It’s not so easy to rank video call platforms

About two weeks ago, one of my bosses sent an email asking me to rank order my preferred video conferencing platforms.

There were four options: Zoom, Cisco’s WebEx, Microsoft’s Teams, and the video platform for our learning management platform. There are many other options, but these are the only platforms with which our university has licensing agreements. And quite frankly, the choices weren’t an issue. These platforms have (mostly) served us well during the pandemic.

My issue was with the simplicity of his single question. I appreciated the short survey, and it should have taken me a few seconds to rank them. Instead, it required 15-minutes of deep thought before I picked my favorites and clicked “submit.”

Fast forward a few days, and I was already rethinking my ranking. In fact, today I’d rank these platforms differently knowing what we now know about recent upgrades to these well-known platforms.

See, there’s fierce competition in the video conferencing realm, thanks in part to the pandemic and our move to online meetings and instruction. I say “in part” because the video conferencing platform competition started long before COVID-19 reached our shores. The war to win the hearts and minds of telecommuters started long ago, but users are now reaping the rewards of those long-standing rivalries.

Read more at https://www.vindy.com/life/lifestyles/2020/07/its-not-so-easy-to-rank-video-call-platforms/ (may encounter paywall).