First week under third Lock-down in Austria (1.1.2021)

We’re back in a hard lock-down. In contrast to the second lock-down in November and December 2020 this one is a proactive lock-down to keep the infections after Christmas under control. Started on 26th December we are under an all-day curfew and non-essential business are closed. Up to now, the impact of the new GB mutation which is more infectious is unclear. Hopefully this will prevent uns from a third wave.

The last year was very challenging for all of us. COVID-19 killed approximately 1.8 million people, and many suffer from severe consequences of a COVID-19 infections. Actions taken to get the pandemic under control brought us into a economic and social crisis. However, from an IT perspective the good news are that COVID-19 boosted Digitization.

Something good in 2020

• Microsoft Teams: 2020 was the year of Teams. Never ever was a Microsoft Product adopted so quickly by so many people and organizations. Thanks to the (very) hard lock-downs in Europe in spring, Teams was one of the few products that kept many organizations operable.

• The Cloud: Those who didn’t understand the benefit of the cloud have learned it the hard way this year. The only way to scale up in a very short time is the cloud. No matter if it’s in a public or private cloud. But the situation in early 2020 showed that only the public cloud like Azure could handle the situation. When millions of people are forced to work from home, classic on-premises installations and VPN Gateways collapse.
  
• Azure Region Austria: Microsoft announced to build two data centers in Austria. We will get our own Azure region. Typically our customers host their Azure Workloads in the West-Europe region. In the future we will be able to place the cloud workloads closed to the our customers.
  
• E-Health: Digitalization and health care has never been a big issue in Austria and Digitalization projects like ELGA (electronic health file) was not very widely used. But COVID-19 boosted Digitalization in health care. We’ll get an electronic vaccination pass next year and e-prescription.
  
• Home / Distance Schooling: It is said that the Austrian Education system is very old fashioned and stuck in traditions over decades. Over the last centuries E-Learning was explored from time to time but never ever taken serious. COVID-19 forced the education system to adapt to the situation. Universities also struggled to make exams remote compatible and came up with modern, naive and lazy solutions: The closest solution to a normal exam are Zoom-Meeting based exams, where you have to be online including audio and being watched through the webcam. Some Law-Schools found another way without all the fancy technology stuff. You get the exam online and have to upload the results within a given time, including a sworn declaration that you didn’t cheat. And some other lecturers replaced the classic exam by letting the students write an essay about some textbooks.
  
• Bitcoin: Lucky you if you are a Bitcoin hodler 😉

“A very merry Christmas and a happy New Year Let’s hope it’s a good one”
– John Lennon, Merry Christmas