Microsoft, Cisco, And Zoom Are Now The Big Three For Video

Since the COVID-19 pandemic began to take hold across the globe, companies and organizations of all sizes have had to adapt to moving the vast majority of their workforce to work from home situations. But how are companies adapting to the new work from home normal?

Austin, TX-based Unified Communications (UC) monitoring and analytics company Vyopta has recently released the results of a recent survey focused on how organizations have adapted to remote work and their plans for the future.

The survey, The Next Phase of Remote Work: Managing UC and Workspaces in the Next Phase of the Pandemic, was carried out in July and polled respondents who work for organizations with more than 1,000 employees. All manage, oversee, or advise UC, technology budget, and/or facilities planning or management for their company.

The survey showed that video is now the new normal. Over two out of three (68%) of companies plan to hold meetings either entirely over video or give participants the option to join by video.

UCaaS (Unified Communications as a Service) wins big overall. Four out of five (80%) of companies primarily relied on UCaaS to quickly scale up their remote workforce.

Microsoft, Cisco, and Zoom are now "The Big Three" in videoconferencing. Microsoft was ranked as the top video collaboration company among enterprises, whereas Cisco and Zoom ranked No. 2 and No. 3.

Multi-vendor UC environments are standard across businesses. About two-thirds of enterprises use two or more video collaboration technology vendors.

Almost four in five (78%) of respondents rated their video quality was very good or fantastic -- they either never had any issues or had infrequent issues.

One in five (20%) of respondents faced many issues but employees were able to problem-solve. Only 2% described their video quality as bad with frequent quality problems that severely impacted productivity.

Enterprises reported dealing with video and voice quality problems. Over one in four (27%) of respondents in the largest enterprises reported issues with the quality of video service and almost three out of four (73%) reported voice service issues since the start of the pandemic.

Quality is king. Over three in four (77%) of respondents feel that improving video quality of service for employees going forward is important or extremely important.

Enterprises plan to reduce real estate. Almost 60% of enterprises plan to change their office space requirements, with about 50% reducing office space, and 10% providing extra space for social distancing.

Alfredo Ramirez, president and CEO of Vyopta, said: 

"Ensuring a high-quality collaboration experience will continue to gain importance as some employees begin to ease back into the office while others continue to work from home. Remote work is here to stay."

You don't need to live in built-up areas anymore. You can be anywhere where you can get Internet access and be productive -- even over mobile data. for now, mobile connections over video will have to do.

One day, however, we will have to go back to experiencing the human connection in the office. When that will be is anyone's guess.