This opinion piece was written by Lasse Schneppenheim and does not necessarily reflect the positions of IDED.

Just a few weeks ago, the first companies in Europe began closing due to the coronavirus. Wherever possible, employees are now working from home. Not everyone can do this — some professions require physical presence, and others lack the necessary systems and processes. For those who can, it is their responsibility to keep operations running and to sustain our economy.

In times like these, the vulnerability of our society becomes apparent. What is saving us now — besides the people in system-critical professions such as healthcare — is our functioning digital infrastructure. It enables us to stay informed, communicate virtually, work remotely, and keep our essential systems running: energy supply, food logistics, transport, healthcare. On the one hand, it's our connected devices — but above all, it's the global network of data centers that makes all of this possible. What would be the consequences if this infrastructure were to fail right now?

Current Challenges

The infrastructure and its users are currently facing significant strains:

• Greatly increased data traffic pushing the capacities of services, networks, and data centers to their limits

• Increased threat from cyberattacks by actors exploiting the situation

• Rising costs for companies in establishing home office environments

• Lack of capacities for computer-assisted pandemic research

Some examples illustrate the scale: Microsoft Teams reports a doubling of users since November, now at 44 million daily active users. Netflix is throttling streaming quality to protect the system from collapse. DE-CIX, one of the largest internet exchanges in Europe located in Frankfurt, reports an increase of around 10% — growth that usually takes 6 to 12 months. Vodafone Germany reports data traffic 30% higher than usual on several days last week.

Strengthening Resilience

To ensure that our infrastructure continues to function reliably, all industry stakeholders must contribute. The Uptime Institute has released a report for operators of critical infrastructures, which includes measures to minimize risks associated with COVID-19. Additionally, we need innovative solutions to directly tackle the current challenges. For example, an SDIA member, Helio, is working on a solution to distribute computing loads across different data centers, tapping into unused and reserve capacities. They have opened their computing network to researchers and software developers fighting the virus.

Lessons from the Crisis

After the corona crisis, we should view the current situation as a stress test and further develop our digital infrastructure accordingly. Given the current growth surge of digital services, we must ask ourselves: Does our digital infrastructure meet the requirements for physical resilience, security, capacity, international autonomy, and sustainability?

We hope to emerge stronger from this crisis — with the knowledge of what truly matters in challenging times and the will to consistently further develop our infrastructures, particularly in terms of resilience and sustainability.