Covid, the pandemic, lockdowns—I think it has now been enough time that we can look back on that era without the same emotional response we would have had just two years ago.
Indeed, as the world fully opened up in 2023, the last thing anyone wanted to do was don a face mask, carry around a bottle of hand sanitizer, or talk about Covid.
Yet now, five years after the first lockdown of countries like the US and UK, and having replenished our freedoms, we can take a more measured approach.
Aside from everyone learning how to bake banana bread, the pandemic left lasting impacts elsewhere.
The biggest one affected the UC sector more than any other: remote work.
“In the early days of the pandemic, organizations were thrust into remote work almost overnight,“
David Evans, Vice President of Product Management at GoTo, said to UC Today.
As a result, businesses—from SMBs all the way to larger enterprises—rushed to implement ways to keep their teams connected.
The surge in new customers resulted in a profound effect on the current UC ecosphere.
But what was the sector like before the pandemic? How has it changed, and where will it continue to evolve because of its legacy?
The Pandemic and Its Effect on UC
The pandemic saw “every UCaaS vendor get a lift,” with those becoming household names now being the companies leading the sphere.
“The big winners included those whose offerings were easiest to buy and use, and most prominent in public consciousness when businesses were scrambling for a quick solution. Zoom and Microsoft Teams, for instance, enjoyed strong growth and both have used this acceleration to establish themselves as major UCaaS players,” Evans said.
Equally, home working meant that traditional on-prem providers of UC solutions were not of use, affecting the market of established UC providers.
“The pandemic greatly accelerated the migration of UC to the cloud, and this had a downward effect on legacy UC vendors,” Evans explained:
“Customers sought out cloud vendors that unlocked flexibility to enable home working.”
In 2019, a publication for IT buyers and leads, HackerNoon, published an article on the top 6 UC solutions to consider. Within the piece, there was no mention of Zoom or Teams. Now, you could not imagine that same article being published without these platforms.
The switch to cloud has put some legacy vendors at risk of having their lunch taken by new entries.
“Competition has also been heavily impacted by changes in how communications vendors are valued over the last few years,” Evans explained.
This competition was fueled not only by the pandemic but by cheap borrowing offered during lockdowns, which allowed companies to make big investments in product innovation.
Evans explained that this innovation only accelerated as AI became mainstream: “This had a secondary escalation effect and created some large, very valuable companies in our space.”
Yet with inflation having now taken hold, reducing the availability of capital, profitability is becoming a more key business driver.
The effect? All this borrowing and investment has to be paid back somehow.
“This all has a direct impact on the prices available to buyers and the rate at which vendors can invest in growth and technology innovation,” Evans stated.
Equally, those who invested in AI technologies before this current generative AI boom are unfortunately being punished for their prospecting outlook.
“Organizations that implemented AI before the latest generative AI evolution are unfortunately having to quickly re-tool and accept that some of their investment has been wasted.”
Evans believes that these new market dynamics post-pandemic have yet to be accurately accounted for due to the UC market’s sheer size, although he states “ongoing saturation in the move to the cloud will likely fuel tougher competition and an uptick in consolidation.”
UC’s New Trajectory
With the pandemic creating a “rush to keep the lights on,” Evans believes that this led to fragmented UC solutions for many.
“Departments often made their own decisions independently, leading to a patchwork of tools that weren’t necessarily interoperable or compliant. Speed was everything, and the long-term impact on user experience, scalability, and security sometimes took a back seat.”
However, growing technologies like AI, its regulation, and companies having learned from their mistakes from the pandemic have seen them shift their focus from rushed adoption to more careful consolidation.
“Now, rather than rushing to deploy standalone apps, IT leaders are taking a more strategic and holistic approach,” Evans explained:
“Companies understand that a fragmented communications stack creates inefficiencies, security risks, and adoption hurdles. With businesses keen to future-proof their strategies, the key question has shifted from ‘What tool do we need right now?‘ to ‘What platform best suits our requirements and can grow with us?‘”
This has led to what Evans explains is small- and medium-sized firms looking for a unified solution as opposed to large enterprises that have the capabilities to adopt a best-in-breed approach.
“Looking at how the entire workforce interacts across physical offices, remote or flexible setups, and contact centers—they’re seeking unified platforms that can cover many bases: managing all channels in one place, adapting to changing needs, and integrating with existing software ecosystems such as CRMs, HR tools, and productivity suites.”
A cohesive stack from one provider can simplify integration, reduce complexity, and ensure consistency across tools and channels.
In contrast, a mix of separate tools—even with an integrated underlying structure—can introduce challenges with interoperability, scalability, and efficient AI implementation.
Evans believes this demand will be the catalyst for trimming the size of the UC market—with AI and integrated solutions being the decider.
“Eventually, my prediction is that integrated solutions powered by generative AI will take over the market as their capabilities catch up with and surpass standalone competitors,”
Evans explained.
The current momentum, Evans believes, is with companies that have the scale to exploit generative AI at scale and have a single platform architecture to make applying AI consistent.
“Vendors that have not invested in first-generation AI are moving quickest as they are not losing time and money replacing legacy AI tech and migrating customers away from them,“
Evans is bullish on unified platforms being the future of the UC market.
However, he understands that challenges still persist with their capabilities and ability to truly “unify” their offerings—and “the sheer speed of AI progress is fueling exciting abilities and complications for both vendors and customers.”
Yet just as how the Covid pandemic turned things very quickly for the UC space—so too could AI.
