Trends in Collaboration, Communities, Conferencing, and Events

Trends in Collaboration, Communities, Conferencing, and Events

This IDC Perspective looks at the continued evolution and growth of collaborative platforms including team collaboration applications, conferencing, enterprise communities, and virtual events, with a focus on what the enterprise needs to consider when moving forward. Specifically, this document brings together these seemingly distinct product types because they comprise an emerging pattern of social business that, despite economic headwinds, are increasingly required to differentiate companies regardless to whom they sell. There is now a need for robust, integrated, collaborative applications stack.The rise of wide-ranging digital transformation collaborative applications has changed how people work, where they work, how they are deemed present at work, how they attend events, and even how work is done and measured. Core to these changes is the need for every company to be a technology-first company with a focus on customer experience (CX) and the intertwined employee experience (EX) and workforce experience. CX and EX are two sides of the same coin. We are on the "on-ramp" to an array of technological changes that are as much about communications, collaboration, personalization, and experience as they are about innovation and productivity."The internet is a place where we meet, collaborate, and innovate," according to Wayne Kurtzman, vice president of IDC's Collaboration, Communities, and Conferencing practice. "Collaborative, community and conferencing applications are evolving to enable a digital enterprise to recreate itself and identify new revenue streams. Virtual events are creating a new world of learning and meeting. The challenge for the enterprise and its leadership is, to paraphrase Alvin Toffler, 'to learn, unlearn, and relearn' how businesses work in this new digital era."

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