The rising number of employees working remotely has spurred a huge growth in the communication and collaboration (C&C) market, which is set to be worth a whopping $309 billion by 2025. With hybrid working becoming standard practise in the workplace, the communications platforms segment — worth $16.3 billion in 2020 — will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 15% between 2020 and 2025, according to GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company.

Laura Petrone, Principal Analyst in Thematic Research at GlobalData, comments: “Competition is raging in the communications platforms segment, which is already the fastest growing part of the C&C market, with many companies — from big tech companies such as Microsoft, Google and Cisco to cloud-native providers such as Zoom, RingCentral and Salesforce — all battling for dominance.”

The growing number of employees working from remote locations, and the need to establish strong links between them and office-based staff, is driving enterprise adoption of C&C tools. Within C&C, the highest growth segment is communications platforms, which was worth $16.3 billion in 2020, and will grow at a CAGR of 15% between 2020 and 2025. Enterprise social networking and collaboration platforms will grow at a CAGR of 14% in the same period.

Petrone continues: “The pandemic has made competition in the C&C market even fiercer. Today, as we shift to a hybrid model of working, vendors are rushing to provide the appropriate collaboration tools to enable staff to work from their chosen location. Those companies operating in the C&C market who are building their artificial intelligence (AI), augmented reality (AR), and virtual reality (VR) capabilities will be the most successful, as such technologies will be critical in the emerging hybrid workplace.

“Augmented versions of collaboration tools, where people can display digital files and whiteboards inside the virtual space, are increasingly becoming commonplace. The likes of Meta and Microsoft are also championing the metaverse as the ideal environment to support hybrid working. However, the metaverse space will likely be exposed to potential data privacy violations, as it will involve processing a significant amount of personal data, including biometrics. Also, it remains to be seen whether office workers, many of whom are already struggling with Zoom fatigue, will find it appealing to interact with digital avatars in the corporate metaverse.”