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Announcing the lockdown of the UK in response to the threat posed by the Covid-19 coronavirus in a televised address at 8.30pm on 23 March 2020, UK prime minister Boris Johnson took just a few minutes to usher in a (hopefully temporary) new way of living – and working – for more than 60 million people. In that moment, the arguments that many in the IT industry had been making around the potential for home working over the past few years suddenly became indisputable. But despite all the evangelical work undertaken by some, how prepared was the UK for a shift to home working? “Globally, the UK is one of the least prepared countries to introduce a mass work-from-home strategy,” states Jason Howells, director international at Barracuda MSP. He cites a recent study by Leesman which found 55% of UK respondents “had little or no experience of working from home”. The Covid-19 pandemic has brought that into sharp relief, with more and more businesses forced to rely on home working – or no work at all. Howells believes resellers “have a ...