The Covid-19 pandemic has pushed businesses from around the world and different sectors to allow their teams to work from home. This challenging environment has thrown many unknown avenues of technologies in the open for good. The same technologies have faced challenges to adapt to the huge demand.
Below are few mentioned apps or subjects that came into limelight:
Zoom App: Zoom which is a video calling app based out of US but having infrastructure in China, gained popularity during the lockdown, salient features of the app were to allow up to 100 participants for call and allow free 45 minute sessions for hosting a video / audio meet. Many small and even big corporates were forced to use Zoom for official meetings as a viable option. Off late there have been news about privacy and security issues with using the app. The app has seen 3.2 million fresh downloads in a week of lockdown announcement across India.
Google Classrooms: Lock down made it difficult for education institutes in India to conduct classes since March mid. March to May is a peak exam period and students work hard on their studies during these months. Crippled travelling and social distancing has led to education institutes to call of conducting classes and institute premises. Institutes and small time class coordinators and teachers have gone to Google Classrooms app to engage with their students. It allows sharing of files, assessments at regular intervals. It acquired 1.1 million fresh downloads during last week of March 2020 worldwide.
Arogya Setu App: Indian government and Ministry of health launched Arogya Setu Mobile app for passing on important health related information related to Covid-19. It actually tells you the status of your health with self-assessment questions related to Covid-19 symptoms. It saw 5 million downloads in India within 2 weeks of its launch. App is available in 18+ vernacular languages of India.
Collaboration: Offices and teams across world embraced apps and SaaS tools that provide collaboration with work from home environment, seamless file sharing, reporting of activity, team project status updates etc. Microsoft Team, GoToMeeting, AnyDesk, Team viewer, Trello , Zoho Cliq are some collaboration services gained weight age during last 1 month.
Virtual Private Networks: With staff working at respective home, security is of extreme importance. Since people start using their mobile hotspots, and home WI-FI networks to connect to work, offices across have implemented enterprise VPN networks to secure data and important information which can be easily hacked by hackers. People have been told to login to VPN of organization and work remotely. VPN servers should be patched with up-to-date security patches and the metrics should be closely observed.
Digital Marketing: Since offices and industries shut, businesses relied on keeping their brand visible with marketing strategies on social media and search engines, there has been a spike in social media spend and other mediums like print, television become less significant. Digital Marketing agencies working round the clock to promote their accounts by posting relevant Covid-19 content. It also helps reach becomes most people are hooked to smart phones and engaging on social network will result better. Traffic on Facebook, Instagram has increased multi-fold during the lock down period.
Cyber Security: Its apparent that during lock down and work from home may lapses will take place with wifi-networks, smartphone and systems not so secured. Many systems still prevail with no anti-virus or secured firewalls. Piracy on OS and software used pose a great security threat in cyber world. Use of insecure apps will expose password and private data to hackers say cyber security experts.
Healthcare Apps: Online medical consultation apps and services gained more importance during the lock down period. Huge traffic jump is seen even in tier-2 and tier-3 cities for medical assistance online. Practo Medical app is seeing 100% week on week jump in user additions. Telemedicine practices are regulated by government of India, and consultation must be taken with lot of precautions. People are asking questions to doctors with Covid-19 Symptoms, while this may not replace the regular consultations, it will definitely do a trend change in coming years on telemedicine practice.
Grocery Apps: Lock down has forced grocery shops to shut down, food is the most required element to survive, and due to this many areas have adopted to grocery delivery apps. Grofers and Big Basket like apps have seen major uptick with their orders. Government has also ensured whats app based home delivery of groceries. It will be safe to get the grocery delivered to doorstep as it avoid contact with others.
Ecommerce: While everyone thought ecommerce will be there go to source for all their essential items, ecommerce major companies like Flipkart and Amazon were flooded with orders. Due to lockdown measure they are not left with many resources to fulfill those orders. Government also issued order to curb on non-essential goods delivery and prioritize to deliver only essential items to customers. Transportation and supply of the good also effected fulfillment of ecommerce orders, even stocks with vendors also deteriorated these days. Ecommerce will gain more significance in coming days.
E-governance: Many state governments run e-governance portals, the lockdown in effect has allowed people to use e-governance portal for grievances redressal, public distribution systems. Paying online payments for property and other taxes, electricity payments, utility payments, checking land records etc services. Government has also initiated e-Pass facility to allow people to register online and take permission for travelling or other emergencies-governance in future will gain significance post lockdown as social distancing will become norm.
This phase will mean an increased focus on technologies like 5G, AI, augmented reality and virtual reality, Artificial intelligence, machine learning