It has become one of the mantras of the Covid-19 crisis: the shifts in technology use expected in the next two years have all occurred in just two months.
It was a point made in May by Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, who told the Build conference he had seen “something like two years’ worth of digital transformation in just two months”.
This week, Amazon Web Services (AWS) vice-president for its worldwide public sector division, Teresa Carlson, expanded on the same theme: “I have seen more digital transformation and IT modernisation in my business in the last two months than I have seen in the last two years,” she told Business Times.
Not that organisations like Microsoft and AWS were not already digitally transformed. As Carlson put it, “when the pandemic hit, we already had a decade of experience in mobilising fast”. That included the creation of an AWS disaster response team in 2018.
Before the pandemic, she said, it had helped organisations around the world to harness the power of the cloud to prepare for, respond to and recover from, major natural disasters, including earthquakes, hurricanes, and wildfires. Now, its energies have become focused on Covid-19.
“Cloud technology plays a key role in helping to speed up research into a cure for Covid-19 and this is one of the reasons why we have been putting a lot of time and resources into supporting diagnostic research. By providing data and cloud-based tools, we aim to help experts to better understand and track the coronavirus, and more effectively test people for Covid-19.”
Thanks to the reach of the cloud, the acceleration of diagnostic and research capabilities is a worldwide phenomenon — with SA and the rest of the continent not left out, she said.“ We have a number of customers in SA who are doing courageous things, at the forefront of the Covid-19 research. A great example is Hyrax Biosciences, an SA company known for its contributions to HIV drug-resistance testing.
Hyrax has released a software tool to detect mutations in the genome of SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus responsible for Covid-19.“ Mutation detection and raw DNA sequencing data analytics are crucial to vaccine research, outbreak tracking, and drug development. Using AWS, they have developed the Exatype SARS-CoV-2 platform, which tracks the evolution of the virus as it spreads, and have been able to reduce the time spent analysing data sets from days or weeks to hours or minutes.”
Carlson pointed out that the acceleration of innovation was not only about research. New ways of educating and informing people during this time has also emerged.“ A good example is the work Digitata is doing in Malawi. Using AWS, they have developed a mobile-based Covid-19 information portal and game that tests and enhances people’s knowledge of the virus.
The game is freely accessible and users are given multi-choice questions on Covid-19-related topics to help test and grow their knowledge of the virus, how it is transmitted, and when to seek medical attention. The game was built in less than five days and now serves more than 2.8-million requests per day.
“Another uniquely African example we have seen is Sentech, the national broadcasting signal distributor in SA. Sentech has helped the African faith-based community during the lockdown by deploying new channels to live stream church services to 14 religious channels across the country.”
These examples represent three areas in which cloud technologies have accelerated digital transformation during an abnormal time, said Carlson: transformation of research; transformation of education; and transformation of citizen services.
“In the education space we have seen schools, literally overnight, move rapidly to launch online, to support the education of millions of students around the world. With citizen services we have seen national and local governments [set] up applications, or entire call centres, in a matter of days. We have seen digital projects that would normally take months or years, completed in weeks or days.”
It's not only about bragging rights, however. The acceleration of digital transformation is having a tangible effect: “Something that has also become clear during the pandemic is the power of analytics, artificial intelligence, and machine learning to help governments, research and public health institutes, and nongovernmental organisations manage the phenomenal amount of data being produced about Covid-19, to make more informed decisions, and ultimately save more lives.”
• Goldstuck is founder of World Wide Worx and editor-in-chief of Gadget.co.za.
