After nearly three years of deploying more and more collaboration solutions to help employees work remotely, IT leaders are now seeking more integrated collaboration solutions to remove complexity, according to new research from secure cloud networking company Masergy.
The Comcast Business-owned firm’s study found that IT leaders are working to standardize and consolidate their corporate collaboration strategies, which includes using bundled solutions to make collaboration easier for their distributed workforces and customers.
This sentiment comes after deploying what the company calls a “hodge-podge” of collaboration solutions to quickly meet the needs of their new distributed work models, which included cloud calling, virtual presence, chat, videoconferencing and others. Now, that redundancy of applications is forcing many IT leaders to rethink those strategies as they look to keep hybrid work models sustainable.
Masergy’s latest UCaas and CCaaS Market Trends Study identified consolidation and integration as a top priority, joining data security and network reliability as the top three most important considerations of unified communications technologies.
Of the 200-plus IT leaders surveyed, 91% identified data security as critical or very important, 90% cited network reliability and 89% now say integration is just as important.
In addition, Masergy found that organizations are having trouble weathering the storm in the event of a collaboration failure, with 90% of IT leaders saying UCaaS/CCaaS downtime is highly concerning or detrimental to their business.
Adoption of collaboration technology continue to rise, and 97% of organizations say remote work has led to an increase in usage.
Organizations are still investing in the technology with 47% of respondents saying they have implemented UCaaS/CCaaS this year, up from 40% in 2020. Further, three-quarters of respondents reported an increased use of Microsoft Teams.
CIOs cited IT flexibility and agility as the biggest factor driving their collaboration investments. For those investments to work well, they must function as core elements in the larger IT ecosystem and harmonize communications, connectivity and security, says Rudy Tibuni, director of UC solutions at Masergy.
“These three disciplines can no longer operate in silos,” Tibuni says. “They must come together to create a more secure, resilient, and efficient environment to support excellent employee and customer experiences.”
But there’s another reason the idea of integration is rising in importance — the sheer volume of systems and technologies required to make collaboration work well.
Signaling additional essentials for consolidation, SIP trunking and bundled solutions are also rising in demand, the study says, citing the increased use of SIP trunking with UCaaS/CCaaS over the last two years (63% versus 51% in 2020). Additionally, the preference for bundled, pre-integrated UCaaS/CCaaS solutions has grown stronger since 2020 (65% versus 51% in 2020).
“Senior IT decision makers are pointing to a new integration imperative, consolidating UC around one toolset to untangle complexities in the wake of multiple applications and multi-cloud services,” says Tibuni. “To effectively connect people, corporate communications tools and their supporting systems must all work as a cohesive collective. Businesses should standardize on their preferred cloud collaboration platform and seek holistic solutions that intersect with SIP trunking and secure network connectivity, including SD-WAN and SASE.”
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