Insighter Dec 2020
 

Holiday Hoping from InsightaaS

December 19, 2020, Mary Allen

In hindsight, 2020 will be a less than perfect vision. Political disquiet, climate change, and global pandemic have taken a heavy toll on people, the economy, and the planet. Harm has been huge, as we lost loved ones, businesses collapsed, and people fragmented under the weight of social distance and isolation. But as Alfred Lord Tennyson said, “Hope smiles from the threshold of the year to come, whispering ‘it will be happier’…”

We have also seen abundant hope in the past year – in the selfless efforts of front-line healthcare and essential services workers to deliver the support needed to maintain life and limb – and at the end of the tunnel, as governments around the world have begun to distribute life saving COVID vaccines to the most vulnerable. And in our struggle with the devil pandemic, we have learned many things about resilience, community care and the importance of staying open to new ways of doing things.

This is the case with information technology, in particular, which proved to be an important lifeboat during the pandemic that has ferried us to safer shores. While advanced collaboration tools connected individuals, enabling the remote work required to limit viral spread, powerful software and infrastructure resources were available to drive the ongoing digitization that could keep businesses and society afloat with much needed goods and services. AI-enabled virus research is only one of the more notable ways that IT has been at the ready.

Even more remarkable has the pace of change that IT has managed to address: many of the IT professionals that InsightaaS is privileged to work with have shared their experiences with rapid shifts to work online for large staff contingents, tunnelling digital transformation initiatives that would have taken years under normal circumstances into a matter of weeks, and sometimes days.

At this year’s Great Canadian Data Centre Symposium, InsightaaS had an opportunity to celebrate the work and achievements of many of these unsung tech heroes. Recipients of our CDCXA COVID-19 Crisis response and Data Centre Sustainability awards – BCIT, UBC, the Durham Region, the Ontario Government and Consumer Services’ DCO, and Sun Life Financial – offer inspirational examples of what is possible when we work together with purpose and are armed with the right tools.

The pandemic called for pivot on the part of InsightaaS as well, and we worked hard this year to take advantage of the best technology can offer, to continue to provide the educational and networking opportunities that you have come to expect from our team. To keep our community connected, we launched a Summer of Webinar series hard on the heels of COVID lockdown and shifted our annual GCDCS20 conference to a “Better than Live!” virtual event with the same great level of content quality, but just more convenience. I encourage you to check in with www.InsightaaS, or our GCDCS20 conference site as we roll out key conference segments over our Ten Days of Holiday Cheer!

From all of us at InsightaaS to all of you, stay safe, stay hopeful, and have a wonderful holiday season.

Mary Allen
Chief Content Officer
InsightaaS

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