How Logitech’s foresight on workplace conferencing paid off

In 2011, Prakash Arunkundrum took a trip to the Logitech office for a videoconference meeting with a participant in another part of the world. Today, the task may seem mundane, but back then, getting on a videoconference call could feel like something it took a village to do.

“Either the bandwidth won’t work, or you wouldn’t know which button to press, or you had a bunch of controllers and you didn’t know which controllers to use,” Arunkundrum said, adding that he ultimately waved his white flag and called for IT help the day of his videocall.

Arunkundrum, now president of Logitech for Business (LOB), Logitech’s enterprise solutions arm, said things are much different now, partly because of the company’s early efforts to simplify workplace technology.

Since 2011, LOB, formerly known as Logitech Video Collaboration, has had big dreams for enhancing videoconference communication. The BCC950 ConferenceCam, one of the first products in LOB’s lineup, aimed to deliver high-quality audio and video through an easy-to-use interface. The device propelled Logitech—which Arunkundrum said was once known predominantly as a “mouse company”—into the unified communications category.

Those bets paid off. Today, one in three meeting rooms and desk solutions use Logitech’s workplace tech, according to data shared by the company.

“We are in finance. We are in boardrooms. We are in startups. We are at your coffee shop,” Arunkundrum said.

Logitech’s early foresight helped propel it to become a leader in enterprise technology as the pandemic transformed workplace norms.

The early days. Prior to Logitech’s enterprise product line taking off, Moor Insights & Strategy VP and Principal Analyst Melody Brue said Logitech was known for its selection of computer peripherals.

“They’re known for their keyboards, their webcams, headsets, conferencing systems, and then more consumer gaming accessories,” Brue said.

Arunkundrum said Logitech had wanted to simplify conference room tech, which he noted was “super complex” in the early 2010s. While the BCC950 was the business group’s first product, Arunkundrum called Logitech MeetUp, an all-in-one conference camera device first released in 2017, LOB’s “breakthrough” product because of how it simplified the conference experience.

“We’ve sold over a million units of those over the years, and it’s the fastest-growing meeting room category,” Arunkundrum said. “So, we essentially super-simplified that whole experience.”

Turning point. And then, just like that, Covid-19 happened.

When the pandemic hit and forced many workers to adopt hybrid and remote working styles, Arunkundrum said demand for Logitech products surged, both on the video collaboration side and the personal workspace front.

“I’d say there was a Goldilocks moment where some of our foresight actually got fast-forwarded because of Covid,” he said. Webcams on Logitech’s website quickly sold out “due to high demand” during the peak of the pandemic.

In a press release announcing the tech company’s Q4 financial results for the 2021 fiscal year, former Logitech CEO Bracken Darrell said the company had its best year yet. Logitech brought in $5.25 billion in sales that year, an unprecedented amount for the company.

“Our powerful and resilient capabilities allowed us to both deliver remarkable performance in a challenging FY 2021, and at the same time, invest in compelling plans for the future,” Darrell, who departed Logitech in 2023, said at the time. “The world has just caught a glimpse of what Logitech will become.”

The company’s growing traction didn’t end there. Crawford Del Prete, president of IDC, said the pandemic’s lasting impact on the office continued to aid Logitech’s success.

“We’ve all read the stories of the companies that say everybody’s got to come back,” Del Prete said. “Well, the reality is people now work from both places, and because they work from both places, that’s been a tailwind to Logitech’s business.”

Keeping the momentum going. Arunkundrum said LOB currently makes up 40% of Logitech’s overall revenue. While the pandemic may now be a not-so distant memory, the business group still has big plans for workplace tech.

In January, the tech company announced Logitech Spot, an office sensor capable of tracking a room’s stats like occupancy, temperature, and humidity in order to make automated changes (e.g., automatically making a room available to book for meetings if its current meeting ends early). In the same month, Logitech also announced Rally Board 65, an “all-in-one portable videoconference solution” that quickly equips the room or small space it occupies with the tools needed for a collaborative conference room.

Arunkundrum said LOB is focused on solutions that enhance the workplace experience as the IT professional role increasingly evolves to support the needs of employees and their workplace environment.

“Facilities, IT, and HR are working closer together than I’ve ever seen, and I think this is certainly something that we are helping equip as part of our technology,” he said.

Del Prete said the new era of products reflects Logitech’s ability to pivot its focus to new areas and innovations.

“They see these opportunities and they move to them and then that becomes a category expander for them,” Del Prete said. “And I think that’s really one of the marvelous features about the company.”