Shelling out for collaboration software rocketed through the Covid-19 pandemic as remote work became typical for many businesses, and investments are set remain high as offices commence to reopen even.

Global collaboration software spending reached $22.6 billion in 2020, in accordance with an IDC report , a rise of 32.9% in comparison to 2019. Year of double-digit it had been the fourth successive, year-on-year growth, in accordance with IDC.

The five largest collaboration software vendors by revenue – Microsoft, Google, Zoom, Slack and cisco – accounted for 64.2% of the marketplace, up 4% from the prior year. The very best 20 vendors saw 40% annual revenue growth, typically, the year during, though Zoom outpaced the marketplace with a 227.1% increase.

A number of factors will probably donate to continued growth, said Wayne Kurtzman, research director at IDC and the report’s author. Companies are actually more aware of the business enterprise value of collaboration tools that enable streamlined internal communications and better employee efficiency. The various tools may also offer greater insight into information and operations flow in a organization. And closer integration of collaboration software with business apps, such as for example CRM platforms, can help improve customer outcomes, he said.

New avenues of collaboration will spur business demand, Kurtzman said, as partners and customers find they are able to effectively communicate more. Slack and Microsoft Teams  have opened their respective team chat apps to external collaboration, for example, with the introduction of shared channels.

“Collaboration with external users provide[s] greater insights to project teams and enable companies to become more attentive to customer and partner needs,” said Kurtzman. “This total results in greater loyalty to the business and better customer experience.”

The expansion of collaboration software to underserved sets of frontline previously, customer-facing employees will drive spending.

Further ahead, IDC expects emerging collaboration technologies shall boost revenues for a number of vendors. This includes efforts to generate virtual environments for remote collaboration, as seen with famous brands Microsoft’s HoloLens and Facebook’s Horizon Workrooms and the replacement of “talking head” video feeds with avatars that build relationships each other.

“’Metaverse’ solutions will be built-into the conferencing, team community and collaboration space in future,” he said.

A  recent Gartner report also reveal the extent of collaboration software adoption through the pandemic.

Almost 80% of workers now use collaboration software within their jobs, from just over 1 / 2 of workers in 2019 up, in accordance with findings from Gartner’s Digital Worker Experience Survey. That amounted to a 44% upsurge in use. Through the same period, the adoption of storage and sharing tools rose by 16%, and real-time mobile messaging apps use grew by 7%.

The growth was driven by the rapid switch to video and audio meetings through the pandemic: Gartner’s research also found, and in addition, that the amount of in-person meetings dropped from 63% in 2019 to 33% in 2021. Thiatshift is likely to continue, with only 25% of meetings to be completed in-person by 2024; many businesses plan “hybrid” remote work strategies in the years ahead.