KUALA LUMPUR, April 1 — The extended movement control order (MCO) has undoubtedly forced several businesses and corporations to take their operations online, proven by statistics released by the Malaysian Digital Association (MDA) that showed enormous spikes in traffic for video conferencing platforms.
The numbers were calculated by MDA over a period of seven days ending March 21, which was also around the time when the MCO, enforced to break the chain of Covid-19 infections, was implemented.
The MCO also meant operations of services deemed as non-essential had to stop.
In compliance with the MCO, employers were then forced to opt for work from home solutions, ramping up the traffic of these video conferencing applications, the report explained.
The report said that numbers obtained during the monitored period were then compared to readings obtained from January this year, which was used as the baseline.
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Among the platforms that were monitored and saw a significant surge in traffic was video conferencing software Zoom, Google’s Hangout and Meet social platforms, and software developer Cisco’s web conferencing application, Webex.
“While businesses and offices closed their doors for the lockdown, workers continued to toil at home, with discussions shifting to WhatsApp and other messaging apps.
“Data on key web conferencing platforms show meetings migrated to the cloud through video and audio calls.
“The volume on Google’s Meet and Hangouts surged ~950 per cent in sequential traffic in March on a rolling seven-day period, while rival Zoom saw a phenomenal burst of traffic, growing in excess of 3,180 per cent compared to the sequential traffic in the first half of March,” read the report.
Malaysian today enters its 15th day and second phase of the 28-day MCO, enforced to break the chain of infections of the Covid-19 outbreak.
