It's time for businesses to turn smarter for longer term: Lenovo

A lot of the technology shifts that organisations made in the wake of the pandemic may not make their operations "future-proof", said a top executive of the group which provides data centre solutions.

"Many companies had to rush into quick fix deployments to stay running -- it's like having a hole in your roof -- you need to act fast and plug the hole to keep the rain from getting in until the storm passes," Vivek Sharma, Managing Director -- India, Lenovo DCG, told IANS in an interview.

"We've seen everything from panic buying of devices and hardware to mad scrambles to the public cloud -- a lot of which is good for keeping things running in the short term, but not the long run," Sharma said, while talking about the trends the company saw emerging amid the pandemic.

According to the International Data Corporation''s (IDC) Covid-19 impact on IT spending survey, May 2020, as a result of the spread of the pandemic 64 per cent of the organisations in India are expected to increase demand for Cloud computing while 56 per cent for Cloud software to support the new normal.

Sharma said that as technology providers, the priority for Lenovo DCG now is to enable its customers and partners with solutions that not only help them navigate interim challenges, but also plan a path to recovery and future growth through innovation.

Lenovo said its software-defined infrastructure (SDI) offering delivers an all-in-one Cloud system on premise and businesses can use building-blocks of software to virtualise infrastructure components of compute, storage and networking.

"Since SDI works on the concept of ''Scale as you Grow'', users can start small and, as and when workloads increase, scale out the infrastructure," Sharma said.

He said that these solutions also work well for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), as it is quick to deploy them and easy to manage.

"Our SDI solutions can also be billed using the consumption based model, allowing users to spread out cash flow and have better control over costs," he said, adding that SDI technologies bring the benefits of public Cloud into the customer''s data centre without compromising on latency, costs and data control.

The onset of the pandemic and the need for remote working also led many organisations to turn to virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) which allows employees to access corporate data from any device without fear of device failure or losing work, while organisations can automate user access and security from a central location, and even add new users.

"VDI has proven to be the right investment for SMEs, enabling even those with lean or no IT departments to manage workloads while providing seamless remote working capabilities," Sharma said.

However, by partnering with technology vendors and other larger companies, even small businesses can take their transformation journey to the next step -- despite budget constraints, lack of skilled IT practitioners, or even a dedicated IT department.

"As we look ahead to recovery and the new ''Smart Normal'', data centres will be integral in powering automation - be it in robotics, telemedicine, making medical records accessible anywhere and powering remote assistants in the hospitality industry," Sharma said, adding that companies across the board are starting to look to Artificial Intelligence to see what they can automate.

"All of this calls for Cloud-ready technologies where customers may not always be comfortable running out of public clouds -- and that is the gap we are aiming to bridge," he said.