Page 20 - Kaleidoscope Academic Conference Proceedings 2020

processing that before was managed by private, small clouds. It was clear that in the data center area
"size" matters.
At the same time, we have experienced shortcomings with many industries and workers longing for
a prompt return to the "old times". The problem is that whilst many activities can be moved to
cyberspace and people can work almost as efficiently (some more, some less) in cyberspace, industry
processes are defined and optimized for the physical world. Hence, they were not adequate/fitting for
cyberspace.
From the workers’ side the loss of direct human contact proved, in some cases, a source of frustration.

What also became clear was that digital transformation is not a godsend for everybody. People
working from home are saving on transportation costs; they have more time, and prepare lunch at
home. The implication is that transportation providers have seen their services plummeting as they
have an infrastructure that was optimized for a given amount of traffic that and so immediately they
start losing (lots of) money. There is no need to point out that airlines would have gone bankrupt
without state support (and a few went bankrupt anyway, and probably more will follow). Urban
transportation immediately went in the red and stayed there even when the lockdown was lifted since
social distancing does not match well with public transportation and people turned to their own means.
The fear of contracting the virus that was instilled by health institutions lingers and it will take time
before people feel safe to mingle with one another.

In several urban areas, day restaurants whose core business is in feeding people at lunch breaks saw
their customers disappear. In Milan, the mayor decided that on 1 September 2020 all public servants
that so far have been working from home had to resume working at the office as that would bring
them back to the old lunch habits of eating on the road.

The above refers to the events of the last six months (slightly different time windows applying to
different countries), so we can now take a step back and reflect on what happened and try to guess
what will happen over the next few years.
A lesson learnt is that industry can use cyberspace as a patch in dire situations. In spite of several
issues, business continued thanks to cyberspace. However, it also became clear that this was not a
digital transformation. Most companies did not embark in a rethinking of their processes to take
advantage of cyberspace.
It became clear that managing people at the office is different from managing people at home. In what
might seem as a paradox, people felt much more controlled when working from home than at the
office. Their every "click" could be monitored, something that was not done at the office where a
"macro" monitoring approach (clock in - clock out) was usually adopted. As mentioned before, quite
a few workers miss the "working place", the contact with other workers, the organization supporting
them in case of any problems, the relative quietness of their work place when compared to a home
full of noise and disturbances.

Speaking to a number of CEOs I got the same point over and over: "We are in cyberspace but we
keep operating as if we were at the bricks and mortar office". This, in some cases turned out to be
less efficient (no surprise since processes have been designed for bricks and mortar) and far away
from reaping the benefits of cyberspace. Also notable, in some cases where security processes that
were designed to operate in a controlled environment these did not meet the need of an open
environment. It is well known that physical security is a must (you can have all security in place with
network and software but if you cannot control people, your security measures are moot).

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