The Next Phase of Work: Latest UCaaS Research Findings

 The Next Phase of Work: Managing UC and Workspaces in Next Phase of the Pandemic

Companies with knowledge workers still have lots of questions to figure out as they continue to grapple with the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, and the massive shift to remote working for much of their employee base. The dust has started to settle, however, when it comes to decisions on the technology solutions used by companies of all sizes to facilitate remote collaboration and video and voice communications. Leaders in IT and unified communications have favored tools that could be scaled quickly and offered reliability and stability, often from long-proven leaders in the sector with newcomers also making an impact. As a leader in unified communication and collaboration in the new workplace,we wanted to learn about the current state of unified communications as a service (UCaaS) in the wake of Covid-19. 

The Next Phase of Work: Managing UC and Workspace for Remote and InOffice Coordination - gathered findings from 327 respondents, most of them enterprise-level companies greater than 1,000 employees. 

The data gathered show that: 

Video is the new normal - 68% of companies plan to hold meetings either 100% over video or provide participants the option to join by video. 

UCaaS wins big - 80% of companies primarily relied on UCaaS to quickly scale up their remote workforce. 

Microsoft, Cisco, and Zoom are now “The Big 3” - Microsoft was ranked as the top video collaboration company among enterprises with Cisco and Zoom ranked #2 and #3

Multi-vendor UC environments are standard - About two thirds of enterprises use two or more video collaboration technology vendors. 

Enterprises reported dealing with video and voice quality problems - 27% of respondents in the largest Enterprises reported issues with quality of video service and 73% reported voice service issues since the start of the pandemic. 

Quality is king - 77% of respondents feel that improving video quality of service for employees going forward is important or extremely important.

Enterprises plan to reduce real estate - Almost half of the largest enterprises plan to reduce their office space in the next 12 months.

Companies are making progress in determining how and when to bring their workers back into the office, with gradual and part-time returns becoming normal in offices that are now socially distanced. That new landscape means there will be an ongoing emphasis on UC capabilities, with more video endpoints coming to allow for more in-office video meetings, increased use of remote collaboration tools, and greater use of sensors to track space usage in an effort to reconfigure and possibly decrease total office footprints.