Growth of IT services amid Covid-19

COVID-19 has accelerated changes in the business world. The next generation of leaders in every industry will need to have a new way of thinking as they steer their organizations forward. Leaders will have to be strategic, collaborative and adaptive, while cultivating a global perspective.

We have seen organizations quickly move their workforces’ en-mass to remote working; e-Commerce has increased with many industries and especially retail and food services now relying more heavily on their online presence and cloud-based workflows. Health providers have also moved to online service delivery, to name just a few industries the pandemic has impacted.

While discussing with the industry geniuses on their experiences about growth in business sector amid COVID 19, their adopted preparations and biggest shifts they faced, each one came up with their view.

Let’s take a read

Jiten Mehta, Director, Magnamious Systems

Growth of IT services amid Covid-19:-

Indian IT services and Business will definitely grow in current situation and that too in double digits as we have seen ourselves growing in Q1 by almost 25% compared to Q1 2019.

Preparedness adopted:-

We were even prepared before the Covid-19 pandemic as we were providing lot of BCP solutions to the organizations. Now, post Covid recovery we are clear that we will operate with at least 70% staff from home and call 30% to the office. Probably only the operation team would be here, as we are working currently 100% from home.

We can reduce our foot fall also in office and might give away some of the office space on rental for a cost cutting purposes and of course for revenue increase; we are all set.

Biggest shifts:-

WFH is the biggest shift and then Security. What is more important as of now is, the senior management is available on a call for a meeting and discussion.

Dnyanesh Kulkarni, Director, Deltakraft Solutions

Growth of IT services amid Covid-19:-

The COVID pandemic has resulted in slowdown in the overall economy and in IT services market as well. A few of the services during this pandemic became essential have grown, e.g. Online education platform, VDI’s , cloud and business continuity and food and medicine supply chain etc. But an overall negative impact on the sector. Some surge was observed in laptop sales as it is required for WFH kind of environment and all the schools and colleges have started online. Due to WFH a lot of issues regarding cyber security compliances are occurring.

Preparedness adopted:-

Although new contracts, as well as contract renewals in IT Services, are expected to be affected during the crisis, it is also expected that consulting services, managed security services, network management services and hosting services will represent higher revenue-generating opportunities. Hence we adopted and upgraded ourselves to cope up with the requirements.

Biggest shifts:-

Major shift according to us is, Enterprises will move in hybrid workforce model from traditional way of working as maximum of their employees are now working from home, i.e. increase in remote working hence enterprises need to adapt different strategies than the traditional one.

We have to look this as a great opportunity to moving our customers towards digital transformation maturity.

Tarun Seth, Managing Director, Hitachi Systems Micro Clinic

Growth of IT services amid Covid-19:-

The social distancing norms demanded zero physical interaction; the organizations required infrastructure to be managed remotely. To address this changing demand, we developed our IPs in various areas i.e. remote management, automation, monitoring, patch management etc. Even during COVID19 pandemic using our IPs, we have helped our customers to manage and monitor their infrastructure needs from cable to cloud with decreased physical intervention ensuring safety and business continuity.

Preparedness adopted:-

The impact of COVID 19 is extensive and far reaching on every business. To thrive in the period of uncertainty we planned agile engagement strategies for employees, partners and customers. We have taken measures to up skill our employees, extending work from home policy, constantly communicating the advisory and policies to cope with the crisis. We leveraged our partnership with OEMs to support our customers navigate through this disruption, our bundled offerings for security, cloud solutions along with flexible payment plan are some of the measures we took. Our continuous investment in our IPs has helped us to generate value-based outcomes for our customers creating a positive recovery for our organization.

Biggest shifts:-

The current technology adoption in India looks very promising, COVID19 has propelled the technology implementation which otherwise would have taken couple of years to reach its maturity. The biggest rise we see today is in adoption of cloud so that everything can be monitored and managed remotely. As more and more employees are opting work from home huge volume of valuable corporate data become vulnerable to cyber-attacks. Therefore, organizations are opting for security strategies to ensure their data, devices, networks and systems are not compromised.

R Madhusudhanan, Director, Cisco Practice BU DigitalTrack Solutions

Growth of IT services amid Covid-19:-

COVID-19 has created an unprecedented situation and many organisations were caught unaware of the consequences and the business impact. With Work-from-Home becoming the norm of the day, many organisations quickly recognised the need to restructure their approach and made investments on Endpoint devices, Collaborative Tools such as Cisco WebEx, Strengthened their security posture by adding endpoint, Cloud and email security. By migrating applications to cloud, organisations are ensuring seamless access and availability of their services to their customers.

Preparedness adopted:-

An organisation with Strong Security DNA, we are geared up to offer the best-of-breed solutions security customer’s cloud infrastructure, applications & their end users. We expect Cloud adoption to gain pace which will accelerate the investments on Security.

Biggest shifts:-

COVID-19 is a wakeup call for many organisations that otherwise were not prioritising their Security & Cloud Investments. We expect a Big Shift in the investments on Cloud and Security which will ensure that Businesses are able to deliver their services to their customers seamlessly and in a secured manner. The experience of Work-from-Home will bring a huge cultural shift and make work-from-anywhere possible. Business Models are expected to change to adopt the new norm such as contact less payments, which will make digital payments the de-facto norm and thereby increasing investment in Digital Transformation of Enterprises.

Vibhore Shrivastava, Director, VIBS Infosol

Growth of IT services amid Covid-19:-

COVID 19 crisis will leave a great learning for all of us. Initially it was a new challenge globally and everyone was trying to find the right possibilities to manage continuity. This acceptance to alternate way of managing business allows the rise in service industry, as most of the business wants a robust work from home (WFH) environment for their complete staff. Customers felt cloud based services, Third party DC services and similar service based models are more reliable and easy to manage .which equipped them to organise continuity.

Preparedness adopted:-

In the current scenario, the focus is more on formulating and structuring the support team mechanism that will enable us to promptly respond to the customer requirements. We are also in discussions with our few important customers to provide them SOC based services as they are worried about DATA privacy and compliance factors during WFH in lockdown.

Biggest shifts:-

• Focus on Bottom line

• Explore - be in touch with customers always

• Focus on remote services/managed services

• Cloud business is going to ramp up/improve

• Focus on customer centric solutions

• Increase social media presence

We have observed many enterprise customers were earlier more concerned about perimeter security and basic endpoint management solution; however, with the sudden rise in cyber threats and different attack patterns, they are now looking for endpoint threat management suite, including anti-malware, anti-Ransomware, EDR, MDR, APT, encryption, anti-phishing and many more. We also ensure that their data is well backed up and secured both at central location and end-point.

Secured VPN Connectivity, Collaboration tools, Centralised Backup & Similar solutions are also talk of the town during these days.

Amarnath Shetty, Managing Director, LDS Infotech

Growth of IT services amid Covid-19:-

The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in a slowdown in the overall economy along with the IT Services market. Cloud and AI will be forerunners in enabling remote collaborative technology in this WFH scenario. IT Services industry may not be affected like other industry as corporates/individuals/SMBs will depend on IT to enable WFH solutions, business continuity solutions. Furthermore, businesses will also look to implement a definite technology plan to tackle the present situations and the infrastructure and tools required to implement the same.

Preparedness adopted:-

The crisis has accelerated the adoption of digital technologies to keep the lights on amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. Companies like us that are ahead in the digital maturity curve will clearly be better equipped to handle the crisis and will further invest in technology upgradation to address the changing customer demand. Long-term managed services contracts are expected to continue despite lock downs, as IT vendors likes us find innovative ways to continue servicing their customers.

For our organization, we have planned following strategies

• Focus on Bottom line

• Explore - be in touch with customers always

• Focus on remote services/managed services

• Cloud business is going to ramp up/improve

• Focus on customer centric solutions

• Increase social media presence

Biggest shifts:-

• Redesigning Business Strategy, Businesses should work with full strength. Work harder

• Retain your performing employees

• Hope for the best, prepare for the worst

• Reinvent yourself

• IT companies have another Y2K like opportunity, if we give right solution

• Solution centric approach.

• Hybrid Work environment (both WFH and WFO)

Devesh Agarwal, CEO, Compusoft Advisors

Growth of IT services amid Covid-19:-

 The cloud infrastructure and consumer hardware products industry in IT is booming due to remote working & education and process automation requirements.

We are more focused on collaboration tools and cloud solutions during COVID situation as more organizations are working from home during the lockdown and extended period post lockdown as well.

Although new contracts, as well as contract renewals in IT Services, are expected to be affected during the crisis, it is also expected that consulting services, digital transformation, modern collaborative applications, managed security services, network management services and hosting services will represent higher revenue-generating opportunities in the year 2020.

Preparedness adopted:-

As a global company we are predictive and proactive in our decision-making to preserve our business continuity and build enterprise resilience.

Few months before the pandemic we launched our own IP platform namely ProcMATE which helps enterprises automate their business processed across Omni channel environment and adapt digital transformation faster.

We ensure the safety and wellbeing of all our employees in the workplace. We are happy to address their concerns in an open and transparent manner which will go a long way to engaging them and reassuring the business continuity.

Microsoft Teams a perfect collaborative tool which gives the easy access to do group chat, online meetings, online classes, quick calling, and web conferencing. This instant support chat application provides our customers on the go support as and when the queries arrive. Teams let them stay connected all the time from anywhere.

We operate with transparency and open communication which have inherent advantages when events require quick actions to react and reshape.

Once the COVID-19 outbreak is controlled, we will review and renew business continuity plans (BCP). We will consider putting new internal guidelines in place based on lessons learned, as well as solid contingency plans to build resilience and better respond to future crises

Biggest shifts:-

The crisis has accelerated the adoption of digital technologies to keep the lights on amidst the COVID-19 pandemic.

As we have seen the biggest shifts during the COVID-19 is that long-term managed services contracts are expected to continue despite lock downs, as IT vendors like us find innovative ways to continue servicing their customers.

With the start of the lockdown and work from home enforcement our major focus during the pandemic has shifted to addressing the challenges of remote connectivity and collaboration, connecting with the ecosystem of customers, suppliers and partners, while also ensuring the business continuity and being more adaptable.

COVID-19 and Work from Home culture has brought the importance of Cloud hosting in the forefront for most organizations who were reluctant earlier. Cloud was always our focus, but now we see that there is a renewed impetus and a much wider acceptance.

The push towards digital transformation is much higher now. Organizations that were on borderline have started evaluating automations platforms more seriously to ensure smooth business continuity.

And at last, organizations are expected to use current situation learnings to prepare for future business disruptions by adopting a Business Continuation Plan (BCP) & Digital Transformation that includes migrating their business operations to digital infrastructure and platforms.

Nityanand Shetty, CEO, Essen Vision Software

Growth of IT services amid Covid-19:-

As per a market research report we read in recent times the Cybersecurity, market speculates to grow by 12% this year considering increasing focus on securing remote infrastructure and IP of enterprises due to work from home and remote services programs. Increasing focus on cybersecurity as a key business imperative as the major focus will be on improved Endpoint Protection of Organisation based as well and BYOD and CYOD Devices .Apart from this securing Web Usage and Increased Data Protection controls will be a major focus for organisation’s today.

Preparedness adopted:-

We had started our migration to the cloud a few years back for our accounting, sales and support functions and it did pay of well since there was minimum impact on customer delivery and service . We see the same approach being adopted by organisations today as WFH is the new normal now and functions, technologies and solutions will be based on this way of working for the next few years till we have a vaccine giving hope to the world to get back to the earlier ways of working.

Biggest shifts:-

Quicker adoption of Cloud Applications by organisations , Flexibility in Employee Working timings and shifts for WFH  and Data security have been some of the shifts we have seen. Apart from this acceptance by clients towards the virtual working methodologies thru WFH  for sales , demos  and customer service related activities has improved productivity better agility to reach out to a larger set of clients and is providing better visibility for the company revenue forecasts .

Gurpreet Singh, Managing Director, Arrow PC Network

Growth of IT services amid Covid-19:-

Digital transformation is keeping businesses afloat and many companies have increased their online presence by developing commerce websites on cloud platforms. Security which was a concern in the beginning of 2020 is now a more invested topic, where all companies want state-of-the-art security for the organization as a whole and not just the employees in management level.

Arrow PC has been assisting organizations in making their digital transformation journey smooth and it is factors like these that have not just boosted the morale of the companies and its employees, but also has reflected on the growth in the IT service and business market.

Preparedness adopted:-

Arrow PC Network was already well equipped to handle most of the business functions remotely. Our staff is able to access the data remotely and work from anywhere. We have done internal trainings sessions for best WFH practices to ensure the efficiency and productivity. We are using best of the products and digital tools to ensure the smooth functioning of the departments as well as to ensure the data availability and data protection.

Our warehouses are open for delivery and all the required precautions are taken. No outsider is allowed and all the employees are checked for symptoms twice daily. Complete Hygiene and best practices are maintained to ensure the health and safety.

Biggest shifts:-

The companies are actually looking for digital transformation and infrastructure modernization which is the new way forward for business continuity. The present traditional applications are also choosing to move to the cloud, in turn pushing the cloud applications also to develop.

We can say that the biggest shift seen is cyber security. During Covid-19 companies faced more problems in keeping their data secure along with facing the changes due to pandemic and this made many realize that security for just a few in the CIO level wasn’t exactly safe. Hence if there has been a major shift, it is companies moving towards digital transformation and opting for a robust security feature.

Jitesh Chauhan, Director, Rubik Infotech

Growth of IT services amid Covid-19:-

Covid-19 made the CIOs understand the need to Cloud Technology for their Organisation. Earlier the CIOs feared about Data Security on Cloud, but the new norms of 24x7 availability have changed the thought of Cloud. With Customers looking at the Cloud Options, the Cloud and the services market are definitely growing. Security again attached to the Cloud is growing. We see that the Cloud, Security and Services would be growing this year. Services in the Field of Cloud Migration, SAAS and other Services would definitely increase.

Preparedness adopted:-

This pandemic has given us some time to rethink about our strategy of doing business. We have to have a different Go to Market Approach as now we would not be sitting across the table of Customer for discussion and at the same time he has to be informed on the Solution. We have started investing heavily on Digital marketing and pushing our customer to have face to face meeting on Microsoft the team meeting appointment.

We have also started having Web Session for our customer on technologies and solutions and have seen some positive responses from them. This has in fact helped us in addressing more customers for the same solution at one go.

Biggest shifts:-

The biggest shifts that have happened since COVID-19 is Availability and WFH, believes Jitesh. According to him, Customer has started talking about Availability. “Earlier we all had the mindset that we can’t work from home, today we see our 50% of staff are working from home comfortably. This is the same for the entire sector”.

L Ashok, CEO, Futurenet Technologies

Growth of IT services amid Covid-19:-

As per the government data available, all sectors are showing negative growth including service industry. Also, many researchers cautioned that it may take four to five quarters to become normal.   

For us, we have done reasonably well considering the current Pandemic.  We have done business in areas of Consulting, Work from home and cloud.

Preparedness adopted:-

Futurenet mainly focus on cost reduction by renegotiating with the current vendor for customer benefits. Investing in BCP, Disaster recovery, cybersecurity to safeguard customer data. Also expanded its business opportunity on premise to cloud migration, ML/ Big data analytics, Virtual reality, Robotics and IoT.

Biggest shifts:-

Year 2020 is going to be a tough year, so without lowering our guard, we are pursuing innovative methods for demand generation and ensuring that we are in constant connect with our clients. With BCP and Security being the mantra for the way forward, we at Futurenet are adding the right portfolio for our customer to reduce the Capex. Products and solutions focusing on Private cloud like our innovative Cloud Drop product and WFH are our focus for 2020.

Narinder Singh Manral, Founder & MD, Enrich Data Services

Growth of IT services amid Covid-19:-

Indian IT services industry is expected to see an adverse impact for a short-term due to COVID-19 outbreak with the sector clocking a lower growth in current financial year previously we expected the sector to grow at 6-8 per cent. We fulfilled our backlog orders / Projects which were placed before the lockdown or the material which was lying with us. Our original estimates from the Government and Institutional business is still just below the target, however there is a concern among the industry whether the budgets have been approved as the Government has suggested a freeze in expenditure.

Our forecast assumes gradual recovery during the second half of the year, however, the evolution of the virus remains highly uncertain and the full extent of the economic costs remains unclear at this point of time.

Preparedness adopted:-

We feel that the situation will not change drastically over the coming few months. We have considered the best possible scenario as well as the worst possible to come up with a business plan to ensure continuity of business. No retrenchment during this period, however we have discussed and agreed with our employees for salary cuts based on salary slabs ranging from 10-30% which will be reinstated once the situation improves. We have cut down our costs/expenditures to ensure minimum stress on our bottom line. We have also put in a work from home policy so that employees who are unable to commute due to non-availability of public transport and don't have their own conveyance, can work from home.

Biggest shifts:-

After the initial teething troubles the employees have adjusted with the new work from home model.

Even though a lot of organizations have cut down staff we have only had minimal salary cuts after discussions with the employees and explaining to them the need of the hour. The employees have appreciated the transparency and have responded well to the new normal. The organizations are feeling a huge need for securing the organization's assets from bad actors hence and are budgeting more to be invested in Cybersecurity. There is a clear movement by clients from Onsite models to cloud based subscription models.

More and more organizations are looking at AI for speeding up their digital transformations projects along with Robotic Process Automation. However the budgets will most likely be looked into and revised every quarter based on the market situation.

New Investments are on hold and no new projects are announced. After the initial period of lockdown where organizations found it difficult to work from home, they have put in VPNs to ensure applications are available to all employees however, going forward some organizations are re-considering the WFH option as they don’t see clear results whereas others have announced WFH till end of the year.

Punit Thakkar, CEO, Shivaami Cloud Services

Growth of IT services amid Covid-19:-

In this situation there is a huge demand for cloud based applications. Customers are looking for various ways to move their business on the cloud. In this pandemic situation customers require a tool that will help them work from home and we have experienced that through the increase in the number of enquiries on our website.

Preparedness adopted:-

For Shivaami, WFH was always an option to work better. With maximum female strength, Work from Home has been on our regular basis table. In the early phase of COVID - 19 Shivaami got ready for WFH. Being in cloud industry for more than decade, as the lockdown happened, the companies started looking for new tools to work from home and it was only possible through cloud, and we were all set and prepared with all the technical capabilities to help the customers to move on to the cloud. Even in the future, if any such circumstances arrive we are ready & available for our clients at any point of time.

Biggest shifts:-

Many businesses were badly affected when during pandemic the entire nation came to a standstill due to lockdown. But apart from this, there were a few organisations which were still functioning, because those organisations had adopted cloud solutions for their day to day operations. Also, their employees could work from remote locations. Looking at this, many organisations using the traditional business solutions started looking for remote working tools i.e. cloud solution to run their business. This increased the demand for the cloud and other IT solutions in the market.

Vipul Datta, CEO, Future Soft Solutions

Growth of IT services amid Covid-19:-

We are confident that the present & post Covid19 scenarios will demand greater investment in Automation on account of Digitization of the business and need to automate supply chain eco system across industry verticals and technology will pave the way for delivering product & services faster / better.

Preparedness adopted:-

We ensured transparent and timely communications amongst our employee on periodical intervals.  FSPL has adopted Flexi Working Hours or WFH policy for entire organization till end of Sept 2020. 

We haven’t made any change in our GTM strategy as we are solving business problems around Adopting Digitization or, Process Automation to Improved Supply Chain Eco System & Revenue recognition process, or E-sign & PKI Integration / Cloud Adoption & Managed Services for our clients and they are the top priority for business owners in current and Post covid-19 scenario. So, we are confident to achieve a significant YOY growth current FY 20-21 despite Covid-19.

Biggest shifts:-

Our client corporate & government alike understand now that technology will be the growth driver and ensuring faster possible road to recovery. Following are some of the business use cases we see our clients are giving top priority in present & near future terms and we have aligned our capability and GTM around the same. Fortunately for team FSPL we have already delivered measurable solution in each of these domains.

Need to strength the weak supply chain eco system

Making business Digital platform ready

Bridging Revenue & collections Leakages

Achieve total Compliance with internal & external process / law of the land

Have technology in place to ensure Business continuity & Growth

Last mile Enablement via technology for faster consumption of delivery & services.

Suresh Ramani, CEO, Techgyan

Growth of IT services amid Covid-19:-

While we are in no position to predict what will happen in next few months, when we look at our performance from April 2020 to July 2020 and compare the same with last year, we have seen a growth of about 16% so far.

Preparedness adopted:-

We operate in 3 Solution buckets where we have 3 branded Service Offerings like, Teamwork 365 for Collaboration, SecureIT 365 for   Security & DataCenter 365 for Data Center Transformation.

Fortunately for us, all the 3 Solution Areas are extremely relevant for Customers in the COVID-19 recovery phase. Between these 3 Solutions, we are broadly covering 4 specific Business Scenarios:

Remote work; Business Continuity; Security; Cloud Migration

So we are increasing our focus on these 4 specific areas to ensure that our Solutions remain extremely relevant for our Customers as they try to recover in a phased manner.

Biggest shifts:-

WFH is the biggest shift and then Security. What is more important as of now is, the senior management is available on a call for a meeting and discussion.

Dhirendra Khandelwal, Founder & MD, Esquare System & Technologies

Growth of IT services amid Covid-19:-

The Indian IT and business services market is expected to grow annually by 6.5 percent compared to the 8 percent in FY 2019-20 owing to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic according to the IDC. We have adopted “Business Continuity Plan” promptly as compared to other competitors to minimize the business disruption that included migrating the business operations to digital infrastructure and platforms which was already in the pipeline.

In this crisis-ridden business climate, we are experiencing a huge demand for remote collaborations with cloud and AI being the technology forerunners.

Preparedness adopted:-

As the crisis evolves, we are taking measures to protect employees and ease financial and operational exposure. We had suspended operations in affected regions and branches, following travel restrictions and mandatory social distancing. We quickly established pandemic-specific policies and training, for employee communications, remote work, and virtual collaboration.

Virtual commitment with clients and partners has been a central part of undertaking business even as we are slowly beginning to restore face-to-face communications. Customers are becoming accustomed to the speed-of-response that virtual appointments provide. Simultaneously, we are generating a distinction in the digital space, through real-time experiences by collaborative tools.

Biggest shifts:-

COVID-19 has transformed the role and importance of digital experiences in people’s lives. Many organizations are currently facing waves of customer questions, orders, and even cancellations. To handle this huge traffic volume for self-service web, email, IVR systems, chatbots, applications, etc. are coming to the forefront to resolve the most generic queries, freeing employees to handle more complex issues