With so many changes afoot, this year is sure to be an exciting one in unified communications.
Story by Darc Rasmussen, NoJitter
The unified communications market will leap forward in the coming year, as an array of innovative technologies radically changes the way business professionals communicate. Here are seven trends that will define the UC market in 2017.
1. Many organizations will initially struggle to adopt cloud UC. Why? Because the installed IT architecture at most companies was never intended for voice, video, or collaboration. It was built for data exchange and data processing. But fully functioning UC requires a fundamentally new and different technology infrastructure. Consider video. Organizations are already working overtime to integrate voice communications into their IT infrastructures. Well, take that challenge and multiply by a factor of 100 — that’s the hurdle that video presents. Another major stumbling block is what I call the “pilot trap.” It’s common to conduct a cloud UC pilot with, say, 100 users to see how it goes. Often such pilots are a complete success. Then, when the system goes live and the company adds another 5,000 users, existing IT infrastructures buckle under the strain of the added traffic. Organizations must invest in a UC network readiness assessment and address issues before they affect users.
