Dive Brief:

• The increasingly distributed workforce, driven primarily by millennials and remote workers, requires employers to equip employees with feature-rich and easy-to-use tools, widening the scope of the North American conferencing services market, according to a recent analysis.
• Frost & Sullivan, in its North American Conferencing Services Market report, finds that the overall market earned revenues of $4.5 billion in 2014, and estimates this will reach $5.9 billion by 2021 at a compound annual growth rate of 4.1%.
• Video technology, in particular, is gaining traction, according to the report.

Dive Insight:

"What was once a rudimentary component now holds serious weight in the minds of decision-makers across businesses," said Alaa Saayed, manager, Frost & Sullivan Unified Communications & Collaboration Industry. "As Millennials continue to make up a larger share of the workforce, video will become more pervasive and price points will drop with newer technologies, further fueling adoption."

That price drop can only be good news for HR leaders looking to reduce costs and boost workforce collaboration. However, according to Saayed, while hosted and cloud video conferencing services will become popular as employers look to avoid large capital investments in favor of subscription-based services, the anticipated shift to the cloud is also driving new solutions and providers into the sector, making it difficult for customers to identify the most suitable fit.