Ask an Analyst: 2024 Trends in Collaboration TechAsk an Analyst: 2024 Trends in Collaboration Tech
A look back at some of the key trends in POTS, Gen AI security and workplace collaboration, as well as some insights on potential trends in 2025.
December 20, 2024
No Jitter asked frequent No Jitter contributor Irwin Lazar, president and principal analyst at Metrigy, for his thoughts on a few topics and trends in 2024, ranging from what happened with POTS, to the use of generative AI in collaboration tools, as well as what trends may emerge in 2025.
No Jitter (NJ): What happened with POTS in 2024? Anything major or more of a continuing trend? Do you expect anything ‘radical’ in 2025?
Irwin Lazar (IL): The POTS market continues to undergo change as some countries push to force carriers to retire their POTS services, while others deregulate to allow carriers to raise prices, or to decommission services. Our Employee Engagement Optimization: 2025 global research study found that about 38% of those still using POTS are planning to retire it, either via transition to VoIP or to wireless services.
(Editor’s note: For more, check out Lazar’s article on POTS lines.)
NJ: You've written about Gen AI security and workplace collaboration security. What's important to highlight at year-end for readers?
IL: I think the biggest area to highlight is the ever-growing security challenges as companies adopt new collaboration apps (e.g. connected workspace, virtual whiteboard, etc.) as well as AI. We see now that security teams are often involved in collaboration app purchase decisions and that companies are increasingly scrutinizing apps to ensure compliance with appropriate standards such as ISO27001, HIPAA, etc., AI response accuracy, and the ability to appropriately classify and retain information to protect against data loss and to ensure reliability of AI-generated responses.
NJ: What's your take on the utility of Gen AI in collaboration? Is it saving time / making users more 'productive'?
IL: Our Employee Engagement Optimization: 2025 study found that about a third of those using Gen AI collaboration capabilities are already measuring time savings as the primary metric to gauge. About another 41% expect benefit but aren't seeing it yet. And the rest are either unsure if there will be benefit, or think AI is not going to deliver real-world value. We find that those with an active training program that includes setting expectations and training in prompt writing see the highest benefit. And those that are measuring time savings say it saves employees about 10 hours a week.
(Editor’s note: For more, check out Lazar’s article on calculating ROI for Gen AI.)
NJ: What did you find most interesting in 2024 with respect to the tech you cover?
IL: Obviously AI has been transformative and will continue to dominate discussions in 2025. I think we're moving beyond the hype into the reality phase, which means companies are looking for measurable ROI and are struggling with security, compliance, and governance.
NJ: Crystal ball time: What trends do you see emerging in 2025?
IL: I think a big trend to watch in 2025 is how companies build out their AI strategies to include ingestion of company data and how companies will decide whether to spend money on AI assistants / agents / copilots within their collab apps, or instead focus on basing their AI strategy on larger platforms from companies like Anthropic, OpenAI, etc., who can enable insights from both collaboration apps as well as other sources of business intelligence.
