In a pandemic, it’s critical for government agencies and healthcare providers to mobilize quickly. Washington State is ground zero in the United States for COVID-19 where the first US deaths were reported in February 2019, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Since then the disease has spread to nearly every state in the country, and is now a global pandemic. Health officials have been working around the clock to contain the virus.

Today ServiceNow announced a customer care plan to support our public and private sector customers in managing the COVID-19 pandemic. As part of this effort, we’re announcing four new community apps to help our customers, including government agencies and enterprises, manage complex emergency response workflows. These apps are now available at servicenow.com/crisisresponse for customers to access free of charge through September 30, 2020.

Let’s start with a simple picture and a question. You are involved in the day-to-day running of a complex and hybrid cloud of IT systems and applications. These systems, technologies, applications, processes and other platforms perform a number of critical business functions.

So your organization has decided to move to the cloud. Smart move! Many companies today are either making the move to the cloud or have already made it. According to RightScale’s 2019 State of the Cloud Survey, 94% of IT professionals say their companies use the cloud. Over 90% is public cloud. Gartner predicts that public cloud revenue will increase by 17% in 2020. The biggest percentage increase is expected with IaaS. So, you’re clearly not alone.

This blog post is an adaptation of a talk I gave at the Cloud Native meetup in Birmingham in the UK in February 2020. It details the advantages of k3s, a lightweight Kubernetes distribution we have deployed as part of a managed Kubernetes service. Developed by Rancher Labs, k3s allows for quick deployments for testing, CI/CD runs and getting to grips with Kubernetes without having to commit to large-scale infrastructure and the costs that would bring.

Five worthy reads is a regular column on five noteworthy items we’ve discovered while researching trending and timeless topics. This week, we explore the concept of alternative data.

Are you on DEV? Did you know that it's open-source, and that it uses Honeybadger? We just launched a new feature to help communities like DEV fix more errors together! Software development is more fun with friends; that's why we've built tons of collaboration features into Honeybadger over the years, making it easier for teams to fix errors. Recently the team at DEV emailed us with a feature request: could we make it easier to involve the broader DEV open source community in the error-fixing process?

Better communication at work is the answer. Ok, maybe not THE answer… but it’s close. Fact is, it’s almost always step number one when addressing persistent issues that hold you back, as well as what helps you move from good to great. Better communication increases understanding, fosters trust, and stands out as the essential ingredient for getting things done. It’s not a silver bullet, it’s silver buckshot.

As reported cases of novel coronavirus (COVID-19) continue to rise around the world, many companies are increasingly shifting to using remote work as a way of minimizing exposure for their workforce. But even if some of these companies have been remote-friendly in the past, many organizations are currently struggling to figure out how to shift their operations to becoming entirely remote.

Companies all across the world are responding to the COVID-19 crisis by taking every precaution to limit its impact on the lives of employees and customers. The virus has created a ripple effect impacting everything from a visit to the local grocery store to countless conference cancellations. And the world became aware of this crisis only a little over a month ago. Tech companies have responded by asking, and even requiring, employees to work remotely.