COVID-19 has been an accelerant in the company's impressive growth

COVID-19 crisis has drastically changed IT needs -- and budgets -- for many businesses, whereas, the networking-as-a-service trend is only picking up steam from hospitality and retail to medicine and technology. But compared to as-a-service models in other areas of tech, such as software and unified communications, networking as a service is still in its early days. The overall networking industry is late to the as-a-service game. However, recent events have further demand for vendors to step up their respective consumption-based IT games. FY 20 will always be a year to remember for a long time to come. The year was nothing short of challenges & surprises.

The networking space, for better or for worse, was no exception. Customers want to focus on their core services, whatever those might be, and are doing more with less. Many businesses already had digital transformation on their roadmaps, but the COVID-19 crisis sped up adoption of the consumption-based IT model. It’s safe to say that teleworking isn’t going anywhere, and vendors are making adjustments to their portfolios to enable remote networking and right-size offerings such as SD-WAN, especially for small to midsize companies. At the same time, the demand for edge networking offerings is going through the roof as businesses demand compute and storage at the edge to empower brand-new use cases. From the increasing focus on IoT and edge networking in a COVID-19 world, the rise of 5G and teleworking will flourish in 2021

5G promises to turbocharge some technology use cases, such as IoT and autonomous vehicles thanks to its lightning-fast speeds and lower latency. The year 2021 will be the year that real-life 5G use cases go into production and more 5G-capable devices hit the market.

Today is the day, India completes one year of Lockdown due to pandemic, some states and countries have resumed daily life, while some have seen resurging cases and renewed lockdowns. As vaccines are doled out, a complete return to normal still remains uncertain for many, but what’s certain is the fact that the pandemic has fundamentally impacted several industries. Given how far we’ve moved into digital spaces, it’s hard to imagine people will return fully to brick-and-mortar alternatives, for one.

The technological changes inspired by Covid-19 will come in the form of an acceleration of existing trends - for example, industrial automation and contactless payments. In other cases, like virtual reality, 3D printing, or telehealth, the crisis may change the course of the industry, enabling companies to demonstrate value that, until now, consumers have been unable or unwilling to see. Accelerated by the onset of Covid-19 that are likely to change the way we live, work, learn, and relax long after the pandemic is completely over - and how the future of those innovations is likely to unfold.

S Mohini Ratna, Editor, VARINDIA