally have not though about was the supply chain of the business partners we choose. When disaster arises knowing when and how quickly you can get equipment is vitally important to any business. An organization I spoke to was fortunate enough to not be affected by the current crisis but realized it needed to make different choices because of how everyone else would be affected. They were originally planning an expansion in September but after conversations with the business decided to purchase earlier to avoid project delays due to a rush on supply chain that could occur when many organizations are “unfrozen” later in the year.

Another example is knowing how your partner is addressing this global pandemic to better serve customers. One of the largest challenges customers are facing is around scaling infrastructure (especially VDI). This challenge is very much in line with #3 but its important to discuss it in this section. A customer told me the pain they were seeing was that their VDI infrastructure was designed to support 15% of the workforce which was very normal and when the pandemic stuck they had to quickly scale to 90% (some individuals were 100% SAAS users and didnt require VDI). Ignoring the financials (which we will discuss in #3) the customer needed to scale compute and storage quickly to address the need. Luckily they understood the turnaround times with both their business partners and that all the gear could be delivered and installed in a few weeks which feels like an eternity but their other vendor had a 6+ week timeline.

Many IT Providers are creating solutions and programs to help customer during this crisis to ensure customer can scale as quickly as possible. An example of this is Cisco/Pure who have launched “VDI Quick Ship Bundles”, compute and storage solutions designed with equipment that is verified in stock and can be delivered, installed and configured in just a few weeks. (While I always try to be as agnostic as possible its a great read) A Colleague of mine, Craig Waters has an excellent post here.

In Summary, I have spoken to numerous customer and colleagues in the IT industry who have reiterated how important it is to understand timelines and order cycles more now than ever as delivery timelines become longer when distribution chains become disrupted. I encourage everyone to consider the two topics we have discussed to provide added stability to your IT organization.

Table of Contents

• 1. Find a business partner not a vendor (Value not Price)
• You are Here-> 2. Understand Supply Chain (be in tune with your partners business)
• 3. Explore XAAS Offering (as a service offerings)
• 4. Rethink your Architecture (evaluate your infrastructure)
• 5. Consolidate / Automate