COVID-19 impact: ‘Work Remotely’ trend creates opportunities for Virtual Meeting

23 July 2020: The COVID-19 crisis has made remote work and hybrid work the new norm. So, it is but natural that a recent ‘Post-pandemic Growth Opportunity Analysis’ carried out by Frost & Sullivan on the ‘Meetings Market’ estimates that the number of remote workers, post-COVID-19 will be a whopping 500% higher compared to the pre-pandemic number. The number of video meeting licenses is projected to increase at a CAGR of 24.6% between 2019 and 2025, compared to a pre-pandemic forecast of 17.2%.

Roopam Jain, Senior Industry Director, ICT, Frost & Sullivan, says that during the pandemic and its immediate aftermath, in-office presence will be needs-based, and offices will transform from being ‘productivity centers’ to being sites for employee engagement, collaboration, and building relationships.

She adds: “The shift to remote work represents a transformative moment for the meetings market and unveils tremendous growth opportunities for vendors that can differentiate on better quality and more scalable, manageable, and secure cloud services and devices that ensure an optimal meeting experience, regardless of where users work.”

According to Jain Video meetings will be a de facto expectation for business communications in the future, leading to a rapid rise in usage. Growth in the future will primarily come from all-in-one, easy-to-use devices and service bundles for personal collaboration. She also noted that rampant free offerings during the pandemic will generate an immense base of free users, providing vendors with the opportunity to convert them to paid accounts in the future. “The ability to gracefully wean users off of free services into a paid engagement will ultimately determine if providers will see a sustained revenue impact from the upsurge in user demand.”