Collaboration, Communities and Conferencing

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Meet the Experts

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Wayne Kurtzman

Research Vice President, Social, Communities and Collaboration



Collaboration, communities, and conferencing are engaging the workforce, partners, and customers to drive productivity, loyalty, and alignment. This is only the start as rising expectations, AI, increasing bandwidths, and a culture of collaboration usher in a new generation of collaborative products. IDC's Collaboration, Communities and Conferencing practice is your guide to the evolving collaboration and social technologies that will power the new intelligent multimodal collaborative workspace. This will result in new ways of measuring work, workflow, engagement, and productivity that will soon connect to customer outcomes. This practice explicitly covers team collaboration applications (including messaging and multimodalities), enterprise community applications (enterprise social networks), videoconferencing solutions (including asynchronous video and copresence), virtual events and webinars, public social networks, and email.


Markets and Subjects Analyzed


  • Team collaboration applications
  • Enterprise community applications (enterprise social networks)
  • Conferencing and copresence applications
  • Virtual events and webinars (digital events)
  • Collaborative work
  • Multimodal collaboration
  • Social media public networks and messaging
  • Email applications

Core Research


  • IDC MarketScape: Team Collaboration Application Vendors
  • IDC Annual Collaboration Application Survey
  • Research: The Intelligent, Visual Collaborative Workspace
  • Future of Collaboration Frameworks
  • AI, Multimodal Collaboration, and the Future of Work
  • Worldwide Collaborative Applications Market Share and Forecast
  • Team Collaboration and Enterprise Community Market Share and Forecast
  • Conferencing and Virtual Event Applications Forecast
  • Best Practices: Collaboration, Communities, and Virtual Events
  • Innovation Accelerators: AI, Teaming, and Visual Collaboration
  • Emerging Trends, Best Practices, and KPIs
  • Pertinent Market News and Key Vendor Updates
  • The Conferencing and Virtual Evolution

In addition to the insight provided in this service, IDC may conduct research on specific topics or emerging market segments via research offerings that require additional IDC funding and client investment.


Key Questions Answered


  1. How do collaboration, communities, social media, messaging, and multimodalities create new value and new metrics to the enterprise?
  2. How can collaboration applications be optimized to drive productivity and new business?
  3. How will copresence and XReality change the conferencing and events market?
  4. How will visual collaboration change workforce expectations?
  5. What are the best practices in selecting and attaining collaborative adoption in an enterprise culture?
  6. How will the collaborative enterprise bridge internal, gated, and public community users to accelerate insights and revenue?
  7. How will virtual events and communities drive first-party data in an era of cookieless marketing?
  8. How will the emerging convergence of social and collaborative platforms change business models and drive customer experience and employee engagement?
  9. How will AI contribute to enterprise collaboration and value?
  10. How can vendors maximize sales growth in emerging and evolving applications markets?
  11. Where are enterprises realizing value from social and collaborative solutions — and what are the leaders doing?
  12. How will organizations build a collaborative stack that supports shifting customer expectations?

Companies Covered