More than 1,200 people turned out for a comprehensive webinar exploring how the Coronavirus/Covid-19 is impacting the uptake of technology and the ways that business is conducted.
The April 21st Internet event, which was sponsored by 8×8, set a new attendance record for AVANT webinars, and featured representatives from a variety of technology vendors who shared viewpoints on strategies and the ways in which commerce will likely be forever changed as a result of the pandemic.
We have beautiful offices all over the world, and all of them are empty,” said Vikram Verma, CEO of 8×8. “Yet, productivity is high.”
Verma also speculated that commercial real estate will likely lose ground in the future as the massive shift towards working from home becomes the new normal, and centralized office space becomes less embedded in the culture of work. In such circumstances, IT decisions will likely take precedence over real estate decisions.
“Can you imagine if this had happened 15 years ago?” asked Brian Day, CEO of Fuze. “The global economy has taken a big hit, but it would have paralyzed the economy 15 years ago.”
Collaboration and video products, which were much more narrowly deployed 15 years ago, have surged in the midst of the pandemic. Fuze reports that the use of video in business meetings has surged nearly 600 percent over the near term.
Meanwhile, AVANT has seen interest in UCaaS, which had already experienced a 27% uptrend from December 2018 to December 2019, spike to 88% from December 2019 to the end of March 2020.
An ad hoc survey of webinar attendees showed that 52% of respondents considered themselves either somewhat prepared or unprepared to move to a work-from-home business model at the outset of the pandemic; 72% were looking for ways to improve their collaboration experience; and 70% will likely continue a work-from-home option even after the pandemic has passed.
Enterprise decision-makers who resonate with these needs are urged to contact their Trusted Advisors for further assistance.
A Q&A with Seal Team 6 veteran Robert O’Neil was one of the highlights of the webinar. O’Neil was deployed more than a dozen times and held combat leadership roles in more than 400 combat missions in four different theaters of war, including the attack that led to the death of Osama bin Laden. O’Neil spoke at length about the need to remain level-headed and calm in the midst of a crisis. “There’s a thing called, ‘normalcy bias,’ in which people don’t think anything bad is going to happen until it does,” he said. “The only thing more contagious than the virus is panic.
“Once you get a negative attitude, your mind is going to fail and your body is going to follow, he added. “Worrying about stuff you can’t affect is a problem.”
O’Neil spoke briefly about the military operation in which he shot and killed bin Laden.
“I was following a brave guy up the stairs,” he said. [That guy] “went straight so I turned right. There he was! I recognized him and pulled the trigger.”
If you are interested in learning more about collaboration or to have a conversation with any of the providers in the webinar, you can email: [email protected] In case you missed any portion of this webinar, there is a 60 day limited-availability recording at:
Use Password: TrustedAdvisor
The next CIO Insight Webinar will take place May 19th for our next webinar:
A Trusted Advisor CIO Insight Webinar, The State of IT Security, with special guest speaker, Sam Esmail the creative mind behind Mr. Robot, the Emmy award winning Cyber Security thriller. Register at: http://GoAVANT.net/CIO-Security
