Digital Lifescapes

When you hire qualified talent for a key role and trust them to perform, you'll likely achieve the best outcome. Skilled and experienced people will deliver results, regardless of the challenges. That's a key lesson learned from the pandemic experience as most knowledge workers were asked to work from their homes. However, some resist returning to an open-plan office. It's unacceptable. Meanwhile, forward-thinking leaders decided a "return to normal" is undesirable, and in hindsight, everyone should aspire to be more accomodating than before. Therefore, location flexibility is okay. Hybrid Workforce Market Development How will people adapt to these changes? They'll apply the modern IT tools at their disposal. They'll learn new skills and thrive. Nearly 80 percent of employees are now successfully using online collaboration tools for work in 2021 -- that's up from just over half of workers in 2019, according to the latest market study by Gartner. This g...

Modern business communication and collaboration solutions are an essential platform for a distributed workforce. The global COVID-19 pandemic has brought these platforms to the forefront of digital transformation. Together, they'll form a foundation for many 'digital workspace' deployments. These multifaceted offerings aren't deployed because they're the best technology. They're used to drive meaningful advances in employee productivity, agility, and flexibility that are proven to help achieve desired business outcomes. The Unified Communications & Collaboration (UC&C) market grew 29.2 percent year-over-year and 7.1 percent quarter-over-quarter to reach $13.1 billion in the fourth quarter of 2020 (4Q20), according to the latest worldwide market study by International Data Corporation (IDC). IT vendor revenue growth was also up by an impressive 24.9 percent for the full year of 2020 to reach $47.2 billion. Regardless, not all the IT vendors benefited from...

How agile organizations enable online communication and collaboration for their distributed workforce is top of mind for most senior executives today. More savvy CEOs, across all industries, have rapidly increased investments in IT systems and services that empower employees to work from anywhere. The global unified communications & collaboration (UC&C) market grew 26.7 percent year-over-year and 6.6 percent quarter-over-quarter to $12.2 billion in the third quarter of 2020 (3Q20), according to the latest worldwide market study by International Data Corporation (IDC). As enterprise leaders moved their teams from the crisis phase to the recovery phase, in response to the global COVID-19 pandemic, worldwide growth of UC&C applications was driven by organizations across all business types and sizes. Unified Communications Market Development The IDC study uncovered a special interest in cloud-based solutions for voice, video, messaging, and collaboration for driving initiatives...

Within the business-to-business (B2B) realm, large enterprise corporate events are often a major component of the marketing organization's operating budget. These events are frequently held at resort hotels or conference centers in popular destinations, such as Las Vegas. They're very expensive to produce. What are the typical event goals? How does this investment deliver results? In many cases, these events are funded as 'sales progression' activities. Meaning, the company invites key contacts from their existing customers that they know are already likely to purchase products and services. In reality, there's very little 'selling' that takes place. More often than not, the event execution actually revolves around scheduled hospitality (meals, cocktails, and entertainment) rather than a definitive business objective. Keynote sessions set the tone for the remainder of the event. Education and certification opportunities are sometimes offered to attende...

Digital data growth is already an ongoing challenge for many enterprise organizations across the globe. That said, the global pandemic has accelerated the digital data deluge, with a surge in video-based content, and other emerging trends that will fuel additional growth in 2020 and 2021. More than 59 zettabytes (ZB) of data will be created, captured, copied, and consumed in the world this year, according to the latest worldwide market study by International Data Corporation (IDC). The COVID-19 pandemic is contributing to this growth by causing an increase in the number of remote employees, and that's fueled more adoption of video conferencing applications and a significant increase in streaming video webcasts or events. Digital Data Analytics Market Development IDC measures the amount of data created and consumed in the world each year. The ratio of unique data (created and captured) to replicated data (copied and consumed) is roughly 1:9 -- but the trend is a slow migrati...

I recall when some of the first videoconferencing systems were installed in multinational enterprises across America, more than two decades ago. Since that time, there have been many new developments in video communication-related technologies and associated services. The introduction of Telepresence was a significant advancement. However, the arrival of software app and web-based services -- such as Microsoft Skype and Google Hangouts -- have raised expectations for online collaboration ease-of-use and transformed how video meetings are conducted across the public Internet. In the first quarter of 2016 (Q1 2016), video conferencing revenue declined 22 percent quarter-over-quarter to $701 million due to lower seasonal demand, according the the latest worldwide market study by IHS Technology . Video Communication Market Development Videoconferencing revenue is also trending down slightly on a year-over-year basis, primarily due to decreases in infrastructure sales. Demand for...

Why travel to meet with employees and vendor partners when you can just as easily interact with them via online video communication? Whatever motivates people to endure airline departure delays and airport security lines, just so they can attend internal business meetings, it clearly isn't their increased productivity. Enterprise videoconferencing and telepresence systems market showed mixed results in the first quarter of 2016 (1Q16), with overall videoconferencing equipment revenue decreasing 21.1 percent quarter over quarter, but increasing 2.3 percent year over year, according to the latest study by International Data Corporation (IDC). The total worldwide enterprise video equipment revenue in 1Q16 was over $495 million -- that's down from about $628 million in 4Q15. The total number of videoconferencing units sold in 1Q16 (101,391) decreased 8.0 percent quarter over quarter, but increased 9.9 percent compared to 1Q15. "Some mixed news for the worldwide enterpris...

Applications for a variety of video-based communication and collaboration use-cases have grown significantly over the last decade. Overall market adoption has been fueled by free services -- such as Microsoft Skype and Google Hangouts -- which enables more people to become familiar with the process of impromptu or scheduled online face-to-face meetings. That being said, there are still issues with market shifts that increase the volatility for vendors of enterprise products and services. According to the latest worldwide market study by International Data Corporation (IDC ), there were mixed results in the third quarter of 2015 (3Q15) with overall videoconferencing equipment revenue increasing 0.8 percent quarter over quarter but declining -3.3 percent year over year. The total worldwide enterprise video equipment market revenue in 3Q15 was over $511 million -- that's up from $507 million in 2Q15. The total number of videoconferencing units sold in 3Q15 decreased both quarter...