Most businesses were already heading on a digital transformation journey before the pandemic struck. But the crisis has significantly accelerated this need for organizations around the world.

Telefónica Tech conducted a research study to find out how businesses turned to digital services when adapting to the conditions of the pandemic.

There is much to be learned from how businesses responded to the crisis so that we can act with hindsight and meaningfully plan for the future. This study will look at how cloud technology served businesses through the pandemic and how organizations’ cyber security practices withstood the growing nature of cyber threats and to what extent they are poised for the future of work.

This research was done with 810 IT professionals, working in a range of ICT job roles across small, medium, and large enterprises and MNCs, with 54% being of Management to Board level, and all respondents declared that they are either the sole decision maker (57%) or have influence over the IT decision making (43%) for their business.

These are the key findings of the research:

81% of businesses said they’d made expedient ICT purchases that serve no long-term purpose. But encouragingly, confidence has grown in two of the key areas that stand to make the biggest difference to our working worlds.

Cloud Focus:

• 54% of respondents believe that cloud-based infrastructure is the technology that would offer the greatest strategic value to their organization.
  Some sectors in particular rated cloud-based infrastructure highly for their organizations; energy (89%), consulting (82%), hospitality (80%), and government (68%).
  
• 57% of respondents from businesses of all sizes are currently utilizing cloud-based infrastructure.
  
• Cloud-based apps and solutions are being used by 45% of organizations across all business divisions.
  
• Collaborative tech such as video conferencing (55%) was viewed to offer strategic value and already has a good uptake of 61% of organizations.
  

Cyber Security Focus:

• 33% of respondents identified that their prior remote working practices had left them open to security vulnerabilities.
  The finding was even more noticeable in sectors such as energy (56%), retail (47%), consulting (45%), transport (42%), and biotech (40%).
  
• But as we emerge from the pandemic, a significant 60% stated that their approach to cyber security is better than before the pandemic.
  Respondents from certain sectors were more likely to express this sentiment, including transport (83%), engineering (82%), energy (78%), retail (76%), and telecoms (71%).
  
  

Telefónica Tech recommends the following top tips when it comes to navigating an organization’s journey to the cloud whilst keeping security front of mind:

• Cloud transformation affects the whole business from finance to HR, so while the overall strategy needs to be led from the top down, every department needs to be heard, to make sure their requirements for the cloud are met.
  
• Understand your workload behaviors prior to moving them to the cloud. Are these applications that you’re moving to the cloud ready? If not, you’re probably moving the problem to a different location without resolving it. This could incur unnecessary costs.
  
• To realize the full benefit of the cloud’s pay-as-you-go service model, ensure that users are fully adopting their software licenses and subscriptions.
  
• A common misconception when moving to the cloud from on-premise infrastructure is to keep existing security solutions. Instead, you need a toolset that will adapt to the environment; whether that’s public or hybrid cloud, or on-premise.

For businesses in the recovery phase of the pandemic, the strategy should be less about using technology to fight fires and much more about planting ‘digital’ seeds for the future.

Download the full report here and start planting digital seeds!