What’s to Come in Unified Communications in 2021?

Guest Blog by Steven Johnson, General Manager, Ingate Systems

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ingate-uc-2021-coming-year-predictions
Unified Communications

Published: January 11, 2021

Guest Blogger

2020 was a rollercoaster for the UC industry. 2021 brings even more uncertainty. UC solutions were designed for the kind of quick adaptation necessary for these fast-changing times. Many of the trends we saw emerging over the years, slowly gaining traction with enterprises, call centres, and carriers small and large, are now rapidly meeting the challenges in today’s COVID (and soon, the post-COVID) era.

Here’s what we expect for 2021:

Scramble for integration solutions

Businesses are rushing to integrate their existing applications/systems with solutions that extend these benefits to the work-from-home (WFH) workforce, offering greater access. In a matter of weeks, COVID challenged businesses to extend all real-time communications functionality – phone, presence, video – to their entire workforce, while simultaneously freezing all budgets. Customers had to “do more with what they already had.”

This created a rush to integrate existing technology with new solutions that created secure, real-time access for the WFH workforce. Fortunately, many UC solutions are designed to serve this purpose, as they are flexible enough to integrate securely with older technology to add these new features.

Many customers are leveraging the opportunity to bring in new functionality or otherwise level-up their infrastructure. For example, some have added WebRTC for remote workers. Others have significantly increased VoIP call capacity – for the immediate need to support the WFH workforce, but also for the longer haul.

WFH Solutions Become a Permanent Necessity

Solutions for remote workers are of paramount importance. Since the pandemic began, we’ve seen many cobbling together what they could, to make it work. But WFH will outlast the pandemic, going from temporary to permanent, with many employees either remaining remote or splitting their time. Businesses are now looking at this as a longer-term technology investment.

Expect budgets to reflect this, as IT managers will be looking to purchase i.e., hardy SIP-based VoIP phones that integrate with old and new solutions; products that allow secure integration with PBXs and home-based equipment, and that can handle a rapid capacity expansion if necessary; high-quality cameras for video conferencing; and more.

Security: A New Perspective

The issue of security has crystallised for everyone. News about hackers breaching some of the world’s highest security systems has become an almost daily event. This has many IT managers concerned about opening up access to remote workers.

Security is no longer just about keeping intruders out of the corporate mainframe. It now must extend to people’s homes – how do you secure a worker’s personal phone? Or their home internet connection (which is shared by the family), all from the corporate side? At the start of the pandemic, many businesses wound up shipping VoIP phones to their workers ASAP. This was a smart move, as the IT department could ensure that SIP security technology was embedded as part of the phone, using SIP to authenticate users, prevent viruses, etc., in essence extending enterprise-class security to the home.

New security solutions have also emerged. For example, voice identification technology provides two levels of authentication. In the call centre, voice ID of customers has been a game-changer for some of the folks we work with.

Bandwidth and QoS a Priority

Facilities-based service providers had already been working hard to rollout broadband to more people. That mission has gone into overdrive as carriers are expanding their pipes to accommodate customers with WFH needs.

Mission-critical reliability is the key here. Quality-of-Service (QoS) components to WFH solutions such as session border controllers (SBCs) prioritise voice and video over data streams so that calls and video chats are clear, and always prioritised over e.g., your kids playing video games.

Conclusion

While 2020 presented tremendous challenges for our industry, one thing it truly showed was the resiliency of so many of the companies who use UC, and those who design and deliver solutions.

It also revealed a great deal of kindness. Personally, I’ve had many conversations with customers new and old, colleagues, and all sorts of people who (like everyone) were trying to make sense of a rapidly shifting landscape. By and large, the players in the UC industry rallied together to help one another out – even among competitors – and cooperation reigned. It is my hope that this atmosphere of cooperation continues, as we face new challenges in 2021 and beyond.

 

Guest Blog by Steven Johnson, General Manager, Ingate Systems
Ingate Systems AB is a Stockholm, Sweden, based high-tech company that designs and develops Firewall and Session Border Controller technology to bring global person-to-person multimedia real-time communication to everyone. SIP and WebRTC enables not only IP telephony but Unified Communications (UC) such as presence, Instant Messaging, video conferencing with telepresence quality and IP-PBX connections. With a history in security, Ingate offers enterprises of all sizes, service providers and carriers elegant solutions that make trusted SIP communications possible beyond the LAN. Ingate products are delivered both as hardware appliances as well as software for integration on to standalone servers or as applications for virtual machines.

 

Security and ComplianceSession Border ControllerSIPVoIP
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