COVID-19 outbreak sees rise in demand for collaboration platforms

Work collaboration platforms such as Microsoft Teams, Zoom and Slack have seen a huge increase in users as more employees work from home.
By: | March 24, 2020
Topics: Digital Transformation | Employee Experience | HR Technology | News | Professional Development

We are seeing the biggest work-from-home exercise in recent times due to the COVID-19 outbreak. And that has led to a huge spike in demand for work collaboration platforms as employees rely on them to ensure productivity and communication.

Microsoft Teams has seen their daily users more than doubled from 20 million in November last year to 44 million users as of March 18. Microsoft has also recently unlocked a number of premium features for users of the free service due to the rise in work-from-home workers.

READ: Remote working gains global traction due to COVID-19

Meanwhile, its competitor Slack has added 7,000 new paid customers from February 1 to March 18, which represents about 40% increase over each of its previous two fiscal quarters, when it had added about 5,000 new paid customers per quarter.

Another work collaboration platform Zoom has seen its user base grew by 67% since early January, according to data from Apptopia.

Global downloads of mobile apps linked to these work conferencing platforms have also seen a five-fold increase.

There were 6.7 million downloads across the App Store and Google Play in the first week of March for apps such as Tencent Conference, WeChat Work, Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Slack. That is compared to 1.4 million downloads in the first week of January, according to app analytics firm Sensor Tower.

And with the pandemic showing little signs of slowing, the demand for work collaboration platforms will only continue to increase.