Latest Findings: Enterprise Collaboration App Sprawl Continued in 2020

The year 2020 would be known as the year of “Zoom meetings”. In a year that witnessed a massive uptick in the volume of usage of collaboration software for remote workplace management, it was forecasted that the enterprise suites would continue to evolve further. Toward the end of the year, Salesforce acquired Slack, and then Microsoft announced a partnership with SAP to protect their business interests in LinkedIn and Skype. Also, last month Cisco acquired Wrike. The technology stacks continue to be disrupted as Zoom registered its best-ever year of productivity and revenue generation in 2020.

According to Aternity’s “The Global Remote Work Productivity Tracker”, we would continue to see the rise of collaborative apps in the enterprise segment. The report tracker found two reasons driving this trend –

1. Companies would continue to operate in ‘work-from-home’ mode unless vaccines are available in broader distribution;
2. These apps are means to ensure teams and individuals remain productive while using these tools and platforms for various operations.

Key takeaways of the report include:

– The US w************* population dropped by 5% in December (79%) compared to its peak percentage in mid-March / early April

– Microsoft users growth exploded by close to 4000 percentage (3891%); Zoom users grew by 1788% from base usage in February 2020

– Microsoft Skype for Business witnessed a dramatic reversal in its growth, as it declined 63% by December since March 2020

– Zoom tripled its share to 6.9%; Slack and Webex doubled their shares to 4.9%

The report by Aterntity didn’t mention about the launch of many new collaborative suites, like Google Workspace and Salesforce-Workday partnerships.

The Volume 7 report by Aternity however provided readers with recommendations for effectively managing collaborative app sprawl in the hybrid remote work environment.

Source: Aternity