Collaboration is the cornerstone of most businesses as the creativity that comes from colleagues working together is what creates the ideas and dynamics of a successful company.
When the pandemic set in last year, the threat remote working has on the ability for teams to collaborate together was one of the primary concerns for organisations, But with the help of manager service providers and vendors introducing and updating their products for remote working, many employees found that successful collaboration doesn’t necessarily mean working together in the same room.
Collaboration has been a massive talking point in the IT industry since March 2020 and the opportunities around it have exploded with the popularity of hybrid working. We spoke with executives from Radisys, Mitel, Avaya, Fuze and Akkadian to get their thoughts on the emerging trends in the collaboration space.
What are Some of the Most Significant Customer Trends from 2021?
Nick Riggott, Country Sales Director UK & Ireland at Mitel:
After a tumultuous 2020 and 2021, Mitel’s Nick Rigott believes that organisations are adjusting their mindsets from “Just make it work” to “How can we do it better?”. This shift has translated into an evolution of the technology underpinning their communications and collaborations tools.
“In no field does that apply better than customer and employee experiences,” he said.
“Companies seek to use technology designed for the way employees want to work and customers want to engage, enabling them to unlock the potential of their team, deliver differentiated customer experiences, and drive growth.”
Rob Carmichael, Collaboration Specialist at Avaya:
According to Avaya’s Rob Carmichael, the evolution of home working was “unquestionably” the most significant of customer trend of 2021. This assertion was backed up by the vendor’s Life and Work Beyond 2020 report which revealed that 60 percent of respondents said they would like to continue working remotely, while 46 percent envisioned a ‘Work from Anywhere’ model being a viable way of working.
“Businesses need to pay attention to the fact that in the UK, 45 percent of respondents cited frustration when their employer doesn’t use technology that would make them more productive,” stated Carmichael.
“We now know that we can work remotely if needed, we now need to invest in the technology to make it as productive as possible to work from anywhere, especially if the technology has been developed to be agile enough to evolve to meet a user’s needs.”
Mike Magil, Technical Product Manager at Akkadian Labs:
Akkadian’s Mike Magil agreed with Carmichael’s assessment that it was all about hybrid this year, stating that the model evolved into three distinct strands over 2021: in-office vs at-home, single UC vs mixed, and on-prem vs in the cloud.
“The pandemic has significantly changed work environments from predominantly in-office to now a hybrid situation, with a large percentage of knowledge workers spend most of their time working from home offices. This shift has impacted the way employees collaborate and made access to diverse and reliable communications technologies more critical than ever,” he stated.
“More organisations are relying on mixed unified communications technologies for collaboration. This often occurs due to merges and acquisitions or a subsidiary making an independent IT decision. Cisco Collaboration, Microsoft Teams, and Zoom look like they will continue to be the big three, with Google and Slack (especially considering its acquisition by Salesforce) being important players as well.”
Which technology will deliver the greatest value to your customers in 2022?
Rob Carmichael, Collaboration Specialist at Avaya:
The world of work has changed forever, and organisations need to acknowledge that they need more than video calling to support their employees’ needs, according to Avaya’s Carmichael.
“Beyond COVID-19, 2021 has shown us that the world of work has changed for good, which means that the challenge for businesses is that they have realised they need more than a video calling capability to support remote working whilst keeping employees productive,” he stated.
“Businesses need to invest in more robust enterprise-business grade solutions that deliver increased flexibility, agility, and a feature-rich unified communications experience to support both users and their customers now and into the future.”
Nick Riggott Country Sales Director UK&Ireland at Mitel:
Mitel’s Riggott added that 2022 allows us to re-shape our working lives in our image, but that this comes with a number of challenges in the form of IT budgets, deciphering the “nice-to-have” solutions form the necessary ones, whether they should migrate completely to the cloud, or ensuring security among a distributed workforce.
“Our industry has come a long way, but it’s time to take another transformative step forward,” he said.
“We’ve gone from simple VoIP solutions, evolved to unified communications and now to unified communications and collaboration tools. Now businesses need truly comprehensive tools that increase organisational agility, deliver customer experiences that provide a competitive advantage and support today’s hybrid workforce and the need for an increased focus on employee experience.”
Al Balasco, Head of Media, Core and Applications Business at Radisys:
Fatigue over collaboration tools is one of the main challenges facing organisations, according to Radisys’ Al Balasco.
“It will be important for vendors and service providers to adapt these applications, so they evolve from one-size-fits-all solutions, where similar user experiences – such as Hollywood Squares for every meeting – and common features are used for every type of meeting,” he said.
What will be the top challenges facing end customers in 2022?
Nick Riggott Country Sales Director UK&Ireland at Mitel:
Next year is likely to be more “evolution than revolution” but that doesn’t mean that advances made in 2022 will be any less significant than those made throughout 2020 and 2021, said Riggott.
“Businesses already have an array of communication, collaboration, customer experience, and contact centre tools available to them – the sheer variety can be overwhelming,” he stated.
“It’s also going to be another very big year for the cloud. Historically, bandwidth was a limiter on how creatively companies could use the cloud. But in most places, bandwidth is no longer a bottleneck and innovations in connectivity like Wi-Fi 6 and 5G are actively pushing forward what’s possible.”
Matt Glock, Global VP Sales Engineering at Fuze:
Fuze’s Glock reckons that maturing technologies combined with enhanced mobile unified communications experience will give companies the flexibility they need in a hybrid working world.
“We believe that innovations such as enhanced mobile UC experiences combined with maturing technologies like 5G, AI and Machine Learning, and Wi-Fi will provide the flexibility and agility companies are increasingly needing for a collaborative work environment,” he mused.
“As changes to the work environment continue to unfold, we’ll see companies accelerate the deployment of intuitive collaboration solutions to improve distributed team collaboration. 5G is a critical enabler for UCaaS and it will become commonplace for increased reliability in running multiple video streams, chat, presentations, etc. from a single device.”
