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Cashing in on Collaboration By Gerald Baldino As companies are re-thinking how employees should exchange ideas and move projects forward, collaboration is now a major focal point across all verticals CORE COMMUNICATIONS A ccording to Research and Markets, the global col- laboration software market is expected to reach $23 billion in 2020, up from $8.9 billion in 2019. This is a market that was already growing considerably before the pandemic and is now accelerating even more — presenting a great op- portunity for agents who can capital- ize on demand. It helps, too, that most businesses — especially large companies — are already using collaboration applica- tions in some form or another. A recent study from Unify Square, conducted in February, found that about 90 percent of enterprises now use some form of collaboration platform for internal com- munications, with the most preferred platforms including Microsoft Teams (31 percent), Skype for Business (27 percent) and Google Chat (21 per- cent). Other popular platforms included Cisco WebEx Teams, Zoom and Slack. Unify’s study also provided in- sight into how employees are us- ing collaboration applications. The majority (62 percent) are using col- laboration applications for chat and messaging, while 31 percent are us- ing them for one-to-one phone calls. Other top use cases included video conferencing (30 percent), project management (18 percent) and time tracking (15 percent). As Unify pointed out, we are now also seeing the merger of unified communications (UC) and work- stream collaboration (WSC), which is a class of products that help teams execute projects. “While UC integrates telephony, digital meeting solutions, IM, email and voicemail, WSC expands upon that,” explained Unify. Workstream collaboration ap- plications can deliver benefits that would typically be found in a UC platform, such as video conferenc- ing and cloud telephony, along with advanced features including persis- tent chat for ongoing, topic-based discussions. They can also enable awareness and discovery functional- ity and group collaboration, while integrating with third-party applica- tions and platforms. These applica- tions are usually highly scalable and enable persistent file sharing and document management. Users’ WSC Applications of Choice Teams 31% Skype for Business 27% Google Chat 21% GoTo Meeting 16% Cisco WebEx Teams 15% Zoom 13% Slack 8% Workplace 8% Source: Unify Square 24 CHANNEL VISION | July - August, 2020