By Costa Christodoulou Head of IT Systems at ZetaSafe
Earlier this year I posted a throwback to something I wrote in 2015, documenting the cloud revolution and recognising that it may be time for an update on this revolution in 2020.
However, a lot has changed since 2015, and even more so in the last few weeks with the current Covid-19 pandemic.
Costa Christodoulou, Head of IT Systems
Subsequently, while this post will not be a full review of 2020 cloud computing, I wanted to write a short post on how we are responding to recent challenges. I took the decision in 2015 to adopt a cloud first and flexible approach to how we work and how we should deliver our services. After years of implementation, and in light of the current climate, the ZetaSafe team have been able to successfully work from home, with the aid of monitors, keyboards, desk chairs and a few office staples, including a desk photo of my son. Whilst our whole team have been home, we have continued to deliver and in the last two weeks we have achieved much, for example:
- 6 releases to our core product
- Completed an ISO surveillance audit
- Update to the ZetaSurvey Mobile App
- 1 new course ‘Pandemic Preparations’ added to our internal online training
- 2 planned changes to our infrastructure architecture
- Over 100 code commits to our development and test environment in the last week alone
- Countless video calls with each other and clients
- 300+ support tickets with 100% Customer satisfaction rating
I am very fortunate that the type of work I do allows me to work remotely if needed, so we can continue to service our clients. However this couldn’t happen unless all the pieces were in place, like remote working policies and cloud services that operate our support lines, HR portal, CRM, phones, development pipelines combined with our production and development infrastructure hosted on platforms such as Microsoft Azure.
With daily changes to our lives due to Covid-19, it was pleasing to see that the smooth transition to full remote working didn’t cause the team further anxiety and allowed us to carry on delivering an a high level of service to our clients. Furthermore, the icing on the cake (pun intended, my wife has been baking a lot!) to remote working and government advised social distancing, is getting to spend lunch time walks with this little man.
Finally, I hope you and your families keep safe during this challenging and unprecedented time.