Back in 2020 and 2021, UC service management was less about long-term transformation and more about sheer survival. Organisations scrambled to pivot to remote and hybrid working models, and in doing so, many leaned heavily on UC service management providers to stabilise operations, onboard new collaboration platforms, and ensure business continuity.
Fast-forward to 2025, and the space has matured dramatically. Many of those longer-term contracts are either being renewed or are approaching renewal. However, the UC service management space into which these contracts were born is scarcely recognisable. A wave of innovation has transformed how UC platforms are managed, secured, and optimised.
This moment represents much more than just a renewal cycle for IT leaders and procurement teams. It’s a strategic opportunity to reassess whether existing service models are still fit for purpose and to take advantage of powerful new capabilities that didn’t exist a few years ago.
- UC Service Management – UC Round Table
- From Reactive to Proactive: UC Service Management Strategies for Success
AI-Driven Automation Means the End of the Manual Headache
One of the most dramatic shifts since the pandemic is the rise of AI and automation across UC service management platforms. From provisioning new users and configuring endpoints to troubleshooting outages and predicting failures before they happen, AI is helping organisations tangibly reduce human effort and bolster reliability.
Modern platforms now offer self-healing capabilities, natural language-based service portals, and proactive alerting systems that anticipate issues before users are even aware of them. It’s not just about convenience but also about reducing downtime and improving employee experience at scale.
How to start the conversation: Ask your UC provider how they’re using AI to reduce mean time to resolution (MTTR) and prevent incidents. Look for platforms that integrate with your ITSM tools and can automate routine tasks across hybrid infrastructure.
Hybrid Cloud Solutions are Balancing Flexibility and Control
The pandemic was a cloud accelerator, but many organisations landed somewhere in the middle, adopting cloud-based UC platforms while still running legacy on-prem infrastructure. However, service management providers have since embraced hybrid cloud as a permanent operating model.
Hybrid cloud UC service management lets organisations support multiple UC environments under one pane of glass. Whether you’re running Microsoft Teams, Cisco, Zoom, or a mix of everything, 2025’s platforms are hand-tailored for agility. They feature seamless integrations, policy consistency, and cross-platform troubleshooting, irrespective of where your services live.
How to start the conversation: Ask your provider how they’re enabling hybrid visibility and control. Suggest unified dashboards and SLA tracking across on-prem, cloud, and multi-UC environments. Consider whether your provider offers authentically platform-agnostic support.
Integrated Security Measures Mean Properly Safeguarded Communications
In 2020 and 2021, many organisations took a “secure it later” approach in their rush to remote work. But with cyber threats surging and regulatory pressure ever-growing, secure-by-design service management has become table stakes.
In 2025, UC platforms offer integrated threat detection, zero-trust architectures, and detailed role-based access controls tailored to UC environments. With communications platforms now part of the organisational threat surface, the ability to monitor, audit, and control user activity across UC systems is absolutely critical.
How to start the conversation: Ask your provider how security is operationalised in their service management stack. What visibility do they offer into risky behaviours? Can they support audit requirements? How do they handle escalation workflows for breaches or suspicious activity?
Comprehensive Analytics Drive Informed Decision-Making
Legacy UC monitoring tools often generated more questions than answers. Today’s service management innovations transform data into actionable intelligence, empowering IT leaders to make shrewder performance, usage, and spending decisions.
Platforms now offer dynamic dashboards that visualise everything from call quality trends and licensing waste to endpoint health and adoption metrics. Some even integrate sentiment analysis to gauge user satisfaction in real time.
How to start the conversation: Ask what analytics are included in your current service level. Request a demo showing how the platform helps identify cost savings or user experience issues. Consider how your provider’s insights can feed into broader business intelligence platforms.
Vendor Consolidation Helps Streamline Management and Support
Many organisations rushed into fragmented UC strategies during the pandemic, layering Zoom on top of Cisco Webex, adding Microsoft Teams on top of Slack, and engaging multiple service providers to support the chaos. That fragmentation is now a severe drag on performance, user experience, and, perhaps most notably in a time of shrinking tech budgets, cost.
A growing number of organisations are consolidating service management under fewer vendors, or even a single, platform-agnostic provider that can manage the entire stack. This approach helps simplify support, improves SLA enforcement, and, crucially, streamlines governance.
How to start the conversation: Evaluate how many vendors you rely on today and what overlaps exist. Ask providers about their integration capabilities and multi-tenant service models. Consider a consolidation strategy that prioritises clarity and control as well as cost savings.
Seize the Moment Before It Passes
The last few years have dramatically elevated UC from a reactive necessity into a strategic enabler. If your service management contract is nearing renewal, don’t sleepwalk into an extension of the status quo. Today’s tools are far more intelligent, secure, and scalable than those deployed in haste during the pandemic.
Treat this moment as an opportunity to rethink your UC service strategy with fresh eyes. Meet with your vendors, scrutinise their roadmaps, and challenge them to show how they’ve evolved. The next five years of your communications infrastructure may depend on the questions you ask today.
