Our world is increasingly digital and virtual! This has many benefits, but equally, it has many challenges. 

•  For instance, virtual work gives flexibility and helps people work from anywhere. At the same time, the question every salesperson is asking is, how do you build relationships and trust in a world that is so virtual? 
•  While teachers at one level are asking, how do we keep students engaged through virtual classes? Skills-based courses have a far more significant challenge. Teaching skills based on physical activities such as carpentry, plumbing, design, drawing, learning a new instrument are challenging through zoom classes. 

There is almost no area of the company – customer or teacher-learner interaction that remains untouched by these issues. Similar challenges exist in the areas of customer engagement, product launches and more.

Perhaps the answers to many of these conundrums lie in technology and enabling tools too. Artificial intelligence, machine learning, cloud solutions, internet of things are not merely buzzwords but an essential aspect of the new businesses of the future and while they may sometimes sound daunting, they could help in many unique ways. An essential part of today and tomorrows technologies will be cloud-based infrastructure. For instance

•  If the office or educational institution is closed or is going to operate in a mixed-mode, then the technology model will adapt to offer business or learning applications wherever the user may be. 
•  If a business professional cannot fly to meet clients or if a student needs to learn skills that were taught in only classroom mode, the cloud will offer an opportunity to rethink the approach. 
•  The cloud will help build new experiences for the business through applications like product catalogues that can be connected to CRM systems, ship a music instrument to a student who wants to learn and this is in turn connected via the cloud to the learning management system of the educational institution. 

This is just a tip of the iceberg; you will soon see rapid changes in every aspect of our lives, driven by the cloud.