Intelligent CIO Europe Issue 31 | Page 77

t cht lk DELIVERING THE RIGHT IT SERVICE DURING LOCKDOWN AND BEYOND, WHILE KEEPING COST AND RISK TO A MINIMUM IT departments must implement strategies that are easily accessible for the whole business, and having the right technology in place to achieve this is crucial. Jeremy Atkins, UKI Sales Director – Enterprise & Public Sector at Commvault, explains why agility and flexibility will be key to success as we prepare to emerge from the pandemic and retreat back to reality. In the initial stages of COVID-19 and lockdown, there was furious activity to transform the workplace in the UK – enabling people to work from home, changing business processes and mobilising apps and data to work as well at the edge as in the office. Now that this has been in place for several weeks and the dust has settled, there are two key things a senior IT leader should now be asking themselves: 1. Can I deliver the right service, securely and efficiently as long as the lockdown endures? 2. How has this situation impacted the overall organisation’s mid-long term strategy and budgets, and do I need to change my IT strategy to re-align with the new world? Of course, like any IT function, there will have been a whole range of in-flight projects running when COVID-19 hit. The majority of them will have been put on hold while it has been ‘all hands to the pumps’ to get over the initial changes – now, weeks later, which projects do you restart? With many organisations facing reduced income and no clear notion of when that revenue might return to ‘normal’, IT budgets have been hit hard. Furthermore, businesses “ TO DECIDE WHICH PROJECTS ARE STILL VIABLE AND WHICH SHOULD BE PAUSED OR SHELVED, IT IS VITALLY IMPORTANT FOR BUSINESSES TO EVALUATE THEM BY MEASURING THEIR IMPACT ACROSS COST AND RISK. www.intelligentcio.com INTELLIGENTCIO 77