Video Conferencing Is Breaking All Records To Keep Us Connected In This COVID-19 World

COVID-19 has truly halted our world. Staying locked indoors. People are working from home and most of their workplace interactions are now conducted on video conferencing apps.

Zoom

Ever since the lockdown, every video conferencing platform out there has seen an exponential spike in the number of users, and the load that it is dealing with.

Here's how leading video conferencing platforms are helping people truly embracing the work-from-home culture, while disrupting the way we communicate amidst lockdown.

Zoom is consuming 210,000 terabytes of data per month

Zoom has been one video conferencing app that has managed to get a lot of attention during the COVID-19 lockdown, primarily due to its simplicity and easy-to-use UI.

To put things into perspective, in December 2019 the app barely showed around 10 million active users. And in March 2020, this number has skyrocketed to a whopping 200 million. Recently it also revealed that it has over 300 million daily meeting participants.

Reuters

While doing so, it is consuming around 7 million gigabytes of data in a day. Just to put things in perspective, that¡¯s around 210,000 Terabytes of data in a month. In case you didn¡¯t know, that¡¯s mindblowing.

This is despite the fact that it has been surrounded by security concerns (which have been worked upon in its recent updates), so much so that companies around the world have been asking people to switch to other platforms. Even the Indian ministry has asked its officials to stop using the Zoom app.

Microsoft Teams is hosting 4.1 billion meeting minutes every day

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella recently revealed usage statistics for Microsoft Teams, its workplace communications app. In case you didn¡¯t know, it is its premium platform that it pairs with Office 365. However, post COVID-19 lockdown, they¡¯ve enabled people to use it for free. While it¡¯s not just a video conferencing app, it also offers in-office messaging like Slack.

Microsoft

Microsoft Teams has reached 75 million active users across the globe. Just last month, Microsoft reported 44 million users. Microsoft has also revealed the fact that it has witnessed over 200 million daily meeting participants this month, amounting to over 4.1 billion meeting minutes on Microsoft Teams.

Google Meet is adding 3 million users daily

Just like Microsoft Teams, Meet is a workplace video conferencing solution offered by Google. It was initially paired with G-Suite, however looking at the fame Zoom was getting, it wanted a slice of it, and decided to make its premium app free for everyone using a Gmail account while boasting better security features.

Google Meet

Google also revealed that Google Meet's daily usage has spiked by 30x since January, with the app hosting 3 billion minutes of video meetings and adding 3 million new users every day.

Where Zoom could allow up to 100 users to simultaneously be on the call, Google Meet can take up to 250 participants at a time without breaking a sweat.

Cisco WebEx had over 240,000 sign-ups in just 24 hours

Many might not even have heard of Cisco WebEx, but it is actually one of the oldest video-conferencing apps on this list. While this too is a paid platform, it recently made its services available free, helping people work from home amidst COVID-19 pandemic. In fact in the first 24 hours of this announcement, WebEx saw 240,000 new subscriptions.

Cisco

In the first week of March, the app reported 5.5 billion meeting minutes, while having around 3.2 million meetings in a day, which is crazy. As March ended, Webex registered a record 324 million attendees. Moreover, About 73 million meetings took place in March and well over 22 million meetings per week.