COVID-19, “A blessing in disguisefor the technology sector.”

The year 2020 should have been the start of a grand decade in the field of science and technology where several digital technologies like Internet of things (IOT) , the next generation telecommunication networks, artificial intelligence (AI), block chain technology, etc would have molded the technical sector of our country but now as we all know the conditions aren’t favorable and day to day it’s getting worse than ever due to the epidemic outbreak of Corona virus disease 2019 (COVID-19). According to the report of World health organization (WHO) the current pandemic has affected over 2164111 people and killed more than 146198 people in more than 200 countries throughout the world. It has rapidly spread around the world, posing enormous health, economic, environmental and social challenges to the entire race of human population. It is severely disrupting the global economy as a result many of the so called powerful countries are now facing threat of high inflation and increasing unemployment which further results as lack of productivity and excessive expenditure for the treatment of the victims.

This new crisis has led to a major decline in the global GDP with a negation of 2.4%. Almost every sector has been badly hit by the pandemic which includes energy sector, materials sector, industrials, health care, financial sector, IT sector, utilities sector, real estate sector, tours and travel sector, etc. So to prevent the further spread of the disease, imposing lockdown is the most important step taken by the government. Nowadays most of us are at home using tools like Zoom, Teams and Slack to stay in touch with our colleagues. All these technologies are of great helpbut the tech sector is also being affected by the pandemic. Let’s take a look at the technology sector along with COVID’S influence on it.

COVID’S impact on the Technology sector:

The technology sector is the backbone of a country’s economy. It has infiltrated every aspect of our lives, changing how we work, how we learn and how we shop. During the COVID-19 pandemic, technologies are playing crucial role in keeping our society functional in a time of lockdowns and quarantines. Nowadays the use of technologies like Artificial Intelligence, Robotics and Machine learning have become the lifeline for a large set of financial institutions worldwide to ensure business continuity and offering uninterrupted services to their customers.

The IT industry, one of the crown jewel of our country’s economic growth has provided global recognition for youth’s technology and entrepreneurial capabilities and has generated millions of direct and indirect jobs. With corona virus ashore, the $180-billion IT industry is facing the biggest challenge ever. The industry is facing weaknesses due to the fall of country’s economy. Various companies including top web design services, software development services, mobile application development services, branding services, etc are forced to ask their employees to work from home which results in massive loss of opportunity for many companies who have international dealers but though being hit by the crisis it has severely tested business continuity plans and disaster recovery counter strategies. It isn’t resistant tosay that several of global companies depend on IT sector to run their critical operations and projects. The IT companies have donea spectacular job by rapidly enabling work from home for their employees and have led many businesses to move online and keep their financial wheels turning. These IT companies have widely contributed to its client’s business growth and have provided them assistance to reap the benefits in this crucial period of time.

There are only a few types of enterprises that are at complete halt otherwise most of them with the assistance of IT sector are working.

The spread of this deadly virus has caused lot of tech conferencesto get cancelled, which could have been a great partnership opportunity for many companies to expand their horizons. According to a survey around 1 billion US dollar has been lost by US govt. due to these major cancellations of meetings.The launches of new smart phones have been deferred due to supply chain constraints. For ex, Apple inc. is estimated to have atleast 10% fall in its shares because of lack of availability of iPhones in the market. The flow of raw materials have hindered leading to disruption of electronics value chain and causing inflationary risk on products. In the near future, the IT companies could feel the heat of high pricing pressure, revenue loss due to lockdown, client bankruptcy and slower client decision making ledby lower discretionary spends.

On the other hand, as every cloud has a silver lining so is the COVID, a blessing for all of us to reinforce our trust and believe in the power of technology. Even after the pandemic situation, the tech sector enjoys many disguised benefits and is expected to have an enormous market boom in the next five years. Due to theoutbreak, a lot of blooming opportunities have been opened up for the IT sector, such as the growing need of 5th generation technology (5G).This will help increase connections that support primed remote interactions. The companies with remote-working technologies are already seeing increased demand as businesses increases their remote-working capabilities.

There is huge demand of IT sector due to various businesses turning online and also due to increase in demand of cloud services, web development services and telecom services as organizations encourage employees to work from home and schools to move online courses. The sector also enjoys majority demand in procuring devices, setting up resilient, flexible and secure network. One of the other reasons for the increase in economy for this industry is the increased demand for software and social media platforms such as Google hangouts, Whatsapp video call, Zoom app and Microsoft teams. All these teleconferencing tools help the people who are in quarantine to stay in touch with their family members as well as have conference meetings and work at the same time.

Finally in conclusion the IT industry is built on strong fundamentals and has all the required resilience to absorb the shocks of corona crisis. Hence any setbacks due to current situation are going to be temporary and the industry should be able to come back on track rather quickly. Also the value and benefits provided by the tech i.e. IT industry across the globe have been immense and it will continue to play the same role in post-Corona phase. The tech sector needs to continue to be agile,constantly engage with customers and proactively develop innovative strategies to not only tide over the crisis but to excel stronger. During this lockdown, people all over the world are learning new skills, getting updated and doing all necessaries withthe help of technology only. So it’s high time to pull up your socksand brush up on your skills as this crisis might well spark further creativity and innocation.