Communication is key.
Since the start of the crisis, tools focused on communication have been in the forefront of business needs and this demand was quickly addressed.
Leaders like Zoom, Cisco Webex, Google Meet and Microsoft Teams, to name a few, have all responded actively to the strong increase in daily users.
Zoom for instance saw its daily participants jump from 10 million a year ago to over 300 million.
From its latest earnings result, Microsoft revealed an increase of over 50% of its Teams platform usage. Over the course of 6 months, daily active users went from 75 to 115 million.
These astonishing numbers helped trigger a round of M&A to stay competitive. We saw Zoom addressing its security flaws when it acquired end-to-end encryption specialist Keybase. Verizon also jumped onboard after buying BlueJeans.
This trend is seen not only in videoconference apps but also in the wider remote-working-tool universe. After Adobe announced the acquisition of Workfront for $1.5 billion, Salesforce made the headlines, agreeing to buy Slack for a massive $27.7 billion. The latter is the biggest bet of its kind on this recent acquisition streak and Salesforce’s largest deal ever.
That’s a strong statement!
What does all of that mean? These large-scale investments not only target today’s demand but also reflect a longer-term view on work dynamic expectations. A long-term investment for a long-term shift.
Remote working is now part of the corporate culture! It’s a great way to generate competitive advantage in your industry. It reduces cost and increases diversity.
Thanks to the latest business innovations, communication tools are now all over for you to choose from; no matter your size or the industry you are focused on.
We can reasonably expect this round of asset consolidation to continue in the next months and even years. As more resources are allocated to it, we will see current options being improved and new ones being offered.
Will all of those deals result as profitable as individually expected? Only time will tell. But one thing is certain, the work-from-home trend is here to stay.
Is your organisation ready to take advantage of it?
