Cloud-based Unified Communications and Collaboration (UCC) platforms have become increasingly more popular for businesses of all sizes. Enterprise spending on UCC tools grew to a $45 billion industry this past year, according to Synergy Research Group, with an average annual growth of 16 percent year-over-year.
UC&C come very much in handy for everyday communication and, most importantly, they make sure the information stays within the company and it can be retrieved later on. This last benefit is actually the key to understanding why and how UC&C are changing the way we work forever.
The beginning of every year is marked by predictions and attempts at assessing the future. 2016 is no different, and this time we’re taking a close look at how our digital lives will improve in the upcoming years.
An infographic from Raconteur ranks the top 10 drivers leading to digital transformation for businesses, pointing out the factors with the greatest influence on the way we’ll work in the years to come. The global tech forecast anticipates a massive expansion of digital technologies among businesses of all sizes.
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Metaphorically speaking, Unified Communications (UC) solution vendors walk around carrying a long list of benefits for service providers who want to offer UC services for SMBs and other organizations (i.e. upgrade their business communication channels). The are many reasons and truth is this crusade against old technology is very justified. Any way you look at it, UC services, especially when hosted in the Cloud, knock the socks off any legacy phone network.
A call center is, in and of itself, a network of phones. Much of UC’s functionality actually originated in call centers. The only difference is that unifying these features enables Service Providers (SP) to take better advantage of resources with the end goal of increasing productivity and improving the customer service. So what better business to target with UC if not contact centers? And although every feature counts, it’s those that touch the customer directly that weigh the most
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Success in business depends as much on innovation as it does on adaptability, strategy, marketing, and of course solid investments. The evidence in favor of digital investments as a key driver is overwhelming. In the not too distant future, a company’s communication and collaboration efforts will be inherently reliant on cloud technology. And the reason is simple: everybody’s doing it, and he who doesn’t falls behind in reach, discoverability, customer satisfaction and many other areas that make or break a business.
Fierce competition, but also the always-on nature of cloud solutions, forcefully dictate the need to incorporate technology as a business strategy. Research conducted by IDG Enterprise gives us a bird’s eye view of the direction of spending, areas of investment and drivers, with a focus on the communication tools employed (or soon-to-be-employed) at large companies
We developed Hubgets with the goal to make our teamwork as smooth as possible. Then, we shared it with the world. With Hubgets, you can have cohesive teams and a flexible work policy. You can reach people half way across the globe using the same mechanism you would to buzz a colleague 10 feet away. Today, we’ll look at the Phone component in Hubgets.
Hubgets Phone
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Communication infrastructures established in the ’90s are becoming increasingly incompatible with today’s connected economy. When it takes too long for partners to connect, or to fulfill customer needs, you know there’s a problem somewhere. For every problem, there’s a solution.
Unified Communications (UC) was born out of the need to enable faster decision making, but also to make collaboration more efficient. UC merges real-time communications (voice, video, instant messaging) with real-time data (presence, file sharing), and we often end up using the term Unified Communications & Collaboration (UC&C) to describe these solutions. Provided as-a-service, UC&C has a series of technical and financial advantages that make it a key asset for virtually any business today
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Most small-to-medium businesses (SMB) don’t have legacy UC&C software to grapple with, making them more likely than enterprises to move to pure cloud-based UC&C services, according to data gauged by IDG Enterprise. The ratio is 20% versus 7%, respectively.
In its 2015 Unified Communications & Collaboration Survey, IDG uncovered that 33% of IT leaders plan to increase spending in Unified Communications and Collaboration (UC&C), both hosted and hybrid – a combination of hosted and on-premise services. Spending will increase by an average of 9% through 2016, while enterprises currently lavish an average of $8.1 million on UC&C products and / or services alone. In 2012, a similar survey uncovered that 49% of respondents still used on-premises solutions. That number has only slightly increased to 51% so far, but things are about to change
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Despite increased awareness about Unified Communications (UC) solutions, many businesses are slow to upgrade, or downright reluctant to do so. Reportlinker shares some numbers as part of a recent market analysis, and predicts a serious uptick in adoption over the next three years.
Compared to 2014, UC adoption in 2015 has not been considerably higher. In fact, some parts of the globe have fallen short of expectations, according to various market researchers, including the fine gents at IDC. But Reportlinker is optimistic about the next few years, projecting a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 11.42 per cent for the global UC 2.0 services market over the period 2015-2019
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The biggest roadblock in cloud adoption everywhere is said to be lack of knowledge at an executive level. Technologically speaking, business leaders don’t always know what’s good for them in the long term. Clinging to outdated systems and processes is a sure way get left behind. Worst of all, the finance sector doesn’t feel it needs any transformative effects whatsoever.
The recent Cloud Business Summit held in New York saw financial and IT leaders debate the ripple effects of cloud adoption in corporate financial systems and processes. Finance is not an area in sync with technology, and nor should it, according to those working in this segment