One of many largest tendencies that emerged at first of the COVID-19 pandemic was the mass exodus of staff out of the workplace. In 2020, 42% of the U.S. labor power started working from house. But as extra organizations help distant work in the course of the pandemic, there emerged a rising want for collaboration options to allow staff to work collectively successfully outdoors the workplace.

Visible collaboration instruments and digital whiteboards have emerged as one of many key applied sciences that technical decision-makers can use to empower staff to successfully plan and handle initiatives as they work at home in digital workspaces.

For that reason, the visible collaboration market is present process a increase. Analysis signifies that the worldwide visible collaboration platform software program market will attain $1.67 billion in 2021, as organizations search for options to allow staff to successfully work remotely.

The market features a combination of cloud and web-based collaboration instruments, from on-line collaboration whiteboard instruments like Miro, Mural, and Stormboard to visible administration programs like iObeya.

Nearly all options purpose to offer distant groups with the flexibility to work collectively extra successfully by way of real-time collaboration by means of a web based whiteboard canvas or digital workspace.

An increasing market: Miro declares $400M in sequence C funding 

In 2021, the increase of the visible collaboration market doesn’t look like slowing down. Earlier this week, infinite canvas supplier Miro raised $400 million in its sequence C funding spherical with traders together with ICONIQ Development, Accel, Atlassian, Dragoneer, GIC, Salesforce Ventures, and TCV.

The brand new funding raises Miro’s valuation to $17.5 billion, making it one of many high 20 most useful non-public corporations on the planet, with over 130,000 clients and purchasers that embrace 99% of Fortune 100 corporations.

Miro has aimed to distinguish itself from opponents by constructing an enormous ecosystem of integrations, that includes over 100 app integrations with options together with Atlassian, Cisco, Google Workspace, Microsoft Groups, and Zoom.

Because the pandemic continues and staff turn into acclimated to distant work, visible collaboration options like Miro play an essential position in centralizing conventional workspaces digitally.

“We imagine that our platform is now extra essential than ever as organizations across the globe are redefining the best way they work — searching for new methods to interact groups and dispose of siloed considering.” stated Andrey Khusid, cofounder and CEO of Miro within the official announcement.

“1000’s of organizations use Miro’s platform each day to harness the ability of collaboration to nurture new concepts, resolve advanced issues, and produce new merchandise to market. We imagine that the ‘Miro method’ would be the spark that permits groups to rework creativeness into execution and alternative into actuality,” he stated.

The visible collaboration increase: Mural, iObeya and the expansion of visible administration options 

Miro isn’t the one visible collaboration options supplier receiving substantial funding in the course of the pandemic. Digital collaboration software program vendor Mural additionally raised $50 million in sequence C funding and reached a valuation of $2 billion in July 2021.

Like Miro, Mural has additionally seemed to integrations to mesh with different collaboration instruments, with greater than 300 templates and integrations for common instruments together with Zoom, Webex, and Microsoft Groups.

A 12 months earlier than that, one other notable funding happened in July 2020 when France-based agile and digital administration answer supplier iObeya introduced it had raised $17 million in sequence A funding to speed up the corporate’s growth into america.

In 2020, the corporate claimed that demand for the platform had elevated 400% for the reason that begin of the 12 months as organizations sought options to help distant work and distributed groups.

Actual-time collaboration is now a must have 

As the normal workplace offers strategy to digital and decentralized working environments, there’s a dire want for options that allow customers to work collectively in real-time. Digital whiteboards and digital rooms are offering an area the place staff can collaborate as successfully as in the event that they have been within the workplace.

As long as organizations proceed to work at home, there may be more likely to be important demand for visible collaboration options to make it as simple as attainable to come back collectively and collaborate on initiatives.