» CIO OUTLOOK
ACCELERATING TO THE NEW NORMAL Challenged by the pandemic, organizations have come to deploy transformation technologies sooner than otherwise
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020 was the year of the pandemic, bringing the world to its knees and yet humankind demonstrated resilience with Technology playing a helping hand. A new normal became the norm and unwittingly, the pandemic played the role of an accelerator, when it came to digital transformation. Organizations scrambled to set up Remote working, collaboration and learning infrastrcture, and the outcomes were more or less encouraging and successful. The world has adapted to the new normal in spite of significant challenges. Across several verticals, there have been success stories. George Akhras, CIO at AMSI, one of the large Education groups in the region says, “Most of the companies and Institutions in the UAE, including schools and universities, have ample manpower and technical capability to work remotely. What was needed was a push; unfortunately, a pandemic provided it and within a short period of time everyone embraced the new situation and learned how to adapt. Today, almost a year later, many businesses transformed and prepared a better virtual work-
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place for their staff to be comfortable ad productive. “ He adds, “At AMSI, we adopted distance learning and reinforced our beliefs that the success of any organization depends on the skills and strengths of the core team and the proper alignment of the staff to our ultimate goals and objectives. We created an online school environment that mimics a typical school day as best as could be and supported our teachers and staff to become more comfortable in the virtual environment. Change was necessary across all verticals. In varying degrees, remote working was a necessity of the hour in all key verticals. Khalid Rashid Moh'd Jalal, Senior Group ICT Manager, GARMCO, Kingdom of Bahrain says, “While Remote working is not a new concept, with the advancements and transformations in technology and communications, it had become easier but unfortunately the adoption rate was never satisfactory. The year 2020 forced all the businesses and institutions to adopt “Work from Home” as the new normal. Although, the initial period was tough for most to
CXO DX / FEBRUARY 2021
cope up with the new normal, everyone had to come out of their routine and comfort zone to learn something new and businesses were forced to implement the right solutions for their survival and existence.” The hybrid model of working is now seen as a trend here to stay. He adds, “The importance of remote working is recognized by all already as the new normal and the hybrid plan is being worked out without eliminating remote-working. The curve of remote-working has gone up but with the hybrid working mode the curve is changing to sinusoidal.” According to Ashith Piriyattiath, CEO, Guardian One Technologies, “Covid taught us a new norm, a total cultural transformation across all sectors. In the initial stages, it was a partial lockdown where only work from home and online learning was possible. We initially expected it to get over in 2 months but then we understood the new norm and it was necessary to get adapted to it. Then a cultural transformation happened and most of the organizations and industries, especially the education and
