“Microsoft’s movement in the space speaks volumes about the seriousness of the unified communications and collaboration space” This is the way my Microsoft Teams interview kicked off with Director of Product Management, TetraVX, Kara Korte.
We had a great conversation about the unified communications and collaborations landscape, which both evolved at grander scales than ever before in 2019. We witnessed substantial innovation on the contact center front with the introduction of several new UCaaS solutions by Zoom, Slack, Avaya, RingCentral, and Microsoft.
We also saw significant collaborations milestones, with more people around the globe meeting via video conferencing systems than any year on record.
The goal of such platforms, of course, is to help contact center agents, remote workers, business partners, and customers connect while increasing efficiency. Do these tools rise to the challenge of mounting consumer demands for enterprises to make communications convenient? Do they increase workplace efficiency?
According to Lifesize’s 2019 impact of video conferencing report, 94 percent of businesses said video conferencing increases productivity. Another 89 percent said video conferencing helped reduce the time it takes to complete projects and tasks.
Korte said there’s no doubt these tools work, they just have to be implemented properly and leveraged throughout the entire organization, otherwise their ineffective. And she should know, as she has over ten years of product management experience, along with previous expertise as a business analyst and a developer.
In prior roles, and especially in her present, Korte shared, she’s learned a lot about the deployment, management, as well as the support of communication and collaboration tools like Cisco Webex and Microsoft Teams. She also said she’s grown fond of these tools and kept her eyes on the market as a whole.
“Microsoft’s activity last year set the bar for the industry and made it even clearer that UCC was not going anywhere.” If anything, it will only get bigger”
The way she sees things, Microsoft’s role in UCC is important. They tend to focus on innovation in unified communications and collaborations, which is important.” If Microsoft continues to make further investments and integrating with others, which they’ve been slow to do, they have even more opportunity for growth.”
And Microsoft has historically been slow at releasing the features organizations need. Korte added, “It is either this or the company is slow to introduce useful features.” When Microsoft does bring new features to the market, she told me, the collab giant often limits them to a small set of users. The question that remains to be answered, Can Microsoft set aside its push for dominance in the name of seamless user experiences?
Another competitor in the landscape is Slack, which Korte said has to continue to innovate. For awhile, Slack got complacent, she added, as it was considered best-in-class. When asked for any advice for Slack? She said the company should focus more on the enterprise market.
What is your take on the evolving UCC market? What about the small players in the industry? Will they be impacted by the industry’s growth? And if so, will it be for the better or for worse?
