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The pandemic has boosted UCC, but it's only part of the story

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The pandemic has boosted UCC, but it's only part of the story

Unified communication and collaboration (UCC) technology is one of the more self-explanatory tech appellations: it is simply the combining of communications and collaboration, which historically have been separate entities, into a single tool with a unified management interface. Features include instant messaging, video conferencing, telephony and voice calls, as well as mobility extension, file sharing, team collaboration and speech recognition.

UCC has evolved as a direct consequence of greater mobility, device proliferation, the need for seamless communication and the efforts of enterprises to push back against the increasing complexity of enterprise infrastructure. The pandemic and the widespread switch to remote working have accelerated the consolidation of these technologies: a fifth of businesses taking part in a recent Delta study of this area had only had solutions in place for less than 12 months, or were still trialling technologies. 84 per cent think that UCC has become more important since March 2020.

Whilst the evidence suggests that the pandemic has given the already-strong UCC market a boost, it doesn't follow that as the pandemic recedes, so will demand for unified comms. Indeed, many participants in the research strongly agreed that unified communications are necessary to operate effectively in today's business landscape.

The drivers for UCC adoption are shown below. The most frequently cited drivers - the need for businesses to modernise, discover efficiencies and stem the rising tide of complexity - were in place well before March 2020. It's also worth noting that nearly half, 46 per cent, of the organisations represented had deployed UCC more than three years ago.

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N = 188. Source: Delta

There are other, more topical reasons that the UCC market is likely to continue on its present trajectory. Whilst the need to social distance may no longer be legally mandated - at least for now - it's clear that the UK government does not wish for every enterprise to bring 100 per cent of its employees back to the office immediately. Many employers have spent the last few months reviewing long term remote working policies, with a view to a hybrid future. Much remains to be clarified but businesses are likely to want to consolidate the gains they made in terms of employee productivity and flexibility, to ensure that they're in the best possible place for an uncertain future.

Enterprises are also signalling a much greater awareness of the importance of employee wellbeing and mental health. If it is sustained, this awareness could be an example of positive change arising from the pandemic. Employee engagement and mental health are an important aspect of enterprise communication and collaboration. Indeed, for those we surveyed, employee engagement/mental health was the second most popular metric for gauging whether a UCC deployment had been successful - ranked marginally above cost savings.

Leading UCC vendors are split between those like Microsoft and Cisco who developed or acquired much earlier versions of collaboration platforms - WebEx was more than a decade old when Cisco acquired it in 2007 - and relative upstarts like Zoom and Slack. The graph below compares these major market players against each other, in areas that IT leaders consider to be of particular importance.

Hover over vendor names to highlight them in the chart, or click names to show/hide particular vendors

The UCC Marketplace

The top metric by which organisations rate their UCC solutions is impact on performance/productivity. This is what gives Microsoft Teams such a huge advantage over its competitors, slotting neatly into the Microsoft stack, and O365 in particular. Not only did Microsoft poll the greatest awareness of its UCC solutions, the proportions trialling and moving into production were almost triple that of the two closest competitors, Zoom and Cisco.

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N = 188. Source: Delta

Integration, seamless user experience, flexibility of deployment options, continuous improvements and a strong roadmap were all cited repeatedly by Microsoft enthusiasts. Overall, the tone was summarised by the participant quoted below.

"It goes without saying that Microsoft are, in my opinion, the leaders in UCC. They have an excellent suite of products, which I can't fault."

Zoom beat Cisco to the second-place position in the league table, which might surprise some due to Cisco's long enterprise history in networking and connectivity. When those who had used Cisco solutions were asked about the company's strengths, technical expertise, general robustness and stability of Cisco were all emphasised.

However, over a period of time when the word 'Zoom' became used as a widely understood synonym for video call, perhaps we shouldn't be too surprised by this finding. In a demonstration of their commercial flexibility, Zoom made their platform free to use for educators throughout the pandemic, which introduced it to millions of locked down children (and their relatives) throughout the world, and the intuitive interface won many longer-term admirers. The company's stock price has retreated slowly from the high of October 2020, but remains considerably higher than pre-pandemic levels.

More organisations evaluated Google's G Suite of UCC products than Cisco's portfolio, but the numbers actually taking G Suite into production are lower. The impression given by the participants who had trialled G Suite was that if Google wants to present a serious alternative to Microsoft, it needs to simplify its licencing; demonstrate greater flexibility; and work on its understanding of UK and EU compliance mandates.

"Google introduces products and drop them again at little or no notice. We need to know where data is held for GDPR compliance," said one respondent.

Slack is another prominent, though more limited, UCC provider: a messaging platform only, which accounts for its low showing among organisations we surveyed. However, those who use Slack love it, and the clarity of its licencing and pricing also won praise. Slack's roadmap and its recent acquisition by Salesforce mean the product is likely to round out in the future, and integration into Salesforce will make it an attractive platform for an increasing number of customers.

Traditional connectivity specialists like Avaya, Colt and Alcatel-Lucent formed the long tail of our survey. The most popular of these vendors was Mitel, but the popularity of the solutions pales when compared to Microsoft's.

Whilst it is difficult to disentangle the effects of the pandemic from the growth of the UCC market overall, and motivations and drivers of UCC clearly vary from one organisation to another, these findings suggest that robust growth in the market is likely to continue through to 2025 and beyond. It is also very difficult at the moment to see how any vendors currently in the space are going to get close to challenging the dominance of Microsoft.

The pandemic has boosted UCC, but it's only part of the story

The UCC Marketplace

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