For decades, the media brands of IDG Germany, namely CIO Magazin, COMPUTERWOCHE and ChannelPartner, have acted as partners of IT management with a clear objective: We want to network the IT community, provide credible information and create visibility for exciting projects and their makers .With our 2021 event portfolio, we offer the CIOs or CDOs, the IT managers and of course the decision-makers in the channel a variety of networking platforms, some of which have been established in the market for many years and continue to grow strongly.Due to the ongoing situation surrounding the coronavirus pandemic, we will focus primarily on digital event formats in the coming year and will convert many of our established events into online events, without losing sight of the goal of networking and professional exchange.You can find a preview of what awaits you at IDG events in 2021 here in our new events calendar.Specialists and executives from many industries use the IDG media every day to find out about the latest news in the IT and digitization segment.The authors in the IDG expert network contribute to this content with their articles.The IDG expert network does not contact manufacturers or service providers to place marketing or advertising for companies, products or services.Companies interested in this type of publication please contactCome to us – as an expertThe range of workplace collaboration tools available to teams today far exceeds anything workers could have imagined two and a half years ago.When the trend towards working from home started with COVID-19 in early 2020, most companies focused on installing a functioning video and chat platform.With a significant proportion of employees deciding to work away from the office for at least part of the week, there is a growing demand for tools that support more than employees' basic communication needs.One product that has seen explosive growth this year is the digital whiteboard.Also known as visual collaboration platforms or shared canvas apps, these tools enable hybrid teams to collaborate visually through an online interface.Between March and May 2022, Box, ClickUp, Mural, BlueJeans and Zoom announced the launch of a new whiteboard product or major updates to their existing solutions.But why the brisk activity?There are a few reasons for this.Data released by Forrester in May 2022 shows that 62 percent of IT and business decision makers who have sent at least some of their workforce working from home due to the COVID-19 pandemic expect to continue to do so a higher proportion will work from home.This even applies to sectors in which work is traditionally done on site.As a result of these sweeping workforce changes, many organizations are looking for ways to enable geographically dispersed employees to work more consistently.Digital whiteboard vendors claim their platforms fill this need.Typically accessed through a web browser, visual collaboration applications create persistent workspaces where team members can collaborate from any device, in real time or asynchronously.In addition to the drawing and writing tools, the apps offer users the ability to add images, videos, charts, sticky notes, and other elements.Multiple platforms offer integrations with enterprise tools like Slack, Trello, Jira, Dropbox, Google Drive, and Microsoft Teams.Andrew Hewitt, senior analyst at Forrester, said virtual whiteboards represent a way for organizations to reduce friction between hybrid and remote workers.However, he noted that before the pandemic, very few people considered a physical whiteboard important to their work environment.Workers who didn't have a need for an online brainstorming tool three years ago probably wouldn't be pushing for it today.Historically, the customer base for digital whiteboard tools has been made up of developers or people working in creative fields like design, rather than general business users.So, unlike more traditional collaboration tools like video conferencing and chat platforms, which have nearly 80 percent corporate adoption, digital whiteboard tools have yet to catch on in the corporate world."As with any other technology, it's very important for people to adopt these tools and learn how to use them effectively for mainstream adoption, especially in this market where people are being asked to work in a collaborative way that they may not be used to," says Hewitt.In November 2021, Research Nester estimated that the visual collaboration market will be worth $1.67 billion by 2028.One company working in this space is Figma, which offers a collaborative, browser-based interface design tool.The provider's FigJam whiteboarding solution was launched in April 2021 and now counts Stripe, Twitter, Airbnb and Netflix among its customers.In September 2022, Adobe announced it would acquire the company for $20 billion.According to Emily Lin, product manager at Figma, the company noticed this trend among Figma customers even before 2020: Engineers and project managers who weren't traditional Figma users began using the tool to collaborate with design teams on a previously unknown way of working together."We saw people starting to use the platform beyond things like classic UI design and using Figma for things like brainstorming instead."As a result, the company decided to launch a dedicated tool that would allow all of these different teams to come together and collaborate in one place.According to Lin, when FigJam first launched, there were two main use cases: ideation and brainstorming, and user flows and basic diagrams.However, after launching FigJam, the company found that more and more customers were using the platform as a way to connect with other teams.Users began sharing their specific FigJam use cases on Twitter and developing team rituals such as:B. a Friday coffee chat or a game night.Now, in addition to the traditional options, the platform also offers gamification options, such as:B. A photobooth that takes digital Polaroid photos of the participants in a whiteboarding session.External developers who use FigJam professionally have also expanded the platform's contact capabilities.The company is seeing many individual developers and partner companies creating add-ons, Lin reports.The goal of the extensions is to help teams feel more connected and engaged."Someone made a widget that includes various get-to-know and group games, and there's even things like rock, scissors, paper. There are now all kinds of activities that are really fun and used alongside the traditional JIRA and Asana widgets can be," she said.The result: Although the Figma platform was built specifically for designers, Lin says that 70 percent of FigJam's new users come from other parts of the company.One of FigJam's clients is the financial services and software company Stripe.While the company declined to identify the tools it was using before FigJam came along, according to Talia Siegel, product designer at Stripe, they didn't offer templates that made it easy to brainstorm or work with many colleagues at the same time.Like most customers, Stripe originally used the platform for team brainstorming, but over time has embraced what Siegel describes as the "playful side" of FigJam: "Illustrations, stickers, and emoji now fill our brainstorming documents We have also used FigJam to develop activities for team cohesion while working remotely."Despite the spate of product launches earlier in the year, Hewitt says the market is still relatively unsaturated.However, as the popularity of these tools continues to grow, more vendors are likely to jump into the space - for example, in mid-August, graphic design platform Canva became the latest company to launch a whiteboarding product, which is now also part of the newly launched Visual Worksuite."There's always a question for vendors: 'Am I developing it natively? Do I integrate it or do I buy something? There are also many small vendors that would be ripe for adoption in this space. But right now there are only about six vendors in total that are really moving forward," analyzes Hewitt.According to Hewitt, many vendors in this space don't just want to be seen as a whiteboarding solution, but instead want to focus on the broader aspect of visual collaboration that enables multiple types of collaboration, such as:B. content creation, project management, mind mapping and design sprints and much more.As the market continues to grow, Hewitt says we can expect to see these platforms integrated with other technologies like AR, VR, and the Metaverse."It's still very, very early days - but experts suspect that the market will move in this direction and we will see better integration between AR and VR technologies and the visual collaboration tools themselves."However, the Forrester analyst warns that while employees may have seen the benefits of having access to a visual collaboration tool, standalone platforms may struggle to grow their customer base in a tough economic climate.When organizations are forced to make difficult budget decisions, a one-off visual collaboration platform may not be economically justifiable compared to a simpler whiteboard tool included in the license cost of a larger unified communications platform covering the entire cooperation strategy of a company."Whiteboard tools are an add-on, but it's not like you fail as a business if you don't have that product," Hewitt said.(mb/fm)This article is based on a contribution from the US sister publication Computerworld.If you want to use articles from CIO, Computerwoche, TecChannel or channel partners for commercial reproduction, you must purchase a license.Please contact our partner, YGS Group (email: IDGLicensing@theygsgroup.com)Dispose of contaminated sites or rediscover an heirloom?Many companies ask themselves this question when it comes to modernizing their legacy and legacy systems.Trends and figures on the subject in our study.SAP S/4HANA is finding its way into companies - with or without the RISE program.You can find everything about HANA migration and current figures for cloud ERP in the study.No-code and low-code stand for a new trend: software development with little or no program code.Our study contains current figures on citizen development, among other things.The future of work is hybrid - hybrid work concepts already exist in some companies, but there is still potential for optimization.More on this in the study.Security at the end point - it has never been more important than today.The more remote work is done, the more crucial it is to ensure the security of the hardware and software "at the end point".The role of managed services providers (MSPs) is changing: the cloud has to be orchestrated, the MSP is increasingly becoming the customer's trusted advisor.More in the study.The Internet of Things has started its triumphal march through companies.In many IoT projects, the main focus is currently on using the generated data in a meaningful way.All about that in this study.Robotic Process Automation (RPA) has become a valuable tool in the digitization and automation portfolio.More on this in the study.Digital transformation has greatly accelerated cultural change in companies, and migration to the cloud plays a crucial role here.Read more about this in our new study.Companies are using machine learning across the board and investing more and more in these projects.More on this in the current ML/KI study.You can currently find over 500 advertised positions in the CW job market