As COVID-19 keeps office workers at home, businesses in every country are having to find new ways to help their employees stay in contact with one another. Videoconferencing apps, in particular, have seen an unprecedented surge in popularity since the pandemic hit. From catch-up calls with co-workers to virtual company meetings, sales presentations and training sessions, connecting over video is a must-have for workers locked down at home.
In just one week in March, enterprise-focused mobile app downloads reached 62 million, an increase of 90% from the pre-COVID-19 weekly download average. Zoom, the most popular videoconferencing platform, saw U.S. downloads increase 14-fold. The company more recently announced that its platform has more than 300 million meeting participants every day, and its stock price has climbed nearly 140% this year.
But Zoom isn’t the only game in town, and it has faced a host of privacy and security concerns in recent weeks that might leave you wondering whether another video meeting service would be better for your organization. Here at Computerworld, we’ve tried to take some of the headache out of your decision-making process by trialing and evaluating five leading videoconferencing platforms.
With help from colleagues across the U.S., U.K., Australia and Sweden, we conducted a series of group video calls via Cisco Webex Meetings, Google Meet, LogMeIn GoToMeeting, Microsoft Teams and Zoom to try to discover which system provides the best service for the millions of people around the world now working from home as a result of the pandemic.
