It’s set to be another eventful year in the unified communications and customer experience industries, with move to hybrid work driving adoption of new technology.
UC Today sat down with Blair Ferguson, Chief of Staff at ComputerTalk, to discuss the trends she expects to emerge in 2022.
Security Will Test Vendors and Customers
The move to remote working, and now hybrid working, has put strain on both IT teams and IT providers in a number of ways.
Perhaps the most crucial issue to address is security, particularly with workforces more dispersed than ever before.
Ferguson said that challenges with security will continue across the board, explaining that many businesses are struggling to adapt to the characteristics of cloud-based protection.
“As people look to replace legacy investments, they are expecting to have the same security protocols in the cloud as they had on premises,” she explained.
“One of the challenges of cloud security is a sense of loss of control because now you’re relying on your cloud vendors to do it for you, where you would have previously turned to your own IT departments”
From a vendor perspective, Ferguson said that customers are paying greater attention to a potential supplier’s security credentials, which can slow down buying processes.
“Vendors are required to have enhanced security certifications such as ISO, SOC 2 and PCI,” she said. “Those are becoming the bare minimum.
“When we’re responding to RFPs and trying to provide solutions to our clients there is a need to go through very detailed enhanced security audits as part of the procurement process. This has a tendency to delay the buying process and we suspect that will continue.”
Teams Will Continue to Disrupt
The rapid adoption of Teams over the past two years is undeniable, with the most recent figures from Microsoft showing that the platform has 240 million monthly active users.
Ferguson said that many of ComputerTalk’s contact centre clients were reluctant to bring Teams into their solution at first, but now some 95 percent of customers are using Teams in some capacity – primarily for chat and then potentially adding in voice.
She said that businesses are now exploring how they can connect Teams to specialised contact centre solutions.
“The way that we have integrated our solution in Teams allows us to leverage a lot of the media processes in the platform, and then extend it with the enterprise contact centre functionalities within ice,” she said.
“I’d now say that 95 percent of the companies we work with have Teams as some component of their journey, so being able to expand on that investment and add contact centre capabilities on top of their UC platform is important.
“So, I think we’re going to see more voice in Teams over the next 12 months; I think organisations are going to replace old PBXs with Direct Routing and Operator Connect, and by default, the contact centre often gets pulled along into those discussions.”
