Cisco Webex Hosted 20 Billion Meeting Minutes in April

We took a look at other unified communications and collaboration company usage, too

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Cisco April Usage Stats
CollaborationInsights

Published: May 11, 2020

Ian Taylor Editor

Ian Taylor

Editor

With April now behind us, Cisco reached out and told me its popular Webex platform hosted over 20 billion meeting minutes during the month. When you compare this to the 14 billion meeting minutes Webex hosted in March, the number is significantly higher. It is also more than double that of February, I’m told.

Collaboration software developer Cisco told me last month, it hosted almost the entire population of the United States on its Webex platform, reporting 324 million Webex users in March. Cisco said it saw close to 240,000 online sign-ups in 24 hours in March. And in one day, it hosted over four million meetings.

‘Google Meet,’ Google’s teleconferencing service, reported adding three million users per day in April. This is up from two million per day earlier this month. Announced by Google CEO, Sundar Pichai, during the company’s first-quarter earnings call, the tremendous growth could be driven by universities, startups, and others flocking to free and affordable video conferencing alternatives to platforms like Microsoft Teams and Zoom. He added during the call:

“Last week, we surpassed a significant milestone, and we are now adding roughly three million new users each day”

“We’ve seen a thirty-fold increase in usage since January 2020, and now have over 100 million daily ‘Meet’ conference participants.”

Formerly known as ‘Google Hangouts,’ the platform made its debut in 2013. Today, following a fresh re-brand, ‘Meet’ is still a part of Google’s G Suite productivity apps. The company released a set of free features, many advanced and Google rolled out free access to many of these features for an extended period, tools like noise-cancellation, until the end of September.

Sundar Pichai
Sundar Pichai

I reached out to Microsoft to inquire about usage stats for its popular Microsoft Teams collaboration app, and a spokesperson for the company told me: “We don’t have a set cadence for when we disclose usage statistics for Microsoft 365, so we don’t have April usage figures to share for Teams.” The collaboration giant, did, however, recently announce it reached 75 million daily active users, catapulting the company light-years ahead of its self-proclaimed competitor, Slack, which boasts 13 million daily active users.

A recent data analysis by vendor-agnostic Vyopta show, that as UCaaS providers ramp up services and capacities at record paces, these companies are now experiencing more significant rises in call quality issues than on-premises solutions.

chart_quality_jan-apr_042120
Vyopta call quality Index

 

The company found, as video meetings become more mainstream, the average number of meeting participants in video calls at large enterprises has increased nearly 5x since the start of the year. It does seem that it was another great month for those in the collaboration business.

chart_CV_usageJan-Apr_042020

As more remote workers get acquainted with their newfound realities, it is paramount they have the best tools available at their disposal. I reached out to Mark Strassman, SVP and GM of UCC, LogMeIn, he told me: “A good wired headset is better for two-way audio. Try to avoid Airpods and ones with compressed Bluetooth.” He also said, setting passwords and securing features like screen sharing are a must if security was to remain intact.

Customer ExperienceDigital TransformationFuture of WorkMicrosoft TeamsMobilitySecurity and Compliance
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