By: Scott St. John, Pipeline
On Tuesday, December 8th, 2020 Margaret Keenan of Britain became the first person in the world to
receive the
Pfizer-BioNtech COVID-19 vaccine outside of clinical trials. This is the end, or at least the beginning of the end, of a very long and arduous journey.
If nothing else, this marks a new beginning, with tens of millions of vaccine doses of the Pfizer-BioNtech vaccine becoming publicly available right away, multitudes more to follow as production
continues to increase, and a half-dozen other vaccines come to market beyond that. The vaccine has already been shipped and stockpiled around the world. The distribution chains have been primed,
prioritization groups defined, and the vaccine promotional campaigns have already begun. In the US, the FDA is expected to grant emergency-use authorization as soon as tomorrow and,
according Pfizer's CEO, the vaccine would be ready to ship "within
hours."
As I wrote in my
Letter from the Editor last
month, it will take time to bridge from now until we reach a state of wide-spread immunity to this horrible disease that has plagued us for so long. But it's time to start taking stock
and planning for the future, which inevitably will occur. Some things will continue, and may never go back to the way they were before. Others, will dynamically shift as the world
returns to normal in a post-COVID world. But one thing is certain, life will return to some resemblance of normal – and the time to start planning for it is now. Which is why this issue of
Pipeline is so important.
In this issue of
Pipeline, we take a look at the top 2020 tech trends, and look ahead to the new year. Juniper Research shares their insights on the
Top 2021 Tech Trends, ETSI and 3GPPP give us
the first look at 6G, and Avertium looks at
cybersecurity best practices for remote workers. Cisco also explores
cybersecurity as a key enabler for enterprise resiliency, Microsoft
gets serious
about cloud adoption, Evolving Systems explores how
5G will unlock value through
digital adoption, and Altran tells us how
5G will drive IoT Growth in 2021. Recently
published author, Ulla Koivukoski shares her perspective on the
Art of Creating Impact,
Ribbon Communications explores
the importance of fiber for next generation services, and our
own Dr. Cummings presents his
Technology Manifest Destiny. All this plus, the latest
industry news and
more.