2016 represented a great year of rapid transformation and growth in the world of UC&C (Unified Communication and Collaboration). As various businesses and organisations continue to make their way towards the Cloud, apps for team collaboration like Cisco Spark, Slack, and Facebook have all started to make an impact on the scene. These brand-new services are forcing IT and business leaders to rethink how their workforce collaborates across a host of platforms.
Since the mobile workforce is predicted to make up around 75% of the U.S. employment network by 2020, business leaders should continue to rely on UC to elevate their workplace productivity and collaboration solutions. Indeed, growth in the UC&C market is predicted to hit a value of $96 billion by 2023 so, how can VARS make their UC&C collaborations more successful?
1. Separate Clients from Multi-Vendor Environments
2017 will be the year when more companies are going “all-in” with a single vendor. Predictions suggest that more than 40% of enterprises will be converging their apps around a single provider, with most choosing Microsoft or Cisco, according to research. Larger businesses are mostly looking to consolidate vendors to create better user experiences and smoother deployments, while many small businesses aren’t ready to commit to a single vendor.
2. Keep an Eye on Disruptive Tools
Over the recent years, team chat solutions like Microsoft Teams, Slack, and Cisco Spark have all surged in popularity, enabling more consistent internal and external communications. The casual format of instant messaging allows teams to interact more frequently, and stay updated with projects in real-time, yet it remains to be seen if these tools are actually going to replace more traditional UC solutions, or they’ll simply serve as boutique options.
3. Improve Interoperability
During 2016, Skype for Business by Microsoft and Cisco collaboration solutions announced an opportunity for greater interoperability between platforms, highlighting a new industry trend. As vendors look for ways to improve connectivity between platforms, a more streamlined UC experience is likely to emerge. Greater interoperability will ultimately tear down communication silos, while giving businesses the opportunity to make more scalable UC investments.
4. Use Personas for Better Deployment
While Personas have often been used in marketing, this year, we will start to see more leaders using personas in the IT industry to identify the tools that their employees need most, based on job responsibilities. In the past, companies have struggled to evaluate the day-to-day needs of their employees, and resellers can now help clients to move away from a one-size-fits-all practice and personalise deployments according to employee need.
5. Find New Uses for Video
Though many businesses have embraced the value of video content like Vimeo and YouTube, enterprise-grade video conferencing has yet to become a standard tool in the workplace. Right now, only about half of employees are regularly participating in video conferencing through consumer-grade technology, with around 70% using things like FaceTime or Skype. As video continues to evolve in 2017, we’re sure to see this option becoming a more fundamental component of the digital transformation.
