This year, UC Today was fortunate enough to attend Enterprise Connect 2017 – an innovative technology and communications conference showcasing the latest and greatest the UC has to offer. During our time at the event, we learned a lot, but one of the biggest themes that we encountered along the way was to do with the rapid evolution of enterprise communications, and how the future is going to look for UC.
It seems fair to suggest that as new technologies appear within the industry, we’ll have to bid farewell to some old staples. At Enterprise Connect 2017, you could taste the change in the air, all the way from the kick-off sessions on the very first day of the conference.
The Shifting World of Enterprise Communication and Collaboration
If you’ve been paying attention to the news over the last few months, then we don’t need to tell you that innovation in the communication and collaboration space is moving with some phenomenal speed. In fact, it’s pretty difficult to keep track of – particularly if you’re among the group that’s used to dealing with slower hardware systems.
This year’s conference began with a “conference-within-a-conference”, examining the world of communications to come in 2020. Essentially, we covered the fact that 2020 is sure to see its fair share of changing premise-based UC platforms but considered the fact that enterprises are largely going to start supplementing the on-premises force and may replace them entirely in some instances, with cloud-based solutions.
Disruptive Forces at Work
The conference experience was started by Tim Banting, the principal analyst for Current Analysis, by taking a look at the question that most companies in the communication sector are asking today: “Will there be a new collaboration and communications model during 2020?”
It’s safe to assume that we’re going to experience an accelerated migration to the cloud, and more adoption of UCaaS across the industry, as well as an increased popularity of team collaboration solutions too. However, it’s also worth noting that the rise of these technologies is likely to spell the demise of others, particularly in regards to conferencing, PBX platforms, and telepresence.
The industry is in a state of disruption, and the crucial thing to keep in mind is that companies will always have the power to appear seemingly out of nowhere, and change businesses without any huge up-front investments. After all, we’ve already seen something similar with Uber’s use of CPaaS. These disruptions are only going to grow more significant across the course of the next three years. Let’s wait and see what happens next.
