As the coronavirus began to spread across the world in February, one of the companies that could track its migration on a daily basis was Cisco Systems Inc. That’s because the networking giant’s portfolio included Webex, a video collaboration tool.

Suddenly, Cisco began to see a sharp rise in usage from China as businesses closed and more people moved to working from home.

“Usage went up as much as 22 times on the night of February 11,” recalled Sri Srinivasan (pictured), senior vice president and general manager of Cisco Collaboration at Cisco. “Right after that we started seeing it expand into South Korea, Japan, Singapore, Australia, Malaysia, Vietnam and Thailand. Toward the end of February, we started seeing it going to Europe in terms of expanded volumes where people were working from home, and from the second week of March it’s been the U.S., our biggest market, which has more than doubled.”

Srinivasan spoke with Dave Vellante, chief analyst at SiliconANGLE sister market research firm Wikibon and co-host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio. They discussed changing attitudes toward working from home, continued growth in the use of collaboration tools, potential benefits as usage expands, and how Cisco addresses security of its Webex platform.

Usage expected to remain high

With his central role in the deployment of Cisco’s collaboration platform, Srinivasan found himself in a position to not only witness the spread of the virus on a global basis, but also to assess use of tools, such as Webex, from a larger perspective. That means the world has changed forever and remote collaboration is going to become a much more significant force, in Srinivasan’s view.

“Do I expect to see the volumes of collaboration to go down?” Srinivasan asked. “No, it’s never going back to the same level. There’s a number of employees who have been skeptical and reticent towards working from home, who are suddenly going to say this ‘work-from-home thing’ is not so bad after all.”

Recent numbers for the growth of collaboration tool usage since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic point toward a sea change in the space. On Thursday, Verizon Inc. reported that network usage in the U.S. was beginning to normalize, with many categories beginning to drop slightly. Video was not one of them, and Verizon reported an average 36% daily increase versus pre-coronavirus levels.

“In March, we served 324 million attendees on our meetings platform,” Srinivasan said. “We’re seeing immense expansion in work-from-home capabilities.”

Change for the better

What the mass migration onto collaboration platforms by much of the global workforce portends for the future is very much on the minds of Srinivasan and other technology executives. A senior official at the research firm Gartner Inc. was recently quoted as saying that the current crisis would be a catalyst for transforming work cultures and practices.

“We are going to have a post-COVID era, and that’s going to be changed for the better,” Srinivasan said. “You’re also going to have a set of employers who are going to look at a much wider pool of applicants that are across time zones, geography, and language barriers. It’s going to help an organization increase the diversity and inclusiveness quotient, making their products and services much better.”

Security of collaboration platforms remains a concern. Threatpost reported this week that researchers recently discovered an underground forum with over 2,300 compromised credentials from video collaboration provider Zoom Inc.

Webex is continuously tested for security flaws by a group within Cisco that reports to Chief Executive Officer Chuck Robbins, according to Srinivasan. And the firm has been diligent about updating the platform’s software since 2012.

“We’ve had over 100 major software updates since then,” Srinivasan said. “Security starts at the time of design for us, it’s not a checkbox at the end of the ship cycle. We’re not going to ever say we’re fully secure, you just have to continually invest in the growing threat posture world we live in today.”

Cisco has made its Webex platform free in all countries where it is available during the pandemic, with unlimited usage and support for up to 100 participants. Enterprises are clearly taking advantage to explore the technology as well. The company reports that free sign-ups in impacted countries are up seven times over pre-outbreak rates.

“What this time has shown us is that businesses can still continue to operate and operate really well when you bring people together using these virtual technologies,” Srinivasan said. “I see something coming out of this, which is recognition that organizations are going to have to fix and modernize their digital infrastructure. It’s a plethora of opportunities in front of us, and these technologies are going to get monumentally better in the months to come.”

Here’s the complete video interview, one of many CUBE Conversations from SiliconANGLE and theCUBE:

Photo: SiliconANGLE