The coronavirus pandemic has fundamentally changed the nature of remote work as organizations throughout the United States abruptly had to close workplaces. Over a matter of days and weeks, organizations scrambled to accommodate millions of workers trying to connect and collaborate fulltime over remote connections.

The ability to communicate with remote sites, customers, partners, and suppliers is often taken for granted until interrupted.

Participants in a recent IDG TechTalk Twitter chat largely agreed that remote work platforms have proved crucial. But they’re adamant that leaders need to act on the lessons to be learned from this crisis, particularly in making digital collaboration less of a slogan and more of a reality.

Major incidents inevitably create vivid, lifetime memories of what we were doing when, for example, the lights went out in New York City, a prominent government leader or celebrity died, New Orleans was ravaged in the wake of a hurricane, and so forth. Many IT leaders will undoubtedly remember what they were doing when they realized they had to remotely support not just part of a workforce, but perhaps most.