Dear Partners, 

We have been waiting for more than a year for an end to this pandemic that has brought damage to our health systems, endangered our families’ well-being, threatened our jobs and businesses and caused our economy to contract.

We were elated to hear that finally, several pharmaceutical companies had been able to develop vaccines against COVID-19. We knew it was just a matter of time before these vaccines found their way to the Philippines.

They are coming in trickles, but if we choose to look at the bright side, at least they are here. As of this week, some 8.3 million doses of vaccines have arrived. Some 1.2 million Filipinos have been fully vaccinated while 4 million have received their first dose. 

I hope you belong to either those fully vaccinated or, at the very least, those who have received their first dose. This month of June, I believe more vaccines will arrive and the inoculations will now be open to the A4 category — economic frontliners — after the first three priority groups of medical frontliners, senior citizens and those with comorbidities have been given their shot. 

We need to achieve herd immunity at the soonest possible time.  It is the only way we can truly and sustainably restore economic activity. We can’t be staying home or keeping our social and business interactions to a minimum out of fear of this virus. We have to go back out there and resume our routines — working and interacting with colleagues and partners, talking strategy and bouncing off ideas with them, sharing meals with the people who matter to us, talking over big and small decisions, all face to face. 

It’s what makes us human. And thriving. And alive.

Cloud technology has provided tremendous benefit during the time we had no choice but to stay home for our own safety. It allowed us to do our work and from the safety of the four walls of our homes. Our integrated systems enabled us to keep track of our business.

But we cannot wait to optimize the use of cloud technology in tandem with the practices and in-the-flesh interactions we have been used to for many years before this pandemic.  

This is the new normal everybody has been talking about: a hybrid of work arrangements that would make us most productive and most informed, and when we can do our work from anywhere because we need to be someplace else or conserve our energy for strategic moves.

Cloud technology, after all, is there exactly to provide people with options on how best they can do their work.  It is not just for when you have no choice because you are locked down. 

So let’s get vaccinated — and then get back to real business.

Keep Safe!

Martin