How the tech industry is ensuring business continuity in the times of coronavirus
Coronavirus has presented a situation most geeks probably didn’t anticipate: what happens when even the disaster recovery sites and business continuity plans are rendered useless. You can fly resources to alternative locations. But how do you run a global business when flights are grounded and countries regulate who can come in?
For the $190 billion IT services and BPO sector, Covid-19 poses the twin challenges of business continuity and business growth. Sangeeta Gupta, senior vice-president, Nasscom, says, “You can’t shift people from, say, Chennai to Delhi (like it happened during the Chennai floods in 2015) to keep a business functioning. Besides, travel, hospitality and aviation verticals might see a dip in growth in IT spending as coronavirus has directly impacted all three due to travel bans and grounding of flights.” This could lower the overall sector’s growth by a few notches from the 7.5% estimated by Nasscom for 2019-20.