Enghouse’s group VP of marketing & alliances, Jeremy Payne, is in no doubt about how cloud-based communications and collaboration saved the business world, in the past 18 months. “Without cloud technology, cloud infrastructure, the enterprise would not have survived in the way that it did,” he reflected. “There have been so many business benefits, from security to scalability, flexibility, elasticity…
“But like with most things, there’s always an equal and opposite force to be reckoned with.”
The main challenges seem to stem from the fact that the technology enabled working patterns to shift so fast, that culturally, emotionally, it was difficult for the humans involved to keep up — grappling with all the personal implications of a global health crisis, on top of the up-ending of business planning.
The present-future is unevenly distributed
“Some people ended up with promotions, better opportunities, as a result. Others were forced down routes of technological change faster than they could really cope, and culture and practice could not travel down the same road at the same speed”
The people affected are operating in a broader socio-economic context beyond their work, where promises of unlocking restrictions feel like a moving target, they cannot take the overseas holidays they were looking forward to, and inflation is eroding their income just as some leisure opportunities unevenly return — the effects of which have barely begun to be felt.
“From the work point of view, the enabler of everything was cloud-based UC, and this gave us the ability to carry on working, to keep the plane in the air. Without that, the world would have ground to a halt,” Payne pointed out. “It’s actually remarkable how the national and international telco infrastructure stood up, to the increased demand for video calling, the way it scaled and held up.
“But there’s been a price tag building up for that, in human terms, and we’re approaching the point where that price will have to be paid.”
Heading off the backlash
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Jeremy Payne[/caption]
