Digital Transformation Accelerated! 

It has been only a few days since Polish Government announced a full lock-down of schools, restaurants, gym clubs, sport events, etc. – desperate measures to prevent the community spread of the Coronavirus. It is a very tough time, especially for smaller companies that do not have the financial strength to weather the sharp demand decline caused by COVID-19. You can witness it first hand if you are living in Europe – streets are empty, shops are closed, people avoid direct contact with each other…

On the other hand – I am very impressed by how quickly people adjust to the new situation. More and more restaurants offer food delivery, more and more shops are enabling online purchasing, gyms provide live trainings on-line, schools are deploying e-learning capabilities… even Catholic Church in Poland invited people to join the live on-line transmission of the Sunday service!

It is amazing how quickly people make decisions now, to leverage IT to enable more and more of their activities, how many of them accelerate their Digital Transformation plans.

One, perfect example is the school of my 3 girls: we have been discussing expanding e-learning and the need to leverage IT to improve the teaching and learning techniques for two-to-three years now. But there was always another priority: first we needed to take the school through the reform of education introduced 3-4 years ago in Poland, then we had to deal with acquisition and renovation of the new building… It was difficult to set aside time to train the teachers, evaluate and buy the hardware and software, agree on the deployment plans with all the parents. The need to continue teaching our kids accelerated all the discussions: since Thursday all the teachers are trained to use the new e-learning platform, today my daughters received their logins, and tomorrow they will participate in the first virtual classes ever! Respect!

Coronavirus is forcing us to change the way we live our lives. The way we conduct our businesses. SMB Customers that embrace the change will not only survive, but could emerge from the crisis much stronger than before. IT can help. HPE can help. If you want to learn about Small Business Solutions that can help you to build a remote office, improve your security or simply maintain business continuity – please speak with one of our HPE Authorized partners – they will work with you to help you to transform, to survive those difficult times and build strong fundaments for the digital future!