eDiscovery Daily Blog

Web Teleconferencing Solutions Experiencing Challenges During COVID-19 Crisis: eDiscovery Logistics

We’re all adjusting to our “new normal” of Work From Home (WFH) during the COVID-19 (Coronavirus) crisis.  But, working with increased demands on teleconferencing solutions may make us want to say “WTF” during our WFH experience these days.  Is there anybody out there?

As reported by The Register (Zoom goes boom, Teams tears at seams: Technology stumbles at the first hurdle for this homeworking malarkey, written by Kieren McCarthy – hat tip to Sharon Nelson of the excellent Ride the Lightning blog), demand for services like Zoom’s conferencing software and Microsoft’s Teams outstripped capacity and outages started occurring at 9am ET on Monday, per the article.

Zoom candidly reported that its software has “degraded performance” and its phone service had a “partial outage.”  For obvious reasons, all remote working companies are scrambling to deal with the sudden flood of users. Zoom has updated its audio-conferencing system in the background in order to allow people running the meeting the ability to change dial-in options – a sign that people who usually do not use its software are having to be guided through it by manager and meeting organizers.

Of course, Zoom has been on a media blitz recently touting their low latency, network optimization, decision to remove a 40-minute limit on free accounts and even offering free video conferencing for schools.  Whoops.  Though the free videoconferencing was a nice offering, so kudos to them for that.  CloudNine uses RingCentral (which is built on Zoom) and I have noticed a couple of issues dialing into meetings this week, but was able to circumvent them by using computer audio instead.  So, there are workarounds; however, I have heard some people have had issues with the computer audio option as well.

Microsoft, which has been heavily promoting its Teams conferencing service recently, has also had issues, which a string of outages. The service was listed by Microsoft as suffering “degradation.”

Needless to say, the COVID-19 virus crisis of 2020 is giving these teleconference platform providers a chance to stress test their systems like never before.

As you may recall, I covered a few eDiscovery related cancellations, postponements and conversions (to virtual events) in Tuesday’s post. Of course, Rob Robinson’s excellent Complex Discovery blog has a much more comprehensive listing of cancellations, postponements and conversions here, which (sadly) includes the Corporate Legal Operations Consortium (CLOC) show in May as well as events for The Sedona Conference and the Masters Conference.

Stay healthy out there!

So, what do you think?  Are you experiencing any challenges during this WFH time for so many?  Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

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