Enterprise Communications: A Look Back, a Look AheadEnterprise Communications: A Look Back, a Look Ahead

This year was an interesting one in business communications, with lots of consolidation, technology innovations, and real deployments of some emerging technologies. In 2017 we witnessed big changes in terms of the vendors and the technology, paving the way for even more change in 2018.

Vendors: A Look at the Changing Players
UCaaS vendors focused on moving up and out in 2017, with key players such as 8x8, Fuze, RingCentral, and Vonage continuing to reach upmarket while expanding their global footprints with new regions and localizations. The two trends go hand in hand -- the multinational enterprises encountered upmarket want a single communications service to unite their various geographical regions. In 2018 expect to see UCaaS vendors expand to additional countries, adding local channel partners as well as localization of services and support.

As always, mergers and acquisitions marked the year. Most recently we saw Cisco announce its intent to acquire BroadSoft, and earlier Mitel acquired ShoreTel, and Sonus and Genband merged into an entity called Ribbon Communications. Of the various mergers, I expect the Cisco-BroadSoft combination will have the biggest impact in 2018. With BroadSoft, Cisco will have a viable cloud solution for Tier 2 and 3 carriers and service providers, and be able to put pressure on companies like Metaswitch and Ribbon. The big question will be whether or not Cisco offers BroadSoft's BroadCloud UCaaS platform directly to businesses, going around service providers and essentially competing with companies like 8x8 and RingCentral.

New players emerged, as well; most notably, Amazon Web Services (AWS) became a contender in both the contact center (Amazon Connect) and collaboration (Amazon Chime) spaces. While these are basic products limited in features and functionality (Connect is voice only, for example), AWS certainly has deep pockets and can invest in R&D as well as acquisitions. In 2018, I expect to see the company make a play for a cloud contact center vendor, or possibly a company like 8x8 that has both cloud UC and contact center offerings.

This leads to the question, will 8x8, Five9, RingCentral, Serenova, and Talkdesk still be independent cloud companies by the end of 2018, or will they be acquired? My guess is the latter for at least one or two of them; besides AWS, other potential suitors include Facebook and Google. Also, I wouldn't be surprised to see Microsoft finally provide its own cloud contact center service, and the best and easiest way to do this is by acquiring a company that already has a service and expertise.

Of course, Avaya's financial restructuring and impending exit from Chapter 11 has been big industry news, and good news for the company. Avaya has lots of work to do in 2018, as it'll need to fight hard to regain its mindshare and market share. While the company has continued investing in R&D, it'll need to convince new and existing customers that it's back on track. It'll also have to prove that it has a competitive cloud story. While Avaya has a loyal customer base, the company hasn't acquired many new logos in the past year, and a good number of channel partners have taken on additional vendors' product/service offerings. Avaya's year will be an interesting one as the company works to continue being seen as a viable long-term player.

Click to Page 2 for a technology review and outlook

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Technology: AI Becomes Real
Turning to the technology front, 2017 saw the rise of the bots, natural language processing (NLP), and virtual assistants -- all under the artificial intelligence (AI) umbrella. Chat bots have become mainstream, primarily because of their use in the contact center. The big issue in 2018 will be ensuring that companies implement bots in such a way that they help, rather than hinder, the customer experience. Just as we've seen with interactive voice response (IVR), if a useful technology is poorly deployed, it may result in customer dissatisfaction and resentment. Companies will need to work hard in 2018 to ensure they don't just use bots to triage or augment the agent, but to assist agents so that they can improve the customer experience.

While bot use began expanding this year to enterprise applications for improved meeting and collaboration experiences and collaboration, actual deployments have been limited. Among interesting products introduced in 2017 were the Cisco Spark Assistant with AI capabilities, and IBM Watson Workspace Essentials, a team collaboration solution with the built-in power of Watson. Salesforce continued to make progress with its AI product Einstein, introducing the myEinstein services platform. Amazon Alexa and Lex are making their way into the enterprise business market, as AWS launched Alexa for Business, and Lex has been integrated with Genesys PureCloud to help businesses build and maintain conversational IVR flows.

If 2017 has been the year of AI announcements, 2018 will be the year of early innovator deployments and additional business use cases. I expect to see more use cases for AI and bots that go beyond just setting up and scheduling meetings, to improving business workflows. For example, a meeting bot will be able to search for and present contextually relevant information for a particular meeting based on the topic discussed, attendees, and keywords mentioned during the meeting.

Collaboration: APIs, Integration, Devices
A key trend in 2017 has been the use of communications platform as a service, or CPaaS, and APIs to integrate communication capabilities into business applications. As UC becomes subsumed as part of business applications such as Salesforce and Zendesk, the nature of the way we communicate will change. We saw the beginning of this in 2017, and will see 2018 as the year of real-world deployments, led by team collaboration vendors. 2017 has been the year many team collaboration (also known as workstream messaging, team chat, team messaging, and so on) vendors focused on integrating their collaboration and UC capabilities.

As voice continues to lose its dominance, expect to see team collaboration become the primary user interface in 2018. We've seen Cisco try to unite its Spark and UC capabilities, while RingCentral has done a good job of tying in Glip with RIngCentral Office, and Unify's Circuit has refined its integrations with OpenScape. I expect to see other team collaboration applications, such as Atlassian HipChat and Stride, Workplace by Facebook, and Slack add more UC and calling capabilities (most likely through WebRTC) in 2018.

Case in point, Microsoft announced that Teams will evolve as the primary client for intelligent communications in Office 365, replacing the current Skype for Business client over time. As my colleague Kevin Kieller pointed out in the UCStrategies Year in Review podcast, Microsoft "blew up Skype Online and replaced it with Teams, which is a completely new product that will take its place." As he noted, "this further demonstrates the shift away from voice communications to other modes such as text."

My belief is that Teams will eventually become the central point of business communications and collaboration for Microsoft users, but not in the short term. Telephony calling features and capabilities won't be available until the second half of 2018, which will have significant impact on the market as businesses decide whether to wait or switch. I expect to see some of the UC and UCaaS vendors take advantage of Microsoft's transition to Teams, and as many enterprises hold off on planning as they wait for Skype for Business changes, this can be an opportunity for other vendors to swoop in.

Turning to collaboration devices, 2017 has seen a rise in larger formats, providing more immersive experiences. Team productivity has been enhanced with the introduction or refinement of conference room devices, or digital canvases, with products such as Cisco Spark Board, Google Jamboard, inFocus MondoPad, Oblong Mezzanine, and Nureva Span. These large-format boards and digital canvasses make it easier for teams to share, view, create, and manipulate content during meetings and with remote workers. The next step will be adding virtual or augmented reality to the meeting experience. We've seen demos in 2017 from companies like Cisco, Microsoft, and others, but won't see many real deployments until the latter part of 2018.

Unified Communications Become Business Communications
Looking forward to 2018, perhaps the biggest news in the industry will be the transition of UCStrategies to BCStrategies (OK, not really the biggest news). The UCStrategies team has recognized the changes taking place in the industry as UC becomes just one part of the overall business communications space; we believe that tthe term "unified communications" is too limiting, and that business communications is more all-encompassing. Please visit our new website, www.bcstrategies.com.

Get all the latest in enterprise communications at Enterprise Connect 2018, March 12 to 15, in Orlando, Fla. Register now using the code NOJITTER to save an additional $200 off the Advance Rate or get a free Expo Plus pass.