While the enterprise spending on most ICT solutions in Malaysia declined in 2020 due to the COVID-19 crisis, the communications and collaboration software market in the country bucked the trend and registered a year-on-year (Y-o-Y) growth of 19.1%, finds GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company.

According to GlobalData, the communications and collaboration software market size in Malaysia reached US$112m by end of 2020, which is about 4% more than what it was estimated before the COVID-19 outbreak.

With the COVID-19 pandemic compelling businesses and government offices to embrace new ways of communication and collaboration and accelerate their shift towards remote working to ensure business continuity, the adoption of communication and collaboration software has increased across enterprises in the country.

Nidhi Gupta, Technology Analyst at GlobalData, says: “With several businesses and government establishments expected to retain their remote working strategies even in the post COVID-19 era, the demand for communications and collaboration software will continue to grow and maintain a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 12.1% over the forecast period 2019-2024.”

Enterprise social networking and collaboration platforms will remain the largest and the fastest growing product category in the overall enterprise communication and collaboration software market in Malaysia through the forecast period.

Ms Gupta concludes: “Enterprise social networking and collaboration platforms enable employees to collaborate remotely through features like instant messaging, video and audio conferencing, virtual workspaces, and screen/application sharing, and will therefore continue to find widespread popularity among enterprise users.”