We all know that the Covid-19 pandemic has taken a toll on everyone’s life. It has drastically affected each aspect of our lifestyle. Not only that, but it also had a huge impact on our mental as well as physical wellbeing. In such a case scenario, most prominent Industries across the globe had to bear huge losses because of the social distancing norms. Undeniably, the event industry is one of the most radically affected ones as it functioned on bringing individuals together in a physical location. Therefore, the sudden emergence of coronavirus forced them to take a step back and think about their business ideas.
Fortunately, mankind had access to the virtual world, this empowered us to take all the physical and in-person events to a virtual platform. The numerous content marketing technologies around the globe along with unified communications and collaboration (UCC), made it quite convenient for the individuals to channelise their events on a virtual medium. This allowed all the awaited events like the concerts, product launches, trade shows, Consumer Electronics Show, and even the exhilarating countdown held in Singapore to stream virtually and reach a global audience.
But, we cannot skip the fact that switching from the traditional event business model to the virtual world was not as easy as it sounds. Organisations had to face numerous hindrances that challenged their mental horizons in an entirely different way. It was essential to incorporate effective communication in the entire organisation. The workforce was trying hard to bring about all the necessary changes that could facilitate a successful virtual event.
Coming to the market value of virtual events industries, we can surely expect a fruitful growth of more than 20% in the years 2021 to 2027.
According to a survey conducted by Grand View Research, we can analyse the virtual market value at USD 77.98 billion in the year 2019.
For instance, we saw a drastic increase in audience participation in the Singapore FinTech Festival. This event was the fifth edition of SFF. The carefully curated hybrid event platform allowed the event organisers to reach a global market and captivate maximum individuals effortlessly. Moreover, this virtual event strategy also facilitated the organisations to seamlessly host valuable meetings and conceptualising sessions with their business partners.
We all are aware of the fact that individuals are coming up with various ideas to make their virtual event platforms stand out from the ordinary. They have started to incorporate a variety of tools and equipment that highlight the overall virtual as well as hybrid event infrastructure. For example, we can observe live surveys, live polls, live question and answer sessions, along with features like gamification, breakout sessions, and so forth. Although these tactics have been proved to be extremely advantageous in the aspect of holding the audience attention. The IT infrastructure industries have been majorly affected by this sudden inclination towards the virtual world. Unquestionably, this has put huge pressure on the infrastructure agencies around the globe.
Furthermore, organisations have started to realise that the more they implement these engagement features, the more their virtual event is going to be successful. Virtual attendees love partaking in effective brainstorming that is facilitated with features that allow them to communicate with the speakers directly. Participants also cherish the communication facilities that enable them to expand their networking reach while sitting in their houses. As a result of this positive feedback towards the engagement features, organisations have started to incorporate more of them.
Due to this, the IT infrastructure industry has to come up with features that facilitate us with a stronger bandwidth. A stable connection is extremely essential to host as well as deliver meaningful virtual events. If an organisation neglects this aspect, it is bound to face numerous hindrances throughout the event. The streaming quality can make or break the content delivery of your virtual as well as a hybrid event. According to a recent survey conducted by IDC, we found out that 61% of the virtual participants thought that video streaming quality resembled their mobile phones! Therefore, it is important to host virtual events with the best equipment that facilitate high definition video streaming. But, this would require greater bandwidth to seamlessly carry out the entire event virtually.
IT infrastructure plays a major role in this aspect of the event industry. We can categorise two major business events that require adequate assistance from the IT industries:
Private corporate conferences:
These Industries clearly function on VPNs, these are also known as virtual private networks. This facilitates them to speed up their connection and seamlessly carry out with their virtual event. It empowers all the participants to access a secure virtual platform that focuses on the quality of content. In this type of event, some major factors that affect the overall performance of the event are bandwidth capacity, security as well as the resiliency.
Public industry events:
The requirements here are not extremely different from what we mentioned above. These types of event Industries usually host a number of activities consecutively. This emphasises on the use of adequate bandwidth. But, these online virtual events require an IP infrastructure that is scalable. It is necessary that the internet service help multiple internet providers in order to boost the bandwidth facility. This enables the content delivery platforms, digital media facility as well as user-created content to function properly.
Be it a private or public virtual event industry, they need to offer a seamless virtual experience to their participants. Otherwise, they might probably never see them again. Therefore, in order to keep the audience engaged, it is necessary to provide a strong band with facilities along with security and redundancy. This will assist the organisations to host a virtual event without facing any obstacles repetitively.
