The Keysource 2020 State of the Industry Report, unsurprisingly, is dominated by the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the technology changes and challenges that it has brought to business and its effect on people’s ability to work, their priorities and decision-making processes.

However, we also wanted to ensure that we captured other issues in our questions in order to ensure some continuity.

Overall, it is encouraging that the survey results suggest the data centre industry remains strong with buoyant demand and activity and seems well placed to meet the challenges of the coming year, with 66% of respondents planning increases in capacity in some form.

For many the virus has prompted the need to consider their IT resilience, capacity, and security to deal with the demand and change to the working landscape.

Given the economic downturn the fact that less than half of respondents are expecting a budget increase is perhaps unsurprising.

However, will delaying investment in technology-based projects hinder organisations’ ability to rebuild and evolve to meet the requirements of the ‘new normal’? Will we see those who are prepared to keep investing reap the rewards while others are left behind? Should Government identify IT investment as key to improving the economy and look to make funding more attractive?