The past year has affected all of us, some more than others. In the recent report on the effects of 2020 on digital architects, the NoSQL cloud database providers, Couchbase, took a litmus test on the state of digital transformation in the IT space. We had an opportunity to sit down with some of the folks at Couchbase to pick their brains about what their results mean, and how their platform can help advance companies’ goals.
Seeing the Effects of COVID-19 on Enterprise IT
At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, many were unsure of the effects it would have on the economy as businesses shut down to accommodate for public health orders. Although a number of companies took significant losses, a good portion seized the opportunity to embrace cloud technology and enable a fully remote workforce.
Ultimately, this shift signified an underlying trend of the IT industry that had been building for some time: digital transformation. By adopting cloud infrastructure and applications, companies found that they could maintain business operations while keeping their employees safe. Unfortunately, not all companies were quite fortunate enough to smoothly transition into this more decentralized approach.
Taking the Pulse on Digital Transformation
Curious about how the industry adapted to this new way of working, distributed NoSQL cloud database providers, Couchbase, surveyed 450 digital architects across the US, UK, France, and Germany. In their third annual report, Couchbase honed in on the way companies addressed technological needs in 2020 as they planned their digital transformation.
Here are a selection of their findings that paint an interesting picture of the effects of COVID-19 on digital technology adoption:
- 86% of respondents claim COVID-19 made it adopt new digital technologies, with 38% saying it disrupted their digital project plans.
- 61% felt their existing technology stack made it more difficult to plan their digital transformation. Specifically, 48% cited their cloud infrastructure and 43% cited their database.
- Only 13% of organizations are still in the planning phase of digital projects, a reduction compared to the 22% of respondents when asked the same question in their 2019 report.
Despite the challenges these companies faced due to the pandemic, it seems that most, if not all of them, are still committed to evoking a digital transformation across their business. A common thread between them all seems to be their tech stack, an area that Couchbase believes it can help with.
How Couchbase Assists in Digital Transformation
We sat down with Couchbase’s Senior Director of Corporate Communications, Christina Knittel, and VP of Product and Solutions Marketing, Jeff Morris, to discuss the results of their survey. According to Morris, a big part of the issue these companies face is how they’re making the most of their data, specifically in edge use cases.
Couchbase is built to natively integrate with mobile devices. These embeddable mobile capabilities allow Couchbase customers to expand the reach of their data to wherever their employees operate. Leveraging these capabilities atop the easy-to-use, scalable NoSQL database platform gives Couchbase customers the ability to build fast and move faster. That way, even if they’re facing the problems detailed in the survey results above, they can quickly transition to a more flexible, versatile approach to data operations.
Zach’s Reaction
As someone who was concerned that COVID-19 would prove detrimental to the IT industry as a whole, it’s promising to see that companies are still eager to move their operations towards the cloud in an attempt to keep their employees safe and productive. Couchbase’s offering provides an efficient way for companies to keep their data accessible in a decentralized world.
Check out the rest of their report to learn more about the effects of COVID-19 on the state of digital transformation across the industry.
