The year 2016 is slowly coming to an end. A great deal has happened this year, particularly in the field of Unified Communications. Unified Communications (UC) is gaining ground, is replacing conventional telephony systems and is changing the way in which we are communicating and working. This is mainly in conjunction with the collaboration tools, which complement the UC system perfectly and, to name only one example, change mobile working completely. Thanks to today's means of communication, geographical distances between the individual team members are no longer an obstacle. Irrespective of whether everyone is working in one office or part of the team in a home office, Unified Communications & Collaboration (UCC) offer the perfect tools for teams which are distributed over several locations, whether via the display of the presence status, desktop sharing options or even starting ad hoc video conferences. Unified Communications & Collaboration offer all these features for everyday work.
But which tools will support us in future? What new features will be on offer in 2017 in the field of Unified Communications? Looking too far into the future may be difficult. In spite of this, in this blog I would like to try to briefly summarize the five key trends for Unified Communications.
Unified Communications from the cloud
An increasing number of companies, particularly in the SME field, no longer wish to operate the Unified Communications infrastructure themselves, but want to focus on their own core competences and acquire the UC features as a service from the cloud. This becomes even more apparent if you follow the Unified Communications news a little more closely. Almost on a daily basis, there are news reports about UCaaS (Unified Communications as a Service), SaaS (Software as a Service) or even IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service). This trend is even expected to intensify in 2017. Finally, more and more providers are entering the market who offer this exact type of service.
Unified Communications "goes mobile"
As mentioned at the beginning, there is an increasing number of employees for whom mobile working is top priority. For at present, employees are no longer tied to a work location. They work in an office, a home office or even at the customer's site and no longer need just one end device, but at least two. As well as notebooks, tablets and smartphones are becoming increasingly more important tools for work, and more and more apps are being developed to this end. The UC manufacturers have to address this demand in order to not miss this opportunity in 2017, whether through proprietary apps where no distinction is made as to whether work is carried out in the office or while on the move, or improved UC clients on tablets or smartphones. For employees currently expect that work can be performed at any time from anywhere.
Social Media Integration
Social media such as LinkedIn, Xing or Facebook, in the commercial sphere, have become more widespread over the last few years. The question as to whether social media are used for networking with business partners, for marketing purposes or for customer relationships does not play such a large role in connection with Unified Communications. The thing which will definitely be in growing demand in the future are interfaces of social media platforms in the Unified Communications environment. The user should be offered the best of both worlds in order to make the communication process simpler, quicker and more efficient. For example, it would be much easier to call a new LinkedIn contact directly from the UC client or write a message to him without first having to change from one platform to another.
Unified Communications and WebRTC
The use of web browsers for real-time communication and collaboration is expected to increase further next year. In particular, due to the increasing prevalence of WebRTC (Web Real-Time Communication), the possibilities are practically endless for browser applications. The very advantage of being accessible from any device via a web browser justifies the proliferation of web applications. The UC manufacturers are also aware of this fact, yet I am convinced that there is still a lot of potential in this area and that the UC manufacturers will turn this into reality to an increasing extent in 2017. If in addition to mobile use, we consider that IT administrators no longer have to install and regularly update the UC client for every employee, this justifies the use of web-based UC solutions.
Improved User Experience
Employees are already currently familiar with simple, intuitive and modern user interfaces from their private life. This fact must also be taken into account more in the field of Unified Communications. It must be possible for every employee to use UC solutions without a long introduction phase. Because ultimately the UC features are needed for daily work and for this reason it may be expected that this is possible without any major obstacles. Even if the user experience is already currently of major importance for the UC manufacturers, I am convinced that this can be optimized even more and that the UC manufacturers will also do this in 2017. For only good user experience with the UC tools can ensure faster acceptance of the new tools.
Even if the list of these trends is of course not complete, I hope that I was able to show you the direction in which Unified Communications market could be heading in 2017. There are of course other trends. However, depending on their individual needs, everyone sees different trends for 2017, while at the same time the list of all these would go beyond the scope of this blog. I therefore suggest that we wait and see what new features and options the UC manufacturers will try to impress us with over the next year.
