As we gradually emerge from a nationwide shelter in place, businesses across the country will be opening up to an uncertain future. One certainty is that we will not return to business as it was just a couple of months ago. We have already seen shelter in place measures lifted, with some states, counties and cities slowly reopening.

As more organizations return, we should anticipate that we will experience localized shutdowns if we see virus flare-ups. With this in mind, companies must be agile enough to evolve as the situation changes. The cloud presents several ways to help organizations pivot.

It happens almost by accident. An organization adopts a cloud collaboration suite, giving employees the ability to share files, exchange messages, manage their calendars and set up voice and video calls — all on a single platform. But then the company merges with another organization, which is using a similar platform from another vendor. Meanwhile,…

For many organizations, Skype for Business (formerly Lync, and before that, Communications Server) has been a staple communication and collaboration platform. This type of application — one that provides the ability to communicate quickly and effectively through instant messaging, check someone’s availability via presence status, place a phone call and spin up an ad hoc…

A couple of months ago, a higher education CIO I know came to me in a near panic. The university’s provost (who had never before acknowledged the CIO by name) had just walked into his office and asked why the school didn’t have a student-focused mobile app that a rival school offered. The CIO didn’t…