CW+ Premium Content/Computer Weekly

Although communication and collaboration platforms have been around for years in various forms, their adoption has inevitably gone through the roof since Covid-19 lockdowns were implemented around the world. On the one hand, many employers had little choice but to turn to such technology as, in many instances, their entire workforce was forced to work from home overnight. This meant a way of replacing site-based interaction was required for businesses to continue functioning. On the other hand, says Lee Evans, head of pre-sales at technology distributor Westcon, the fact that, unlike the systems of old, this software is now affordable, cloud-based and easy for users to adopt, meant that organisations moved to it in droves simply “because they could”. This situation has seen the number of daily users of collaboration platform Microsoft Teams, for example, jump from 20 million in January this year to 44 million in March. The number of individuals using Zoom for video and audio meetings, meanwhile, has leapt from 10 million in ...