Unified communications (UC) and collaboration technologies are now mainstream, with mobile applications opening up the world of UC to a wider range of employees than ever before. These technologies are continuing to evolve, with channel companies playing a vital role in helping organisations adopt these technologies.
Resellers and MSPs are helping their customers solve numerous challenges through implementing UC and collaboration solutions. Jim Regan, channel chief, Vonage, explained how UC is used by multinational businesses.
He said, “In the age of hybrid work, one of the biggest issues facing businesses today is the challenge of organising and managing worldwide collaboration. The solutions to these management and collaboration issues can be found across multiple individual platforms, but few resellers and MSPs offer a single platform with all the answers.
“An integrated UC system for worldwide collaboration solutions encompasses conversations across voice, SMS, team messaging, social and video meetings.”
Ed House, sales director, UK, Nuvias UC, pointed to cost and time savings that can be delivered through adopting UC. He said, “The initial requirement for a UC solution came from businesses wanting to enhance internal communications, especially for businesses with employees located across multiple offices. However, end-users are now starting to see the full benefit of implementing UC technology, it can also help with cost-cutting, recruitment and time saving.”
House explained that cost-savings can be made due to a variety of reasons. He gave two key examples. First, hosting a video call, rather than travelling to an on-site meeting can reduce costs. Secondly, he said that providing teams with a cloud conferencing licence for their communications (calls, video calls and IM) can be more cost-effective than paying multiple phone contracts.
Of the potential time savings, he added, “Time is money! Previously, if someone was out of the office visiting a customer or travelling, you would wait until they were back in the office the next day for a face-to-face meeting to handle certain conversations or to discuss ideas. With communication technology in place, it’s easier to connect and make decisions quickly.”
That chimed with the view of Ben Nicklen, chief operating officer, Tiger. He explained, “Companies are constantly seeking increased efficiency. Therefore, making meetings more productive, with an effective method of detailing actions and outcomes is important. Before the pandemic, while recording calls was common, documenting a face-to-face meeting in the same way was largely unheard of.
“Unless you had a proficient note-taker detailing the discussion and any action points, much of the conversation would, effectively, be lost forever. However now, with virtual meetings taking precedence, recording meetings has become almost a default.
“By providing people with the ability to re-visit a discussion, not only is compliance and transparency improved, but actions, outputs, and to-do lists can be dealt with in an automated fashion.
“And as the working world move towards offering increased individualism and flexibility, the ability to record meetings complements this philosophy — reducing the pressure to always be physically present at a particular moment in time. For those who want to be privy to the discussion, they can still catch up later — regardless of their physical whereabouts while the meeting takes place.”
Jason Wynn, principal technology strategist at Content+Cloud, summarised the opportunity for MSPs here. He said, “Seamless collaboration and communication is no longer just a nice-to-have. MSPs are offering modern UC technologies and communications services that can evolve with modern working preferences and also keep up with customer expectations.”
A changing market
In terms of how the UC and collaboration market is changing, Adrian Sunderland, CTO, Jola, explained, “In the past it was the PBX or hosted PBX providers that were providing UC add-ons to their basic service sometimes at a significant premium. Now it is the collaboration vendors that, with the addition of PSTN calling, are now displacing the PBX and/or hosted PBX.
“It is now relatively easy to port a UK PSTN number to a MS Teams user and use that single client (desktop and mobile) to be able to interact using the rich Teams experience or make and receive traditional voice calls as required.”
House, from Nuvias UC, highlighted how competition in the UC space has fostered a culture of innovation. He said, “There are new products coming to market continuously, which have innovative features and improved quality. This means, it’s becoming more competitive for vendors but there are more options out there for end-users.
“In the past, businesses would be restricted with their options, so it was harder to find solutions suitable to smaller budgets. Now, it’s becoming easier to implement UC technologies across all industries due to the commoditising of these solutions.
“As the market is becoming more competitive for vendors, distributors and even resellers, we’re starting to see more value-add services come into play. Being able to offer consultations and technical expertise can be costly and isn’t an option for everyone, so it does provide a competitive advantage.”
Tiger’s Nicklen pointed to the significance of the cloud in moving the needle on possibilities within the UC space. He said, “The cloud has revolutionised the market. Having delivered transformational change in such a short period of time, there’s now no going back. The small number of businesses that haven’t already migrated over to the cloud, are now generally looking to transition – starting with a hybrid model.
“Having adjusted to this new way of working, companies are now viewing their subscriptions as an ongoing business cost – they know how vital it is that they are able to communicate with customers and partners in a way that works online. The most efficient way to do this is via the cloud.
“During a period of necessity, namely the Covid-19 pandemic, businesses chose ‘one size fits all’ options such as Zoom or Teams. But as these technologies have become increasingly entrenched, larger organisations have begun to explore solutions that better fit their unique needs and growth journeys.
“Therefore, rather than using ready-made options, companies are looking for customisable packages, that can evolve alongside their business. As a result, organisations are looking to embed the capability to use existing technologies such as Teams, Cisco, and Zoom within their own apps — leaving providers to consider the extendibility of their offerings and data.”
Andy Jones, chief revenue officer, TelXL, also pointed to the influence Microsoft Teams on the UC market. He explained, “One of the most significant changes of recent times has been the emergence of Microsoft Teams. This is part of an ongoing trend toward consolidation and connecting of disparate systems.”
Jones also noted the convergence between unified communications and contact centres. He said, “Given that UC and CC systems are increasingly blending, we see facility for this amalgamation, as well as the need to better leverage AI for all partners and their customers as two of the major focuses within our product roadmap here at TelXL.
“If resellers have, to date, sold their customers on simpler telephony or UC solutions, there now exists a more natural and realisable path to offer contact centre functionality to frontline staff, and make the case for how this answers increasing need for improved customer experience and the augmentation of customer service.
“A contact centre solution or elements therein will be naturally sticky for the reseller, while also offering a natural growth path to upsell and relationship retention as more technology comes on stream in coming years, notably from AI applications that enhance automation and productivity benefits.”
Hilary Oliver, chief marketing and experience officer, Tollring, reflected on the increasing merger and acquisition activity in the UC space. She said, “The market is changing faster than ever. Acquisitions and mergers across all industries have increased by about 80 per cent in the last year.
“This is well-reflected in the unified communications space, with a great deal of high-profile M&A activity ongoing. In addition, Microsoft Teams’ ubiquity in the collaboration space is beginning to transfer to telephony: they recently announced they have over 12 million PSTN users, and with an impressive roadmap laid out before them, this trend seems set to continue.
“It would be easy to assume that this would translate to uncertainty in the minds of customers, and negatively impact sales. Instead, the result of this activity is innovation, presenting a chance for customers to revaluate the way they work, driving new opportunities for resellers.
“However, this must come with the understanding that a solution is about so much more than the technology you deploy. Technology is just an enabler, which only becomes a solution with a commitment to understanding both how your organisation and people work now, and how you want them to be able to work in the future. That is putting greater reliance on analytics and insights than ever before.”
Untapped opportunities
In terms of the opportunities that remain for the Channel, Regan, from Vonage, highlighted the add-on products and services that could enhance the core UC solution proposed to a customer.
He said, “There will continue to be developments made by MSPs and resellers to UC services that improve hybrid work, for both employees and employers.
“Whether this be better room video conferencing platforms, increased use of cloud-based services, VPNS, or a reliance on the mobile workforce. As hybrid work continues to be preferable for many workers, UC platforms should continue tapping into these opportunities.”
Nuvias UC’s House explained that simply educating users about the possibilities can be fruitful. He said, “There’s still an upsell opportunity to assist businesses with migration to the cloud.
“Because people had to pick up the communication tools last minute to maintain business continuity during Covid-19, everything that users know is likely self-taught.
“We believe that there are further training opportunities available to ensure businesses are maximising user adoption of their cloud platforms and hardware, which will enable them to utilise all relevant features.”
Emerging features
When asked if there any emerging technologies or features that he expects to become commonplace in the next few years, Jola’s Sunderland pointed to augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (AR). He said, “At the moment the UC collaboration experience is all based in two dimensions with video and screen sharing. However, we already see our SIMs being used in AR and VR applications in specialist industries with purpose-built tools and devices.
“Companies such as Microsoft, Apple and Google are investing heavily in AR and VR for both consumer and business. This combined with the widespread availability of 5G makes me think it won’t be too far away before the UC and Collaboration tools that we use every day start to open up AR and VR for widespread B2B use.”
That chimed with the view of Nicklen, from Tiger, who also pinpointed the potential impact of AR and VR, albeit for a slightly different use case. He said, “With access to recordings comes an opportunity for voice and sentiment analysis. A means of measuring what people say, versus how and when they say it, it could offer a valuable insight into attitudes and engagement among colleagues, clients, and prospects alike.
“In the coming years, augmented and virtual reality are likely to become important parts of the remote working experience. For those working remotely, inclusion — perhaps via AI glasses — could see them included ‘in the room’ in a way that hasn’t previously been possible.
“While this may sound like a stretch right now, when we consider that Google was invented just 25 years ago, it’s much easier to see how quickly this could become reality.”
Tollring’s Oliver explained the balance to strike between continue to evolve UC technologies, whilst also ensuring users can make the most of existing features.
She said, “In the past, telecoms and technology was sold to people because they didn’t have it. The market now is very different. Today, we all have the technology, but we don’t all use it in the best possible way, and it doesn’t solve the business issues which remain the same.
“The focus over the next few years will be to leverage the technology in a better way to help businesses to solve their problems. Some of the hurdles include the delivery of a joined-up solution between UC and collaboration.
“The key is to understand an organisation’s requirements which could relate to the call centre or customer-facing team and then identify the best technology to solve that problem.”
Oliver pointed to analytics as one exciting area for future development. “In a hybrid world, analytics can solve some of the management and customer visibility issues around how to handle customers from a service level perspective.However, as we move into this joined up collaboration setting, that story looks very different.
“And the analytics has had to evolve to consider all forms of communications within our customer and with our internal people. Data-driven insights help to achieve a holistic view across all of it.”
She added, “Collaboration analytics to deliver best management practices in our hybrid world is another emerging capability. It will become more common place as businesses try to understand their culture, their people and how they deal with their customers.”
It is also likely we will continue to see new integrations and partnerships creating new opportunities in the marketplace. Vonage’s Regan explained, “A major feature emerging is the extension of partnerships, and consequently platform integration. Companies are identifying that customers require fewer applications for better productivity.
”A reduction in the number of applications required for business communications means providers must collaborate in order to offer a superior service. This can be successfully achieved through direct routing that does not require new hardware or software installation.”