The current year has been exceptional. A quick change in our daily life routines has put us facing entirely new challenges. In the ICT branch, it was quite easy to move from offices to “the home offices”. However, the work ergonomics has taken steps backward now that we are sitting behind the small screen laptop on the kitchen table as well as when we are trying to fit meetings and household chores into our daily schedules. Families with young school children have had their additional flavor from virtual classroom studies and recess.
Business life has used virtual meeting services for over twenty years, mobile phones for over forty, and the traditional landline phones well over a hundred years. However only now during the pandemic time, the usage of these gadgets has exploded. In many of our interactions, we have persistently assumed personal face to face meetings. Now the possible ways have been to use virtual services options or leave the things undone, which is not actually an alternative. The wellbeing at work and/or home is getting new formats. Working from home in a virtual environment without physical and social contact with your colleagues is mentally stressing. One can ask, “am I a part of the working community anymore”? Therefore, it is more important than ever to highlight the active responsibility of maintaining well-being at work.
The coming year 2021 looks very interesting. We have been running several successful ElinarAI POC with our customers. Few of these will be in live production environment at the beginning of the year. The EU GDPR regulation has introduced additional requirements to national legislations and the past two years have resulted first sanctions as well. At the same time interest in our GDPR solution sold and delivered by our partner, Aigine has increased.
Despite COVID-19, we have been able to capture some new big international data migrations projects. Also, in 2021 there will be some interesting IBM content management use cases delivered. The turbulence in the business caused by this pandemic is weakening and we are learning to operate in the new “normal” state. Let’s hope that the implications will not get worse and we all can take new steps into a brighter future.
Our personnel in Elinar are mainly working from home and “visiting” the office every now and then. Despite that, there has been built some Christmas atmosphere into our office by lights and decorations. We did not arrange a traditional Christmas party this year, but we will have a “glögi” event together where one can participate in the office or via virtual meeting service from home. In addition, we have given a small Christmas bag to each one.
I will be at home during Christmas with my family, unwinding and giving thoughts to the past eventful year. On behalf of Elinar and myself, I wish all our customers, partners, and personnel a peaceful Christmas time and a happy new year 2021.
-Mikko Hörkkö, CEO
