Effects Of The Pandemic On Digital Businesses And Their Owners

Scalable and Simple Solutions During the Pandemic

With the pandemic for over a year now, digital businesses and services must continue to focus on upping their game. It’s a time of tailoring to an audience that can’t necessarily leave their home as often. A time when screen time has increased dramatically, and no public gatherings are allowed, so everyone is communicating online. This pandemic hasn’t just changed our interactions. It’s changed the way we’re going to do business for the foreseeable future.

What does the foreseeable future mean? It means that we need to optimize our in-person operations. We don’t have exacts on how long it’s going to take to get us back to a semblance of normal. Even once the dust has settled on these trying times, we’ll have fallen into a state of online interaction unlike any we’ve ever seen before. People will be used to doing a lot of their day-to-day work, and social interactions, utilizing the user interfaces that the Internet has made so convenient.

As the pandemic unfolded and lockdowns intensified, online businesses, especially any offering face-to-face interaction or media-rich entertainment, have skyrocketed in both user counts and infrastructure needs. DevOps and server administrator teams in companies large and small are scrambling to keep up with the increasing number of users constantly online. While most business owners won’t have the same level of trouble as Facebook or Zoom had experienced,  it is always smart to plan and opt for scalability.

This article will talk about scalable and simple solutions that might help you cope with the pandemic and the increased traffic.

The beneficial side effect

One of the easiest ways to ensure that your sites are ready for bursts of traffic is to implement CDN. We all know that CDN is needed to increase the speed of your site, but that’s not all. Aside from the very straightforward benefit of speeding up how quickly your users can access the content, CDN has the side effect of reducing the load on your server.

When CDN is configured correctly, a target our team will surely help you achieve, we usually see an 80 – 90% reduction of server load. Yes, a staggering change in performance can be achieved if CDN is implemented. If your server is laboring too hard to serve every single user, it will likely display low performance overall. When you implement CDN, that will resolve the problem. Find out more about MojoCDN. You can read about things to watch out for when choosing CDN from our earlier blog posts.

The action plan

The second to-do item you might want to knock out right away is to prepare a plan for scaling. It is always easier to cope with a crisis if there’s a clear action plan. Research what scaling options are available to you. Is there a simple way to upgrade? Does horizontal scaling make more sense, or is there space to go vertical? Is this a good time to consider adding a hot spare? Is it possible to easily load-balance your application?

Our managed customers are welcome to reach out to our tech team for an in-depth analysis of what the future path of scaling would be. Our team of seasoned senior systems administrators will help you draw up a plan of action. They will point out what preemptive steps are a good idea. This may be a great time to transition to using MojoStorage S3-compatible object storage to remove that part of the work from your server, or maybe databases are running out of resources and warrant their own dedicated machine. So don’t hesitate to start a ticket and get guidance on how to ensure your business grows and prospers without infrastructure issues or other bumps on the road to success.

Working… actually working… from home

Aside from preparing your digital assets for the effects of this pandemic, now is also the time for you to optimize your home business. This will enable you to have a higher degree of efficiency. Work on leaving less of a carbon footprint. Trick out your home office with all of the items you’ve been holding off on. Once you’ve sped up your internet, acquired the best microphone for your online interactions, and organized your workspace into a zone of pure efficiency, start on your habits.

We indeed have to have a heightened sense of cleanliness in our current state of being. So now is the time to prep your personal spaces, and automobiles, with all of the necessary sanitizing equipment.

Keep a steady supply of masks with you, whether you’re at home, or having to travel. Even if you have one for yourself, it never hurts to have an extra for someone else who may have forgotten. Have a selection of sanitizing wipes, gloves, and any other products or tech near where you walk into your living space. These are probably all commonplace things for you nowadays, but they’re worth repeating.

We need to look out for families, others, and ourselves needing assistance. We can all get through this, gang. Remember that helping yourself, so that you can better help others, is absolutely and unquestionably Good Mojo.