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Unified Communications: The Top 5 Predictions for 2023
Unified Communications: The Top 5 Predictions for 2023

February 5, 2023

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On the global stage, 2022 shall be remembered for the slowdown of COVID, the Russia-Ukraine war causing political and economic turmoil, particularly in Europe, supply chain issues causing a steep rise in costs, fancy terms like "great resignation", "moon lighting", and “quiet quitting”, which kept employers busy with constant talent hunts, the James Webb Space Telescope sending us spectacular high-resolution colored images of the universe's distant stars, the launch of Artemis 1, a mission to the moon that travelled more than 1.4 million miles on a path around the moon before returning safely to Earth; the release of OpenAI ChatGPT 3.0, a generative AI that took the entire world by storm with its mind-blowing capabilities; the collapse of crypto exchange FTX; and finally the inflation and economic recession concerns that led to tech meltdown with top tech companies announcing layoffs.

Let us look at the top 5 UC predictions for 2023, which will continue to transform the market. 

Top 5 UC Predictions for 2023

There has been a growing economic challenge looming all over, and every industry is on a cost-cutting spree, laying off employees, reducing their revenue guidance, and not bullish about the growth in 2023.

On the UC Tech side, in the last 3 years, organizations of every size have invested heavily in modern communication and collaboration UCaaS capabilities for business continuity, sustainability, and growth reasons. We saw an acceleration in UC Tech Innovation because of increased UCaaS demand, which enabled anytime, anywhere, and on any device communication and collaboration with an equitable experience. The year 2023 may not see the rays of exponential UC growth rates as seen during the pandemic, but it will see linear growth. Below are the UC trends that we believe will have profound impact and investment potential in 2023.

1. Security: Since business applications moved from on-premises to the cloud, the security perimeter has crossed company boundaries, data and systems have resided in third-party data centers, giving hackers free hand to conduct large-scale cyber security attacks. In 2022, the number of cyber security attacks more than doubled that of 2021.  In 2023, security will continue to be a top priority and attract investment from every UCaaS vendor in the market. UC vendors will claim support for Next Generation Security Standards such as TLS 1.3 and FIPS 140-3, which will improve UCaaS product security and make it less vulnerable to cyber security attacks.

2. Platform and Integrations: In 2022, every UC company announced to the world at their trade shows that they are no longer a product company but rather a platform company. Platform essentially means that the company shall provide APIs and SDKs for every feature it develops so that one can integrate UC capabilities into their business applications, and likewise, you can develop your own custom applications on the UC platform. For example, a healthcare customer can build patient care applications like doctor appointment booking, chat with the front-end executive, get notifications of appointments and prescription reminders, schedule a video call with the doctor, etc., all of which can be built on the Zoom app. Customers are demanding best-of-breed UC solutions; hence, UC vendors are partnering to build integrations across the UC platforms and UC end points. In 2023, we will see more of these UC platforms and UC integrations.

3. UC Vendor Consolidation: During the pandemic, we have seen a mushrooming of UC vendors in the market. The market valuation of the UC vendors grew exponentially. With the pandemic almost over, work from home ending, and the economic downturn, the market valuation of the UC vendors has come down drastically. This is the right time for the bigger UC players to acquire smaller UC companies. In 2022, we have seen some of the UC startups disappear. In 2023, we shall see the consolidation of UC vendors. For instance, there are talks about 8x8 getting acquired by RingCentral.

4. Artificial Intelligence: AI has been the core of UC innovation during the pandemic. The features like noise cancellation, virtual backgrounds, meeting transcriptions, and language translations driven by AI were critical to making the WFH meeting experience as close to face-to-face meetings as possible. The recent AI innovation ChatGPT 3.0, or "generative AI," has taken the entire world by storm. ChatGPT is expected to transform the contact center industry like never before, automating the entire agent workflow with minimal human intervention. For UC in 2023, we will get to see more AI-enabled features. For example, we could make our post-meeting experience even more effective and productive by having an AI-enabled meeting assistant summarize the entire meeting, take action items, and track them to completion, freeing up human involvement.

5. Hybrid Work: 2022 saw a new trend called hybrid work, which was expected. The pre-pandemic was more about improving office-to-office communication and collaboration. The pandemic improved the 100% WFH remote working collaboration experience. The office spaces have been redesigned to accommodate hybrid culture, such as hot desking and huddle spaces. In 2023, we will see improved hybrid work collaboration experience. The primary growth area will be in apps, services, and hardware that optimize hybrid work experiences, including virtual engagement and social apps, employee experience measurement and analytics, workspace reservation apps, performance, and administration management platforms.


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Venkat Kandhari
Industry Principal

Mr. Venkat is an Industry Principal working with Infosys Limited. A thought leader in Unified Communications field with 24 years of industry experience in Unified Communications Research and Product Development and a proven track record in building technology teams who partner with business leaders in meeting strategic goals. Venkat’s professional expertise includes UC Linux platform and UC product security. He holds Master of Computer Application (MCA) from Osmania University Hyderabad, India

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