UC has become the backbone of modern enterprise collaboration, but managing these dynamic environments at scale is no small feat.
As organizations continue to adopt hybrid work models and integrate new technologies, the complexity of UC service management grows exponentially.
IT leaders are now tasked with not only ensuring seamless communication but also delivering operational efficiency, security, and a consistently high-quality user experience.
The UC landscape in 2025 is shaped by rapid advancements in automation, AI, and the move toward unified management platforms.
These shifts are driving both unprecedented opportunities and new challenges, from managing multi-vendor environments to ensuring compliance and anticipating user needs before issues arise.
The pressure is on for service providers and enterprise IT teams to adapt, innovate, and future-proof their UC strategies.
For our latest UC Round Table topic, “UC Service Management,” we wanted to see what exactly service providers were facing and so spoke with experts and executives from NUWAVE, IR, GoTo; Kurmi, VOSS and AudioCodes about the trends reshaping UC service management, the most common blind spots, the role of automation and AI, and what the future holds for this critical area of enterprise IT.
- The UC Service Management Innovations IT Leaders Can’t Afford to Miss in 2025
- From Reactive to Proactive: UC Service Management Strategies for Success
What are the major trends impacting UC service management in 2025?
Mark Bunnell, Chief Operations Officer and Co-Founder of NUWAVE Communications
Bunnell emphasizes that the industry is undergoing a fundamental shift away from fragmented point solutions toward comprehensive platforms that provide unified visibility and control across the entire UC ecosystem.
"The most significant trend is the industry's shift away from fragmented point solutions toward comprehensive platforms. Organizations are no longer satisfied with single solutions that manage just one aspect of their communications ecosystem.
"What NUWAVE is seeing is that regardless of where customers are in their UC journey – whether implementing OEM licensing, migrating from legacy systems, expanding global communications, managing multiple UC platforms, or enhancing security and compliance – they need a single pane of glass to manage their entire UC lifecycle.
"This holistic approach through a unified platform is replacing the traditional model where different vendors handle different parts of the UC lifecycle, creating unnecessary complexity and inefficiency. Other key trends include a heightened focus on security compliance frameworks and the push for operational efficiency through intelligent automation that doesn't require specialized expertise to implement."
Michael Tomkins, CTO at IR
Tomkins highlights that rising customer expectations are driving significant changes in the UC service management space, with demands for better user experiences, innovative solutions, and future-proofed environments.
"We're seeing a lot of shifts in the space, all driven by the overarching theme of customer expectation. Customers today expect more from their service providers, it's not enough to just deliver stability. They want better user experiences, ensuring communication is seamless and intuitive across every touchpoint.
"They want innovative solutions, like Agentic AI and conversational interfaces, where chatbots and voice assistants help manage UC environments, troubleshoot issues, and streamline support. And they want help future-proofing their UC environment, like figuring out the right cloud configuration for their organisation. Service providers need access to deeper insight and real-time intelligence to deliver meaningful outcomes at scale."
Damon Covey, General Manager of UCC at GoTo
Covey notes that AI integration, UCaaS adoption, and the push for more proactive support capabilities are transforming how organizations approach UC service management.
"UC service management is undergoing a major shift in 2025, largely driven by the integration of AI and automation to streamline operations, improve service quality, and enhance user experiences. The growing adoption of UCaaS platforms reflects a broader move toward cloud-based, scalable communication solutions that support hybrid and remote workforces.
"Organizations are focusing on smarter, more proactive customer support features such as AI-powered sentiment analysis along with suggestions on how best to address these issues beforehand, preventing further customer dissatisfaction and escalation.
"Additionally, there's a rising emphasis on quality management, with AI being used to analyze, score, and optimize user interactions based on a set of predetermined quality metrics. As UC becomes more embedded into critical business operations, service management is evolving from reactive troubleshooting to predictive, data-driven assurance."
Pascal Moindrot, Kurmi Co-founder & COO
Moindrot identifies three dominant trends: continued cloud migration, multi-vendor management challenges, and the growing importance of advanced automation to support increasingly complex UC environments.
"We're seeing three dominant trends in UC service management right now: continued cloud migration, multi-vendor management, and advanced automation. Around 50% of organizations have yet to migrate to cloud comms systems like Webex Calling, Microsoft Teams and Zoom. This shift requires tools that can support hybrid environments during the transition. At the same time, enterprises are, almost as a rule, using multiple vendors to meet diverse business needs, which introduces considerable complexity.
"To manage this effectively, IT teams need a centralized platform that provides control and security across their entire UC and CC ecosystem, which, in addition to core phone systems, includes compliance recording, e911, SBCs, and more. Finally, automation is no longer optional—it's a mandate for large enterprises.
"UC and CC admins need workflow automation tools, intelligent provisioning, bulk change management, and AI APIs to reduce manual tasks and minimize errors. These trends are driving a new era of UC service management that is more like total systems management for UC/CC technologies. This is more comprehensive, more scalable, more secure, and far more efficient."
Mike Frayne, CEO, VOSS Solutions
Frayne observes that the transition from legacy systems to cloud providers, declining traditional voice services, and AI adoption are fundamentally reshaping UC service management priorities.
"The shift from legacy on-prem UC suppliers to modern cloud providers, the decline of traditional voice services, and the rise of AI are fundamentally transforming both what needs to be managed and how it's managed. As a result, UC service management is being reshaped by several powerful, converging forces. AI is driving smarter operations, enabling predictive insights, automated resolution, and proactive service optimization.
"Hybrid work remains dominant, requiring more flexible, resilient, and user-centric communication tools. New, disruptive technologies are transforming user expectations and workflows. Meanwhile, macroeconomic pressures are forcing enterprises to scrutinize costs and prove ROI across all IT investments.
"This is driving demand for consolidated platforms that reduce complexity, improve visibility, and automate manual effort. Regulatory and security concerns are also intensifying, especially as UC environments expand across geographies and devices. Enterprises need service management strategies that are cloud centric, agile, cost-effective, and future-proof."
Roy Wizeman, Director of UCaaS Platform & Solutions at AudioCodes
Wizeman identifies three key trends transforming UC service management: AI-driven insights and personalization, smarter automation for operational efficiency, and heightened security focus as organizations transition to cloud-based services.
"We see three key trends. Firstly, the impact of AI and Agentic AI, to leverage AI-based insights to gain deeper insights into UC services to improve performance and issue resolution as well as AI-driven enhancements to provide a more personalized and engaging user experience.
"Secondly, we see smarter automation of onboarding and management processes to streamline operations and reduce admin.
"Thirdly, as organisations transition to cloud-based UC services for greater flexibility and scalability, we see an increasing focus on security and compliance to protect UC services from potential threats."
What are the most common blind spots organizations face when managing UC services at scale?
Mark Bunnell, Chief Operations Officer and Co-Founder of NUWAVE Communications
Bunnell points to migration planning and the management of hybrid environments as critical blind spots that can lead to unexpected costs, operational disruption, and security vulnerabilities.
"Migration planning stands out as one of the most critical blind spots in UC service management. Organizations frequently focus on the destination platform without adequately addressing the journey from their current state, leading to prolonged transitions and operational disruption. This shortsightedness often results in unexpected costs, extended timelines, and frustration for both IT teams and end users.
"Another significant blind spot is underestimating the complexity of managing hybrid environments at scale. Through mergers and acquisitions, companies inherit diverse UC ecosystems – Microsoft Teams in one division, Zoom in another, and legacy on-premises systems elsewhere.
"Without a unified management approach, these fragmented environments create operational silos, inconsistent user experiences, and significant overhead costs. Security becomes exponentially more challenging across these multi-platform environments.
"Organizations implement robust security for their primary platforms but often leave gaps in others, creating inconsistent protection. Most concerning is the lack of visibility across platforms – you can't secure what you can't see. This is where a comprehensive management platform becomes essential, providing both the visibility and centralized controls needed to maintain regulatory and compliance standards consistently across the entire UC ecosystem.
"For example, NUWAVE has implemented ISO 27001, 27017, 27018, 27701, and 42001 to meet global industry security standards when using NUWAVE's iPILOT Multi-UC Platform."
Michael Tomkins, CTO at IR
Tomkins highlights that many organizations lack complete visibility across their UC environments, creating challenges for effective service management and issue resolution.
"Many providers aren't getting the full picture – they either think their management tools are more comprehensive than they really are, or they know they have blind spots and try to patch them with multiple tools or through manual processes. Neither of these scenarios are sustainable when you're managing multiple, complex environments.
"The visibility gaps add up fast and teams end up firefighting or finger pointing instead of fixing the issue. Unified insight across vendors, platforms, networks, devices and all the components of an ecosystem is critical."
Damon Covey, General Manager of UCC at GoTo
Covey identifies inadequate visibility into end-user experiences, inconsistent service monitoring across communication channels, and fragmented quality management as key blind spots for organizations managing UC at scale.
"A key blind spot is the lack of real-time visibility into end-user experiences, especially in remote and hybrid environments where variables like local networks and hardware vary widely. Another challenge is inconsistent service monitoring across communication channels—voice, video, messaging—leading to fragmented incident response. Many organizations also underestimate the complexity of managing UC integrations with other business applications and systems.
"This can result in reactive troubleshooting and missed opportunities for optimization. Additionally, without centralized quality management tools, teams may struggle to capture and act on data that could reveal systemic performance or user satisfaction issues."
Pascal Moindrot, Kurmi Co-founder & COO
Moindrot points to security requirements, expertise shortages, and multi-vendor management as the top three blind spots that can significantly impact UC service management effectiveness.
"The top 3 common blind spots we see when organizations manage thousands of users across their UC and CC systems are 1. Underestimating the challenges of security requirements; 2. understaffing of expertise on mission-critical comms systems; and 3. The challenges of managing many vendors, often with migration as an exacerbating factor.
"Security considerations–who has access to data, what rules must be enforced by country, audit, industry compliances, etc.–are usually non-negotiable, therefore key. Expertise is required to provision systems, and backup expertise is required, or time zone expertise.
"Often this becomes a crucial issue during a downsizing or reorganization when skills are lost. Multiple vendors require more expertise but also create inter-vendor dependencies and other requirements for structured interactions that get harder as more vendors are added or when a migration occurs."
Mike Frayne, CEO, VOSS Solutions
Frayne emphasizes that organizations often underestimate the complexity of UC management at scale, particularly regarding visibility across diverse environments and the limitations of manual processes.
"Organizations often underestimate the complexity of managing UC, at scale. A key blind spot is the lack of visibility across multi-vendor, multi-tenant, hybrid environments, which leads to delayed issue resolution, user frustration, productivity loss, and unnecessary spending.
"Many still rely on manual processes or simple vendor supplied admin tools, which can't keep pace with growing complexity and the demands of dispersed teams. This creates bottlenecks, slows down response times, and contributes to spiraling operational costs.
"Another challenge is not capturing or analyzing data effectively, which limits the ability to identify trends or prevent incidents before they escalate. Without integrated automation, observability, and actionable analytics, enterprises struggle to manage UC services at scale."
