Having been in the Unified Communications market since its very early days and witnessed over-enthusiasm and false starts, I am always careful in making claims and predictions. But I think most UC people would agree that 2018 was one of the most exciting years in this now fast moving and growing market, driven by both established players and exciting new start-ups. So my first prediction should be no surprise.
1 - Accelerated Mergers and Acquisitions (M&As)
The second half of 2018 saw some interesting M&A moves in terms of geographical and vertical expansions from Gamma, Centile, EvolveIP and Blueface plus solution-based acquisitions such as the 8x8 purchase of Jitsi Video Communications Technology from Atlassian. I see no signs of this activity slowing. In fact, UC M&A activity in 2019 will continue and accelerated across the board as both vendors and Service Providers fight to gain momentum and market share.
2 - Growth of WebRTC
[caption id="attachment_5714" align="alignright" width="200"]
Steve Harris[/caption]
Prepare to be tired of hearing about everyone’s claims around user experience and user interface in 2019. These terms are certainly not new but there is now a complete focus on the overall UI and UX, with both video, messaging and content sharing seen as mandatory to drive better communication and collaboration.
WebRTC has been seen as an interesting but niche technology to drive these solutions to the desktop but has seen significant growth within the contact centre environment and customer services environments. This will likely spread and become more prevalent across the whole UC space now WebRTC technology has matured.
3 - UC Service Bundling plus Customisation
Everyone likes a one-stop-shop and we are now seeing Service Providers looking to bundle entire solutions for UC across connectivity, hardware and software. It’s becoming increasingly important to do this against the large Over The Top (OTT) players coming into the market and to deliver a simple proposition that is easy to consume and manage. At the same time, Providers are also looking more at customisation and integration opportunities to differentiate against the more standard and volume-based propositions from the larger players. Ultimately, the market is becoming more competitive and providers need to be very clear and savvy, and invest in their differentiators to remain relevant with both existing and new end customers.
4 - UC Security and Analytics
Security is no longer an option and UC vendors, resellers and Service Providers need to deliver secure solutions that protect their customers and their customers’ customers. There will also be a continued increase in focus on analytics, even though 2018 was a little slower on adoption than forecast. User data and trends on the actual consumption of UC services will become the norm and businesses will come to rely on this data to see how staff collaborate and interact to improve productivity and to measure user adoption. This type of data is already commonplace in IT based applications and is moving at pace into UC.
