How technology infrastructure is enabling the new normal, post Covid-19

Whether we like it or not, there is certainly going to be a new normal – post COVID-19 pandemic, and a lot of things will change as regards the way we work and carry out business activities across the world.

Although we would gradually move back to what we used to be, there are certain other things that will change the way we work, think and operate. Things like working from home which has been popularized during the lockdown, as a result of the COVID-19 crisis, will now become even more acceptable. However, moving from the old to the new doesn’t necessarily mean leaving the old, but it is a combination of the new and the old which optimises the way everything works to give us choice. 

Experts say this is going to be very critical as the world starts to determine how the world –  post lockdown, will operate in the future.

During an online presentation with technology journalists at the weekend, Ayotunde Coker, managing director of Rack Centre said that only seven per cent of workers in the United States of America had the option to regularly work from home before the Coronavirus pandemic.

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“There is now an increased dependence on technology infrastructure. We now have business communications and people hosting webinars. It is really amazing how technology is changing some of these expectations. The other key thing that this pandemic has also shown, is the importance of business continuity plans. This has shown that some organisations that have their own data centres and servers in the house are finding it difficult t operate or just cannot operate at this time because all of their servers are down or now, they’re thinking of business continuity of the infrastructure they have rather than thinking of the business continuity of the market they serve and having the agility to change and restructure their businesses to the new normal,” he said.

Giving more details on the way technology infrastructure is enabling changes in business as a result of the pandemic, Coker sited that Microsoft Teams had 32 million active users before the lockdown, but is now recording 900 million meetings daily, while Zoom which had 10 million daily users before COVID-19, is now seeing 200 million daily active users.

“Internet usage has really gone through the roof. Another amazing thing is the elasticity of the global network that has actually been able to sustain the significant increase in the use of social media, moving pictures, an increased amount of business use – a newfound place for the use of technology. All of this is actually underpinned by a global infrastructure. In the middle of this global infrastructure is the world of connectivity,” he said.

With the new normal, people are now starting to know the importance of reliable data services that have low latency and high performance. Different aspects of technology and innovation have to be combined to foster the new normal, post-COVID-19 era, and so broadband and the underpinning infrastructures that support broadband including data centres are key.

In Nigeria, Coker suggests that we optimise to areas where we have commerce and key hubs and innovate on technologies that will allow us satellite technologies, as we are now starting to have low-level orbit satellite technology coming in to reduce latency.

 “In certain instances, having a level of broadband is good enough as a starting point, but good enough is not always the best when we go forward that’s why I believe that given what we see now, we really have an opportunity to innovate a lot more in how we get broadband out into the rural areas and not just Lagos and Abuja,” he said.

 Apart from the volume increase Nigeria has with telecoms, data movements and the use of mobile, the strength of our technology infrastructure will not only depend on communication but now more on technology solutions in Agriculture as we need to feed ourselves, for integrated payment systems, power systems, transportation, financial systems and so on are now core.

The technology infrastructure in any economy is dependent on data centres. Technology connects business to business, or to a data centre or tower somewhere and this is interconnected for the underpinning infrastructure.

“In Rack Centre, we have been making Nigeria the centre of digital infrastructure in Africa, and one of the leading anchors points now over the six years we have been operating in Africa for digital infrastructure. So we are really putting Nigeria on the map of how we integrate and deliver digital infrastructure at world-class into Nigeria and West Africa,” Coker said.