A Network Operations Center (NOC) is a location from which IT support technicians can supervise, monitor, and maintain client networks and infrastructure. Because they act as a central nervous system for many organizations, NOCs are typically located in a central physical location. The global coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic is an unprecedented situation that is creating new challenges for everyone—and that includes NOCs.

COVID-19 is forcing many teams into crisis mode, as they rush to meet customer and employee needs in our new socially distanced reality. Organizations with experienced crisis management teams are urgently adding capacity and adapting to distributed working models. And those who haven’t built crisis response teams before are grappling with how to rapidly train employees and get access to the right tools.

Social distancing measures, like remote working, school closures, and “shelter in place” have driven us onto the Internet more than ever before, creating unprecedented demand for a range of digital services from companies, many of whom weren’t set up for this type of pressure. As a digital operations company, we help teams ensure their websites and apps are running perfectly and partner with over 12,000 organizations around the world—from start-ups to 58 of the Fortune 100.

Yesterday, we released our earnings during an unprecedented time for society and the market. One of the things I noticed was the collective empathy we experienced as we talked to different teams and companies in preparation, and in our analyst call backs, where to a person, everyone kicked off their call by wishing each other good health and safety. It reminded me that when we are all in this together, not only are great things possible, but it also feels less daunting and more manageable.

PagerDuty is known as the platform for driving real-time work, and with the current global spread of COVID-19, many of our customers have been asking how we leverage PagerDuty internally to intelligently coordinate a response to emergency situations (such as this) as they arise. PagerDuty customers primarily leverage our platform for coordinating an incident response process when technical issues happen, such as a bad deployment, network degradation or failed hardware.

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.

As COVID-19 (novel coronavirus) cases start to challenge norms around what makes a healthy and safe workplace, more and more companies are leaning in or fully jumping in to embracing remote work. At PagerDuty, over 20% of our workforce is remote—so we are well set up to distribute if the time comes. Beyond the logistical aspects, we also have a strong culture of inclusivity when it comes to remote colleagues.

Unplanned work is on the rise—and most companies are unprepared for it. That’s according to the recent “State of Unplanned Work Report 2020,” which surveyed 1,316 people across North America and the EMEA and APJ regions. The survey focused on identifying current practices and challenges of responding to customer-impacting technology issues.

Most of us are familiar with the traditional farms that have existed since humans learned to sow and harvest crops—these farms have provided us with food for centuries. And for a long time, due to the lack of refrigeration and other technology, humans lived near their food sources. But industrialization has also led to centralization of farming systems, with farms getting larger and further from consumers and with distributors depending on preservatives or refrigeration to extend shelf life.

IT industry research has repeatedly shown that DevOps-oriented teams that can ship software quickly and effectively routinely outperform their slower counterparts in terms of company profitability, market share, and just about every competitive business metric that matters. That sort of success comes from restructuring teams in ways that empower them to move faster and get closer to their customers.