Pandemic Winners, Losers, and the Underdog

As our society reflects in agony upon the devastation caused by the pandemic, one can’t help but examine the direct effects of this deadly virus on our daily work in offices and closed rooms.

This reflection also leads us to the big question: which companies remained standing on boxing ring?

It’s safe to say that the tech sector has weathered some of the most disruptive effects of the pandemics relatively well, thanks to its agile adaptation speed, and how fast new tech is rolling out into the market.

But not all the players in the tech game have managed to smoothly sail the tides of the pandemic.

And it is too early to determine whether pandemic related shifts in usage and IT tactics will remain permanent.

However, some areas of the computing world have seen a boost while others are withering away.

Video Conferencing vs. Office Management Tools

The biggest and easiest to spot out of the pandemic winners is hands down the videoconferencing ecosystem, which is evident by the skyrocketed demand due to shifts in education and remote work.

Take Zoom as an ideal example; that literally saw sales boom during the pandemic and took advantage to develop their own niche marketplaces that offer specialized extensions for several industries including education and finance.

There won’t be a winner without a loser.

And in this case the losing counterpart that took a major hit during the pandemic is software and hardware packages that are aimed at simplifying our day in the physical office.

As long as we are continuing to work from home, enterprises specializing in software for scheduling rooms or office productivity will continue to witness a drastic decline in their demands.

Another player that is taking up a beating is the RFID chip segment whereby tools that are built around detecting and directing people using physical presence will not be a major focus – until we return back to our offices.

Collaboration Tools is where it’s at

The pandemic has certainly underscored the dire need for office tools that enable coworkers to collaborate on documents and presentations, rendering this technology as another major contender amongst pandemic winners.

Moreover, this new increased demand can be expected to stay around long post-pandemic as several business leaders are realizing the full benefits of remote working – and to be honest, might be getting a bit too comfortable with it!

A noticeable trend to point out here is the rise of online collaboration tools that support marketplace that enables third parties to offer extensions that add functionality to all platforms. Prime examples are Zoho that specialize in online productivity tools and SaaS applications, and Salesforce that offer SaaS solutions specific to customer relationship management (CRM).

The Underdog: Cloud

An overall analysis at pandemic winners and losers would not be complete without mentioning the unsung underdog in all of this, and in our case it is definitely cloud computing.

As cloud deployment and adoptions are only gaining traffic, numbers aggregated from Statista indicates that In 2020, the public cloud services market is predicted to reach around $257.5 billion in size and by 2022 market revenue is forecast to exceed $362.3 billion.

Cloud services have greatly met our expectations when we needed them the most, and industries will be increasingly adopting them in the near future.