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IoT and UCaaS: Changing face of corporate communication (and how to get it right)

During 1960s, Star Trek was a pioneer in introducing futuristic communications. Remember Captain Kirk talking over video with his friends and foes? It took more than 30 years for fiction to become reality (the first industrial telepresence system was introduced in the early 1990s). However, with advent of new technology, the rate at which fictional tech is fast becoming reality is astonishing.

The workplace is an area subjected to such accelerated change. The increasing addition of millennials to the workforce — whose communication choices are more flexible and mobile, with light and on-the-go application needs — is contributing to this change. In this rapid workplace transformation, organizations need a unified communication strategy which can lower their costs and deliver anywhere, as well as plug the gap between employees and their choices, and increase collaboration and productivity.

Unified communications as a service, or UCaaS, is a perfect fit for organizations of all sizes as it helps avoid the hassle of owning and maintaining bulky IT infrastructure, thereby enabling businesses to scale quickly and remain agile with low TCO. With UCaaS, all communication functions, such as voice and telephony, meeting solutions, messaging, presence and instant messaging, are clubbed together in a single package and delivered over the cloud on a pay-as-you-go model.

UCaaS is suitable for current and future trends we are seeing in the market

Going forward, we see UCaaS tools becoming integral in the virtual workplace. With technologies like virtual reality, augmented reality, 5G and IoT gaining popularity among consumers, its entry into enterprise UC is inevitable. With changing workforce attitudes toward telecommuting and communication channels other than voice, UCaaS will become a key core strategy for any enterprise.

Getting it right will be the key

To deliver differentiated and compelling UCaaS, telcos and communications service providers (CSPs) must focus on the following key aspects:

In getting these transitions right, an engineering service provider’s unique expertise and experience has become more and more valuable. With such extensive end-to-end expertise and deep investments in internal communication labs, IoT and emerging technologies, engineering service providers that understand the nuances of the ecosystem can help businesses build and execute their unified communication strategies at an accelerated pace with lower investments.

What the future holds

Remember Eden Hazard’s live interview on Belgium TV from a studio in Russia using hologram technology during the FIFA World Cup? It will not be long before we see these technologies in our UCaaS tools. Most — if not all — meetings, which often take more time to commute to than their actual duration, can soon be done over a unified communication system without compromising on personalized experiences.

It might have taken decades for us to realize the sci-fi tech of 20th century, but the sci-fi tech of 21st century will be realized much sooner — maybe within a decade. We’re now at a pace where reality might even outdo fiction.

All IoT Agenda network contributors are responsible for the content and accuracy of their posts. Opinions are of the writers and do not necessarily convey the thoughts of IoT Agenda.

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