The past 12 months have been anything if not interesting both across the world and specifically across the cloud and SDN ecosystem. That connection included issues surrounding social injustice, the COVID-19 pandemic, and cybersecurity, all of which were prominently detailed this year.

Normally, I would be looking to put together a lighthearted recap of the year that was, and then throw out some equally ridiculous predictions for the year ahead. But the weight of just these three issues alone have pushed that attempt to the side.

And if 2020 taught me anything it’s that predicting what’s going to happen in the future is nearly pointless. Sure, predictions are great ways to prop up a technology or company – and help fill in that story list – but there are just way too many variables even outside of the random pandemic to make such efforts really worthwhile.

The most pressing of these issues was the challenge of social injustice that (again) came to a head in 2020. The incidents that led to this year’s uprising have been a plague on society since the beginning of time, and continue to be a blight on our attempts to become more civilized.

The murder of George Floyd at the hands of the Minneapolis Police Department was the continuation of events that had, for the most part, been quickly usurped in the public consciousness by far less important issues. Thankfully, this event struck a deeper chord.

Seeing groups of people most impacted by these events both in gender and race rise up and say enough was and is great to see. However, it was also disheartening that the incidents that instigated this movement continue.

Closer to home, a number of high-tech firms threw their support behind these causes, including real actions that involved more than a tweet of support. Financial contributions and action flowed from many organizations tied to reversing, or at least stemming, this tide of hate. This is notable, and as many have said it’s important to remember how organizations and people have reacted and continue to react to these issues.

It’s on all of us to not let these events get pushed aside and to remain focused on doing all we can to help eliminate social injustice.

That focus is being stressed by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic that has thrown another significant challenge onto the world. The speed and depth in which something that many knew was inevitable has spread across the globe and upended how the world works has been shocking.

The politicalization of the pandemic has not helped in terms of how it’s been dealt with, but that is not an excuse. Regardless of how you want to view COVID-19, the ability for reason and logic to be thrown out the window has left a disturbing trail in its wake.

It has been hard to cover the reaction by technology firms to the pandemic as they balance their capitalistic foundations with the social needs of their employees. Unlike past financial disasters that were manmade and thus easier to judge how companies reacted, this one sideswiped just about everyone.

While millions of people have died around the world, and tens of millions more have been impacted to some extent, the financial institutions that act as barometers about the health of capitalism have continued to prosper. It’s great that so many firms have been able to secure a financial windfall during this time, but what message does that send?

On the bright side, I guess it can be a beam of hope that despite everything that is happening, these events won’t completely upend the success(?) that came before them. However, the optics of those prospering while others suffer is hard to ignore.

Also hard to ignore has been the escalation of cyberattacks that continue to undermine any thought that securing digital networks is possible. It seemed that barely a week went by this year that vulnerability was not been found or exploited.

The most prominent was also the most recent: the supply chain attack of SolarWinds’ Orion Platform. Most disturbing was that these attacks seemed to go beyond just a rogue set of hackers looking to steal information and instead pushed to shake the public’s confidence in technology and government.

Despite the best efforts by those looking to secure digital networks, the reward for successfully attacking those networks remains too great. This is an issue that unfortunately will not go away and requires a new model to deal with the impact.

I know many people are throwing around the idea that we just need to get out of 2020 and everything will be good again. I typically don’t take that idea too seriously as I know it’s most often in jest. But, my hope is that as the calendar year turns that people increase their vigilance in dealing with these issues instead of letting their guard down.

These issues are too big and too important to just assume they will fix themselves. I hope we can come out of 2020 not thankful that the year is over, but thankful that the past 12 months provided us with a reminder of what’s important and what we need to continue to focus on moving forward.