Trends and recommendations for the UCaaS market

According to Ovum’s “2017 Trends to Watch: Unified Communications” report, the UCaaS market (unified communications solutions and services) will continue to be highly dynamic.

While some providers will persist in providing earlier technologies, unified communications as a service (UCaaS) will become the predominant trend as major providers modernize their offerings, expand into new regions and introduce services that will, in many ways, both large and small and medium-sized enterprises.

It will be especially among large organizations, with more complex communication needs, where the hybrid cloud takes on more prominence, aided by advanced APIs that will change the way communication and collaboration tools integrate with enterprise applications, thus contributing to Improvement, and even replacement of more traditional UC solutions.

UC Trends

Based on this, this report reveals four major trends in what UCaaS refers in the immediate future:

1. As they expand globally and modernize their services, providers focused on large enterprises will see the adoption of UCaaS grow. Faced with this, smaller suppliers will challenge large ones with more profitable services for SMBs and a faster product development cycle.

2. The hybrid cloud will become an increasingly viable option for businesses, although the strategic goal for most will be for the UC software to be completely in the cloud.

3. The trend towards mobility will be increased and enriched by advanced APIs that will transform the way companies make communication and collaboration tools available to their employees, accessible from mobile and web-based applications.

4. Cisco and Microsoft will continue to lead the market as major UC providers while other smaller ones will be acquired by major rivals or other private equity firms.

Recommendations for the UCaaS market

Given these expectations, Ovum proposes three fundamental recommendations:

• Caution. Companies must carefully evaluate their investments in UC services so that the solutions and services purchased today remain compatible for at least the next three to five years.

• Take advantage of uncertainty. Vendors are creating uncertainty about their business or their UC solutions approach (for example, Microsoft is opting for a cloud development model that will reduce its investments in the UC software it once led). This uncertainty must be quickly exploited by its rivals.

• Providers must tightly integrate UCs with their mobility services by leveraging the use of mobile devices within the enterprise for a broad and diverse set of tasks.