Gartner defines event marketing and management platforms as tools that enable B2B marketers to execute virtual and/or in-person events for external audiences. These platforms provide native capabilities to engage and communicate with prospective attendees, registrants and sponsors, manage logistics, deliver content and enable attendees to engage with other participants. Out-of-the-box integrations with sales force automation and marketing automation platforms are provided to track engagement. Features and capabilities are provided in a self-service model, with some platforms offering managed service support to run the technology when preferred. The event technology market does not include webinars or internal meeting-specific solutions.
Meeting solutions are real-time communication services with their associated devices that support live interactions between participants for internal and external collaboration, presentations, learning, training sessions and webinars. Meeting solutions power diverse use cases, such as one-on-one meetings, remote sales engagements, board meetings, telehealth sessions, remote banking and consulting services, to name just a few. Meeting solutions enable rich information sharing and interaction by combining audio and video, in-meeting chat, content and screen sharing, and visual collaboration and whiteboarding.
Gartner defines unified communications as a service (UCaaS) as a multitenant, subscription-based service that is cloud-delivered. It provides business telephony features; public switched telephone network (PSTN) connectivity that enables inbound and/or outbound external calling; and collaboration features, such as messaging and meetings. UCaaS services can be consumed by end users with traditional handsets, desktop clients, web clients, meeting room systems and mobile apps. UCaaS is used by organizations to securely communicate and collaborate — both internally and externally. It includes telephony, messaging and meetings. UCaaS providers may offer variations of each of the three core modes of communication and also offer a range of cloud contact center functionalities, either self-developed or through integration/partnerships with cloud contact center specialists. Gartner’s definition of meetings for the UCaaS market mostly focuses on the capabilities for internal collaboration, work from home and external presentation meeting use cases. Other specialized use cases — such as webinar, remote support, distance learning and training — are often available from UCaaS offerings, but are not mandatory for inclusion in this research. These use cases are part of a separate market defined by Gartner (the meeting solutions market).
Virtual care solutions represent a set of IT capabilities and related services that enable augmentation and substitution of conventional face-to-face care delivery. Virtual care solutions enable delivery of care where the clinician is not in the same physical location as the patient, either synchronously (that is, in real time) or asynchronously. Virtual care solutions support direct-to-patient (for example, provider to patient, patient/consumer to provider) and provider-to-provider (for example, telestroke, e-ICU, specialist consultations) models of care.