As concerns about coronavirus continue to grow, the world is being forced to consider the benefits of cloud comms like never before. The global epidemic has emerged as a Litmus Test, demonstrating the effectiveness of the cloud for providing safe, efficient, and flexible modes of conversation.
Voxbone, one of the market leaders in the communications industry, recently published a report highlighting the impact the virus is having on its network. According to the study, COVID-19 has pushed a massive increase in demand for cloud communications, as businesses look for ways to reduce the threats of things like group gatherings, and the work commute.
In the APAC region, where the virus first emerged, there has been more than a twofold increase in the number of online conferencing minutes used on the Voxbone network. Elsewhere, similar conferencing companies are seeing the same rise in demand. Indeed, some of the largest players, like Zoom, Microsoft, and Teams are all beginning to provide premium features within their conferencing tools to customers for free.
Europe Follows APAC Cloud Trajectory
Now that threats surrounding the coronavirus have taken hold in the European region too, Voxbone is seeing a similar surge in cloud demand. Here at home, businesses of all sizes are following the trends of the APAC region, encouraging more of their team members to work from home and avoid potential exposure to the virus.
Virtual conferencing sessions are on the rise, flights have been grounded, forcing people to embrace alternatives to global travel, and events have been cancelled on an astronomical scale. As a result, Voxbone is encouraging businesses worried about business continuity to reach out and discuss their capacity requirements.
Voxbone notes that the size of the new remote workforce is increasing on a daily basis. Even if this mobile environment is only temporary, companies need to be properly prepared to support their employees, wherever they might be. And in the longer term, the company expects that this period will have a lasting impact on the way that many companies operate and approach remote working.
Voxbone notes that it expects the rapidly increasing amounts of traffic coming from conferencing environments and contact centres to continue growing both in Asia, and Europe, with early signs of a similar trajectory emerging across the Americas.
Exploring the Global Demand for Cloud Conferencing
More and more, people around the world are being forced to work from their couches, engaging in virtual meetings that reduce the risk of infection. Even major colleges like Stanford are beginning to hold lectures using video conferencing software, as in-person classes continue to be cancelled.
This coincides with the growth in traffic that Voxbone has seen too. In the time that has passed since the end of January, the volume of APAC traffic within the Voxbone network more than doubled. According to the company, the biggest weekly increase happened just after the World Health Organization (WHO) announced that the world was in a state of “global emergency”.
Italy is currently the most affected market in Europe when it comes to coronavirus. Since the country was placed in lockdown, Voxbone has seen significant week-on-week rises in call traffic.
Based on what’s happening in the countries where the pandemic is most advanced, Voxbone believes that the rise will continue exponentially across Europe, as more governments institute lockdowns, and employees are advised to work from home. Although it would be easy to panic in this situation, Voxbone believes that it’s important for companies to think rationally about how they’re going to respond to the pandemic as the situation continues to develop, and what their business continuity requirements are in terms of their communications.
Matt Brown, VP Product for Voxbone, said: “At difficult times such as these, a company’s top priorities should be the health, safety and livelihood of its employees. The cloud communications industry has a huge role to play in helping businesses to keep focused on what really matters and in slowing the spread of the disease, by allowing more people to self-isolate and social distance without having to stop working.
“We’d urge all businesses, no matter who they use for communications, to talk to their provider about how they can best manage their rapidly changing requirements without risking capacity saturation or service outages.
“This situation is impacting every provider, but Voxbone is taking every measure to ensure our workforce can safely continue serving our customers’ needs. As a company, we’ve been working remotely since March 11th.”
“Our infrastructure is highly resilient by design, but everyone across the organization is carefully monitoring the situation and its impact on our network”
Click here to discuss your capacity requirements with Voxbone or to learn more about their network.
