With employees working across offices, homes, and even during transit – IT leaders face unprecedented challenges.
As hybrid work cements itself as the default model and not a temporary trend, leaders must rethink how they deliver seamless collaboration across varied environments, devices, and user expectations that can span multiple platforms, geographies, and use cases.
“The shift to the hybrid work has fundamentally transformed the way the collaboration happens,” says Vivek Kar, Head of Employee Interaction Suite at Tata Communications.
“Employees also work during transit where the connectivity could be an issue.”
This demands a fresh approach to how IT delivers seamless, secure, and reliable communication experiences across conditions – from traditional office and home environments to any location with variable connectivity.
According to IDC, 93 percent of enterprises now use UC&C applications like video conferencing, team messaging, and screen sharing, highlighting how hybrid collaboration has evolved into a mature, enterprise-wide capability rather than a stopgap pandemic solution.
IT teams must now ensure consistent voice, video, messaging, and file-sharing experiences – even under unstable network conditions.
Meeting this challenge requires flexible solutions that work across devices, time zones, and connection qualities.
Multi-Platform Complexity: Flexibility vs. Manageability
A major hurdle is the reality of multiple UC platforms within the same organization.
Often a result of mergers, legacy systems, or regional preferences, this multi-platform environment creates complexity for IT teams.
However, managing disparate platforms can lead to fragmented user experiences, security vulnerabilities, and increased operational overhead.
A 2024 survey by Metrigy found that 51 percent of organizations consider consolidating UC&C platforms extremely important, with another 24 percent calling it somewhat important.
“Employees, partners and customers often operate across different UC platforms,” said Kar.
“Supporting multiple platforms preserves the user choices and the business agility.”
Empowering Users: Scaling Without Overburdening IT
Central IT teams can easily become overwhelmed managing routine tasks like user onboarding, troubleshooting, and configuration especially in complex multi-platform environments. Kar stresses the importance of decentralizing these tasks:
“User-self service is a foundational element for scalability… IT teams can’t be the bottleneck for routine actions like onboarding, troubleshooting, or configuration.”
By enabling local administrators and end-users with intuitive tools and APIs, organizations can reduce IT workload and accelerate response times.
This shift not only improves efficiency but also enhances user satisfaction by putting control closer to the point of need.
Managed Services: The Strategic Future
With multi-platform collaboration becoming the norm, managed services will need to evolve beyond basic support into strategic partners that provide orchestration, AI-powered analytics, and unified governance.
According to Nemertes Research, 27 percent of enterprises now rank managed services availability among their top three UC&C provider selection criteria, signaling growing expectations for scalable, hands-off support capabilities.
“Managed services will become central to driving faster adoption, optimizing collaboration ROI, and fostering continuous improvement,” Kar predicted.
For IT leaders, this means reconsidering vendor relationships and exploring service providers capable of delivering cross-platform management, security compliance, and lifecycle support – critical components to keep pace with evolving collaboration demands.
Navigating the Challenges Ahead
The road ahead is filled with difficult trade-offs.
Single-vendor platforms offer simplicity and streamlined security but risk limiting innovation and user choice. Conversely, multi-platform approaches maximize flexibility but increase complexity and cost.
Kar’s advice underscores the need for a holistic strategy:
“Hybrid work isn’t a passing phase. It is the new operating model. Success will depend not just on choosing the right platforms, but on how well those platforms work together, adapt to users, and scale with the business.”
Investing in integration, empowering users through self-service, and partnering with managed services providers that offer orchestration and AI-driven insights will be critical for enterprises to thrive in this hybrid era.
