Evolving technologies, changing workforce demographics and the digital revolution are driving a major shift in how enterprises collaborate, say unified communications experts from Unify.
Speaking in Johannesburg at the first leg of the Unify Unified Communications roadshow in South Africa, Unify and Atos experts said radical changes in the market are driving vendors to innovate in the unified communications space.
"It's a case of business 'not' as usual," said Andrew Cheel, cloud customer success director at Atos, parent company of Unify.
"Mega trends such as mobility, cloud and social are changing our landscape. Enterprises are moving to pay per use/subscription models, and a growing millennial workforce is helping drive a more social, collaborative approach to work."
Millennials, he said, are highly collaborative and tend not to adhere to workplace policy, bringing their preferred collaboration tools into the workplace. Up to 79% often work in virtual teams and 71% dislike e-mail, while 43% are frustrated by the communications and collaboration technologies they work with.
"Research has found that people working in virtual teams without the necessary tools are less productive, less innovative and less likely to finish projects on time, on budget and within scope," said Cheel.
"Now, virtual collaboration is a reality and we have to get this technology working really effectively." But many tools available today do not support effective virtual collaboration, he noted.
Ritesh (Ritz) Patel, head of UCC sales APAC/MEA region, Unify Atos Collaboration Solutions, said companies today seek flexible, multichannel information flow in a cost-effective way, and are moving to cloud-based communications.
To be effective in supporting the virtual teams of the future, collaboration tools have to be simple, reliable, consistent across channels, and they have to be intuitive, offering a consumer-like experience, Unify said.
Cheel said Unify's portfolio delivers on the needs of enterprises undergoing digital transformation and aiming to support virtual collaboration.
Together with its partners, Unify has built ecosystems to support broader digital transformation, the company said.
Pieter Engelbrecht, country manager at Unify partner HPE Aruba, noted the network is a key component in the success of unified communications. "When unified communications fails, people tend to blame the platform, but it's often due to the network."
The secure, smart, enterprise-scale Aruba Access Network supports collaboration from any device or location, with intelligent call quality and performance management, as well as centralised policy management.
Adding further capabilities to Unify's advanced unified communications ecosystem, ASC Technologies AG outlined its intelligent recording and analysis across channels, and Argantic, which specialises in Microsoft Cloud communications and collaboration solutions, elaborated on coexistence with Microsoft Teams and Skype for Business.
The Unify Unified Communications roadshow, presented in partnership with ITWeb, will also be staged in Durban and Cape Town this week.
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