In the past few years, the Unified Communications market has widened. New players have appeared. More and more companies are giving their employees UC tools to improve productivity and working comfort. With solutions flooding into the company’s ecosystem, things can get complicated for administrators, who have to keep all these new tools aligned.
UC means new working methods: web conferencing, instant messaging, shared documents, and video. For 40%[1] of employees, it’s a path to mobility and new motivation.
Employees are increasingly connected, so they can share ideas with their teams and beyond their organization, staying virtually ‘on hand’ for partners, customers, and service providers. Whether in-office, remote, or teleworking, communicating is easier, quicker, and more collaborative.
In 2020, telework has more and more appeal. According to US-based Nemertes Research[2], 70% of employees in large companies want telework to be an option. No doubt this has been clinched by the health crisis linked to Covid-19 and the nonstop growth in new C&C solutions and features. The CPU market should hit $6 billion in Europe by 2023 to become one of the Top 3 priorities for IT decision-makers. With the health crisis, businesses need flexible solutions that are easy to deploy. Many of them have turned to the Cloud. Indeed, the confinement has boosted the digital transformation of many companies, driving cloud telephony and signaling that it’s time to move to these solutions, interconnected with other tools. The latest estimates[3] on the cloud sector show that it will grow by +20% each year, reaching $ 1.4 billion in 2023. All these trends should not only bear out but seriously increase.
[1] 2020 survey of IT decision-makers by TechTarget
[2] Covid-19 Pandemic: Impact on Virtual Workplace Collaboration Now & in the Future
[3] 2019 survey by IDC
Interoperable UC&C solutions
One of the great challenges of the next few years will be making the different UC solutions compatible with each other. We’re already seeing this begin between Cisco and Microsoft, where now you can program, start, or join Cisco Webex Meetings in Microsoft Teams, and vice versa. But most of this wide range of UC applications is still compartmentalized by technology.
A key admin portal
Companies and service providers want the best solutions in their field, which means multiple apps.
To cope with this diversity, businesses and service providers will have to use provisioning software. Administrators won’t be able to juggle multiple admin platforms, because they’re based on rules, operating procedures, and completely different ergonomics. What a waste of time for the admin, and of money for the organization, when deployment times just get longer!
With provisioning software, admins can easily manage multiple environments without switching platforms. They also get uniform management rules, bulk creation or changes across all environments, and defined service packages. And organizations often have to deploy their solutions across multiple sites. To give local administrators more autonomy, decentralizing admin is a must. But it has to be done securely, by defining the local admins’ operating zones. They’ll get an intuitive interface with user-friendly forms and simplified access to basic features for creating, editing, or deleting a user.
For UC&C publishers, the issue is not how to manage their solution, but how easy it is for end users to adopt. They handle this with dedicated provisioning software to simplify and future-proof deployment. Each has their own area of expertise, but they all share one goal: clinching adoption and giving companies and service providers the very best user experience.
