Drawing a line in the collaboration sand - What’s in store for 2024 | IR

You don’t need a crystal ball to see that the immediate future of the rapidly evolving unified communications and collaboration (UCC) landscape is about to experience even more disruption and transformation.

Industries globally have had to adapt to massive changes in the way they communicate, collaborate, and co-exist, and these changes are onerously ongoing.

Today, an increasing number of organizations are finding it difficult to keep pace with the constant addition of cutting-edge technologies and hybrid work implementations.

Many are overwhelmed with the complexities and confusion surrounding AI.

The lines are blurring when it comes to the convergence of UCC and user experience, but at the same time, acceptable standards and expectations are rising as call quality and UCC performance in general becomes a key concern.

In our upcoming 2024 trends webinar, we’ll explore the key factors shaping the imminent new era. Our team of experts will discuss expected changes in the world of communication and collaboration in 2024.

Here’s a brief look at what’s in store:

The hybrid-centric workplace culture

It’s now widely accepted that the future of work is not going to be entirely remote, or fully in-office, so flexibility is a key consideration. This means businesses are looking for effective ways to optimize their workforce without compromising security or functionality. Focus will be on:

• Modernizing and redesigning office spaces with an emphasis on seamless technology integration.
• Rethinking private (on-premises) and public cloud services to support work-from-anywhere models.
• Adapting the workplace to ensure that collaboration is fully supported in every room and from any location, on any device.

The evolution and enhancement of modern communication

Obviously, seamless connectivity is what every organization strives for. But a hit-and-miss approach to call quality and reliability will no longer be good enough, with customers and employees demanding more. UCC has become a huge and important part of every industry but is especially critical in public sector support industries such as Health, Government, Legal and Education. The focus will shift to:

• Maintaining the quality of the call experience. Users will not accept sub-par or unreliable communication, whether it’s internally or externally.
• The general public is better educated on collaboration systems than ever. With so many people now using multiple platforms, organizations must do everything they can to ensure every chosen communication path always works as intended.

Enterprise technology strategies

Cloud migration has also enabled innovation and agility, allowing organizations to pivot rapidly and ensure success – and it’s not slowing down. The global spend on cloud computing infrastructure is predicted to top $1 trillion in 2024, driven in large part by as-a-service offerings, and AI services. However, on-premise legacy systems and infrastructure still play a key role in many communications strategies. Top considerations in this hybrid UCC space include:

• Multi-cloud strategies (deploying cloud services from more then one cloud provider) – While offering advantages in cost and flexibility, it can make governance and data backup more complicated. Businesses need to devise strategies to address data accessibility, security, and governance.
• Multi-vendor strategies – Few (if any) enterprise organizations are using just one vendor. Interoperability between tools and platforms is a key concern for every industry. Businesses need to find ways to ensure that data exchange and interpretation is seamless and that internal and external communication is never compromised.

The meteoric rise of AI: Sorting the hype from the tripe

Since the pandemic, AI has been inching its way into the communications world, but it’s predicted that AI hype is set to explode, forcing businesses to rethink their people, processes, and tech infrastructures.

It’s clear that the increased adoption of AI and ML is set to facilitate more meaningful interactions, better decision-making, and more efficient planning. Topics to consider:

• AI is expected to herald a proliferation of productivity across applications, environments and microservices, streamlining workflows for engineers, creatives, researchers and almost anyone in the workplace.
• Generative AI models will be used to enhance collaboration by easily converting inputs (such as text to image, video to text, or image to audio).
• Large Language Models (LLMs) will transform and enhance customer experience by analyzing vast amounts of customer data, learning language nuances and providing tailor-made responses.
• This uptick in data volume and complexity will make data observability even more critical.

The year ahead looks sure to bring about a myriad of new UCC challenges for organizations, but there are also a wealth of opportunities available to those who have the foresight and right strategies in place.

Join our myself and our team of experts at our webinar next year to get all the insights you need to make sure your organization is well placed to take full advantage of what lies ahead.