Collaboration Apps Are in Perpetual Launch with AI Announcements from Microsoft, Google, Slack, and Zoom

This IDC study focuses on the recent announcements, many AI focused, from Google, Microsoft, Slack and Zoom, including the analysis of the Google and Microsoft developer conferences, with a focus on collaboration applications. "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic," according to Arthur C. Clark in 1962. AI certainly qualifies. Significant announcements to the collaboration market will fundamentally change how we work, communicate, and collaborate. Many of the headlines belong to generative AI, but newly announced features coming to collaboration and conferencing have wide-ranging implications and should be viewed as tools to empower a workforce. "The evolution of AI with collaboration applications are creating a 'first-person virtual' colleague that can help find content hiding in plain sight," says Wayne Kurtzman, IDC research vice president of Social and Collaboration. "Having a culture of collaboration that understands the people-dynamic of collaboration will make the possibilities of company evolution in the digital age nearly endless."