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2 February, 2021

Three Digital Trends that Companies Will Face in 2021

Multi-Cloud, Digitization and Security should be top on the priority list of companies in all industries.

Colombia, February 2, 2021- Last year represented an opportunity for companies to bring their digital transformation to life, reinvent themselves and adapt to guarantee their continuity in the marketplace.

Looking ahead to 2021, C&W Business, a communications company operating in Latin America, identifies three major trends that companies from all sectors should consider when planning their digital strategy.

"We encourage companies of all sizes and in all industries to prioritize digital transformation, ensuring they have the high-quality connectivity, security, and accessibility that will enable them to achieve their business goals," says Daniel Neiva, VP for C&W Business for LATAM and Networks.

These are three trends to keep in mind:

1. The cloud will take a great digital leap

Cloud services will take center stage thanks to their functionality to connect and facilitate remote work. In 2021 the multi-cloud format will gain more strength thanks to its ability to organize different workloads in various on-premise environments, encompassing private and secure clouds with nearby data centers, and public clouds with essential information for the alignment of all the areas to the business objectives.

According to the special report of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (CEPAL) "Universalize access to digital technologies to face the effects of COVID-19" traffic and use in teleworking tools increased by 324%, however, only 76% of the region's employees could perform optimal teleworking. With multi-7’cloud services and the management of public and private clouds within the same IT architecture, the conditions for employees are facilitated thanks to the availability of tools and information available in real time and in a collaborative way that also allow optimal operation both with internal teams and with their clients or external users. 

2. Digitization is a need for all industries

Although the rates of adoption of digitization vary by industry, all sectors will have to review their processes to adapt to the new reality of customers and the market. The number of Colombian companies that have a digital transformation strategy is increasing: according to the recent update of the E-commerce Survey and the National Business Association (Andi) Digital Transformation Survey, currently 63% have it versus 58% in 2017.

In Colombia, industries such as banking and e-commerce accelerated their digital transformation process. However, other sectors that seemed resented or with a slower process, prioritized their transformation during 2020 to stay current: a clear example is the total digitization of 100% online education, as stated by the Colombian Foundation Entrepreneurs for Education. According to CO Internet, which is in charge of managing the domains in the country, the request for “edu.co" domains, only available to educational institutions increased by 155%.

There are still other industries that need to accelerate their transformation, including commercial real estate sales, which have been threatened by teleworking and concepts such as coworking in the sale of their business spaces.

3. Security is critical for remote work

Corporate virtual desktops are something to consider for 2021: one of the main challenges in 2020 was the optimal remote access to applications for daily work tasks use, which initially affected the performance of employees in some industries. Now, it is necessary to rethink the support strategies towards a new flexible work scheme in different ecosystems taking into account the high hardware costs to run programs with high graphic demand that some companies such as those in the education sector have.

“We are in a new stage. Before the efforts were focused on maintaining the operation in a safe and stable way from the homes, improving Internet access, enabling basic remote access schemes with VPNs, and creating new channels of interaction with customers, now we must focus not only on maintaining but on proposing new competitive digital strategies remotely”, says Daniel Neiva.