Digital transformation heroes – in 60 seconds

  • The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated a digital transformation across the world;
  • We see a series of digital transformation heroes emerging from the pandemic;
  • Enterprise cloud computing companies, dominant e-commerce platforms, digital streaming platforms, and telemedicine and genomic medicine applications;
  • Digital transformation was a top corporate priority before the crisis and will emerge as an even stronger priority now.

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected us all, and it has accelerated a digital transformation across the world.

New technologies, like enterprise cloud computing and digital streaming, have shown their flexibility, helped the resilience of the world, and seen adoption by companies and individuals accelerate through the lockdown.

Digital transformation 'heroes' will benefit from the COVID-19 crisis

We see many digital transformation heroes emerging from the crisis, in sectors that include:

  • Enterprise cloud computing companies: these firms made working from home possible at a large scale and provided distributed video capabilities enabling people to conduct meetings remotely.
  • Dominant e-commerce platforms: with machine learning augmented logistics have provided a lifeline for the distribution of goods, when conventional retailers faced disruption.
  • Digital streaming platforms: have offered much needed virtual entertainment for the world.
  • Telemedicine and genomic medicine applications: have become essential public health tools during this pandemic.

Enterprise cloud computing: a sunny forecast for the cloud

Enterprise cloud computing companies helped other companies stay in business while the world was going in lockdown and will most likely continue supporting them once they emerge.

The World Economic Forum recently noted that "businesses that use cloud computing will not buckle under the pressure of the coronavirus pandemic".

Businesses that have used cloud computing have managed to adapt their offerings in an agile and scalable way to keep serving their customers during the pandemic.

Let's take Microsoft as an example, its workplace collaboration tool "Teams" saw a 775% increase in monthly users in Italy during their shutdown.

Accenture, a consultancy firm, stated that it had doubled usage of "Teams" audio usage from "16 million minutes per day to almost 30 million per day" and that it was working to ramp a client from 0 to 61,000 instances of "Teams" over a 5 day period.

The application has been one of the most downloaded apps in the US in the last week of March with circa 700,000 downloads.

US – Most downloaded apps, Mar 26, 2020-Apr 1, 2020 (Million downloads)

App downloads in the United States, March 26, 2020 to Apr 1, 2020
Source: World Economic Forum, May 2020

The nine most downloaded apps in the United States between March 26 and April 1, 2020, measured in millions downloads per app, data source: World Economic Forum

The growing usage of cloud computing and services like digital streaming, plus increasing internet penetration, changing consumer digital lifestyles and the emergence of the Internet of Things will drive solid data growth in the years to come.

And the COVID-19 crisis will act as a further boost because it puts more emphasis on resilience, mobility and flexibility.

And as we look to the future, we believe digital transformation will emerge as an even stronger corporate priority with the potential to boost the 'heroes' that we described above. So contact us now to learn more about how to invest in digital transformation.