Throughout my time at G2, traffic patterns on G2.com category pages have been one of the most significant data points to monitor. Time and again, the changes in those patterns have proven a good indicator of emerging trends and a strong reflection of change in software markets. The current global crisis caused by COVID-19 is, unsurprisingly, creating a large shift to tools that support remote work.

Many people routinely work from home and many companies support remote work in some parts of the business. In a "normal" time, however, only a relatively small percentage of the total workforce has the potential to work remotely. The recent quick shift to remote work for a large number of companies around the world has left many IT organizations scrambling to expand or build a robust remote work infrastructure.

Beyond remote work, many industries are shifting to delivery of services in a virtual model-which is not new-but most organizations in industry verticals that fit the profile for virtual services delivery have only developed those capabilities in a limited way. Virtual classrooms are not uncommon, but they have really only been in reasonably wide-scale use at the university level, and in very limited ways in secondary education. Telemedicine is offered for many health care functions-typically, services vary from routine consultations with physicians to counseling sessions-but has not been widely adopted.