Letters | Coronavirus crisis: how China hit the fast track to a multi-cloud future for remote working
The Covid-19 pandemic has brought restrictions on the movement and congregation of people, forcing companies to operate businesses and manage staff remotely.
Overnight, China became the world’s largest work-from-home market, with Hong Kong following soon after.
Remote working has traditionally been a perk of joining a start-up and a way for cool tech to attract the best and brightest. Covid-19 has catapulted this trend into the mainstream in a matter of weeks, making remote working the accepted way of doing business for tens of thousands of employees and hundreds of companies nationwide.
Covid-19 and other recent disruptive events have not only forced, but accelerated Greater China’s shift to the cloud.
Virtual desktop infrastructure and desktop as a service are perfect examples of how cloud technology is keeping Greater China businesses running during the outbreak. They permit staff to safely and securely access company data from anywhere, on any device, while ensuring network integrity.
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It is common for crisis to spur innovation, but the speed at which reluctant sectors have pivoted to the cloud is unparalleled. A transformation that once may have taken years is now sweeping across every city and sector.
And the trend looks set to continue. IDC has already predicted that more than 90 per cent of China’s enterprises will rely on a combination of on-premises private clouds, multiple public clouds, and legacy platforms to meet their infrastructure requirements within the next two years.
Our research forecasts a huge shift from traditional IT data centres to hybrid clouds over the next two to five years for Hong Kong.
As the centre of the global economy shifts back to Asia, the most naturally turbulent and unpredictable region in the world, any technology that helps eliminate unpredictability and keep the world’s economic engine running ought to be embraced.
So it seems unlikely that once the Covid-19 pandemic subsides, Greater China businesses will abandon the cloud.
The future of a multi-cloud Greater China looks guaranteed, and Asia is looking more stable and resilient as a result.
Edward Yeung, managing director of Hong Kong and Taiwan, Nutanix
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