The proliferation of UCC solutions is transforming how people communicate and collaborate, and how organizations operate, thereby enhancing enterprise productivity. UCC encompasses a wide array of technologies, including email, voice, video conferencing, presence management, team messaging, group chat, and mobility, all seamlessly integrated together and with horizontal and vertical industry business platforms. Today, mature applications within the traditional UCC stack underpin even more advanced functionalities, thereby driving intelligent, contextual interactions, analytics, and automation. This convergence is driving operational efficiencies, facilitating real-time collaboration among geographically dispersed teams, and considerably improving the way organizations interact with and serve their customers. Now, compelling new business models including unified communications-as-a-service (UCaaS), contact center-as-a-service (CCaaS), and communications platform-as-a-service (CPaaS) are empowering providers to deliver more agile, responsive, and flexible solutions to address customer needs holistically and tailor functionality for different use cases and user personas.
Are your technologists implementing the right UCC tools to align with evolving employee and customer needs?
Innovative cloud communications services are compelling organizations to migrate from on-premises infrastructure, in favor of scalability and cost-efficiency; artificial intelligence (AI) is augmenting worker skillsets and facilitating data-driven decision-making; and mobile UCaaS is helping providers deliver fixed-mobile convergence (FMC) to enable convenient and secure access to robust collaboration capabilities from anywhere. Moreover, the ability to deliver actionable intelligence on evolving workflows is quickly becoming a competitive differentiator for technology providers. This implies that partnering with an innovative provider that can deliver all these capabilities in a collaborative ecosystem can help businesses future-proof their communications technology investments.
How are you leveraging disruptive UCC technologies to enhance customer experience (CX) and employee productivity in your organization?
Visionary UCC Providers Embodying Innovation to Accelerate Digital Transformation
The following companies are driving growth and innovation in UCC to meet evolving customer demands, support dynamic workflows, and facilitate digital transformation. They play a fundamental role in empowering enterprises to overcome UCC implementation challenges such as integration complexities, security and compliance, interoperability and scalability, cost optimization, and adapting to hybrid work. Additionally, these trailblazers are successfully delivering AI-powered features, improved privacy controls, and advanced analytics, to help businesses optimize resource allocation and enhance collaboration.
UCaaS in North America
- Microsoft Teams’ success can be attributed to the vendor’s keen understanding of rapidly evolving customer requirements, unsurpassed innovation velocity, creative solution packaging and pricing, extensive partner ecosystem, and formidable brand.
- RingCentral’s EX platform powers advanced communications and collaborations solutions, including an enterprise-grade phone system and a broad set of UCC features, with a strong focus on mobility, AI-powered innovation, and workflow integrations.
- Cisco has earned the reputation as a provider of feature-rich, reliable, secure, and scalable cloud calling and unified communication solutions, and continues to lead the way with its increasingly AI-powered Webex Suite.
Cloud-Connected Calling Enablement
- CallTower represents what a next-generation global carrier should look like, leveraging the Connect platform, purpose-built for customers that require global reach and a simplified path to cloud-connected calling.
- Verizon has one of the longest histories in the cloud-connected calling enablement industry. The company provides reliable and secure PSTN connectivity and managed services to customers adopting leading cloud collaboration platforms, such as Cisco Webex and Microsoft Teams, and contact center platforms including Genesys Cloud, NICE CXone, Medallia, and Pindrop.
- NTT exemplifies the effectiveness of a managed service provider combined with a telco operator in supporting the Microsoft ecosystem. The company delivers end-to-end support and PSTN connectivity to provide customers with a complete communications and collaboration experience across the globe.
UCaaS in Europe
- BT is leveraging technologies from Cisco, Microsoft, Mitel, RingCentral, Zoom, and the innovative BT Cloud Session Layer, to offer a rich portfolio of cloud PBX and UCaaS solutions that enables it to effectively match solutions across a range of customer demographics and functionality requirements.
- Telefonica’s UCaaS portfolio, leveraging voice and collaboration platforms from Cisco, Microsoft, and Zoom and integrations with its own Movistar mobile network to deliver tailored solutions for microbusinesses through large enterprises with essential to complex needs, is uniquely positioned among Spanish and global providers.
- Vodafone differentiates itself from most European competitors in the UCaaS landscape through compelling cloud PBX integrations with mobile services/devices and desktop phones, continually advancing its FMC solutions with greater functionality, ease of use, and reliability.
Communications Platform as a Service (CPaaS)
- Twilio is a leader in application programming interface (API)-driven communications, incorporating video, chat, IoT, AI, chatbots, and natural language processing into its platform, enabling businesses to reimagine customer interaction.
- Infobip delivers a full stack of programmable communications elements, including messaging, voice, video, email, and authentication, at a global scale with a reach of over 200 countries across 6 continents.
- IntelePeer has steadily built up its Communications Automation Platform to include not only APIs, automation, and scripting capabilities, but also a visual workflow designer (SmartFlows), AI, and predictive analytics, thereby bringing CPaaS 2.0 to enterprises and their business users.
Adapting UCC Strategies for Long-Term Business Success
Today, UCC technologies and services continue to evolve with accelerating development. Offering far more than yesterday’s phone systems, these communications solutions serve as important, tactical, and strategic toolsets for businesses across industries. Now, solutions adoption is consistently enriched with new and enhanced capabilities that create roadmaps to generating greater return on investment (ROI) and value through operational efficiencies, business model and workflow agility, and organizational productivity. Providers that build and orchestrate innovative ecosystems deliver such benefits, which positions them as “Companies to Action” in the competitive UCC landscape.
Has your growth team identified the most lucrative opportunities that will help your organization improve employee and customer engagement, while adapting to changing UCC landscapes?
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