Dubai: The world has been severely affected by the pandemic triggered by COVID-19. All walks of life have been forced to overhaul their lifestyle and work habits, including nearly every industry within the Middle East. Such transitions could not have been possible without the proliferation of cloud-based services, which have enabled enterprises to swiftly alter their business models to catch up with the rapid pace of changes.
The new crown epidemic has changed people's patterns of production and life, and it is a paradigm revolution. In the past, we often talked about promoting information, from Internet access to clouds and chains. The technology wave pushed the entire society to follow the technology wave. This epidemic is a social phenomenon, which has forced production and life to change its mode. COVID-19 epidemic makes it necessary to look at new technologies, models, industries, and new business models in real scenarios. Many inflection points of business models have been reflected, such as online education, online healthcare, remote office, and online conferencing.
Imagine just for a moment if there was no cloud. The lockdown would likely have kept many businesses out of operation, full stop. Working from home would only be one of our wildest dreams. Online streaming entertainment like Netflix would not be entertaining so many people, not to mention delivery services like Deliveroo bringing food to individuals and families. Instant messaging might have also had limited functions even when everyone is socially distanced.
These online activities are also gradually changing people's habits and consumption habits. Behind the scenes, all of these real-world applications and services require robust cloud infrastructure to keep things running as we all expect.
The author is the Regional President, Huawei Cloud and AI Business Group
