In the pandemic-driven economy, Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) sees a strong uptake among enterprises and mid-sized companies. The rise of SaaS cloud-based software with the pay-as-you-go model accelerated the shift towards cloud-native UC solutions. But before the pandemic hit the world, the cloud communications market was divided into two segments — the incumbents like Cisco, Microsoft, Genesys, and upstarts like Slack, Dialpad, Twilio, BlueJeans (now acquired), RingCentral.
Now, there’s a new momentum in the Unified Communications Opens a new window space — 2020 is turning out to be a year of market consolidation with a significant transition towards bundled solutions. We see a heady competition in the market with vendors racing to add new products in high-growth segments such as Team CollaboratioOpens a new window n, Video Conferencing, and Cloud Contact Centers. And amid the coronavirus-related boom in UC, the growth of Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Cisco Webex has been noteworthy. It has also brought new players to the table — Facebook enters the market with Messenger RoomsOpens a new window .
In its 2019 Digital Worker Survey, Gartner estimated that by 2023, nearly 60% of enterprise application software providers will add social software and collaboration functionalities in software product portfolios. Additionally, the surveyOpens a new window suggests that while the market is very tool-driven (take Slack, for example), players like Microsoft and Google are upping the game by bundling their solutions. The need for workspace collaboration and productivity software is only set to increase, with 1.14 billion knowledge workers being added to the economy by 2023.
As UC vendors rush to turn the crisis into their biggest opportunity, we list down top the 10 UCaaS product launches and upgrades that happened recently.
Learn More: What is Unified Communications? Opens a new window
Check out the top 10 UCaaS and CCaaS launches and upgrades. (The companies are listed alphabetically)
1. Avaya
Avaya, in collaboration with RingCentral launched a new online collaboration platform – Avaya Cloud Office. This is a new UCaaS product offering advanced messaging, video conferencing, voice and video calls, file sharing features, and, most importantly, it enables effective collaboration across remote devices. Is this Avaya’s answer to Microsoft Office 365 and Google Suite? Also, the company has come to the aid of healthcare workers globally to fight COVID-19 with enhanced ability to deliver much-needed support and care. It has made its services free to healthcare organizations helping them to stay productive, connected, and safe.
Product Launch: Unified Communications solution dubbed Avaya Cloud Office
2. Dialpad
Dialpad announced exciting updates in April — Dynamic Caller ID, Local Dial, and Local Caller ID. This feature helps select matching contact numbers to call — based on a person’s profile and area code. This is an innovative and exciting feature, especially for the sales managers, helping them to assign a bundle of area codes to their call center to increase the number of prospects.
Dialpad has also started an agent screen capture feature recently to record the agent’s screen after their call gets connected.
Product Upgrade: Releases new calling features
3. Facebook
Facebook has launched Messenger Rooms to allow seamless group video calls with up to 50 participants. Facebook, with this launch, will be directly competing with other top platforms such as Zoom. The platform is made open to all, and it doesn’t even require the participant to own a Facebook account to join a Messenger Rooms call. For security purposes, only the users will have the ability to select or allow the participants to discover and join their room. Though Messenger Rooms are initially limited to Facebook, Facebook confirmed that in the future, it might be integrated with WhatsApp, Instagram Direct, and Portal as well.
Product Launch: Video conferencing platform Messenger Rooms
4. LogMeIn
LogMeIn is going after the Cloud Contact Center market with the newly launched GoToConnect Support CenteOpens a new window Opens a new window el=”nofollow noopener” title=”Opens a new window” target=”_blank”>r. Additionally, it has also expanded its ecosystem and offerings available for use in the Microsoft Teams store. These latest integrations allow enterprises to optimize their productivity, workflow, and collaboration.
Post this integration with Microsoft Teams users can launch GoToConnect and GoToMeeting within the Teams environment. The collaboration platform is now working towards ensuring fast, high-quality and reliable calls and meetings with external participants.
Product Launch: Added CCaaS to portfolio with GoToConnect Support CenteOpens a new window r
Learn More: Why Collaboration Tools Will Be the Biggest Beneficiary of 5GOpens a new window
5. RingCentral
The enterprise communication leader RingCentral recently announced its upgrade to video conferencingOpens a new window through – RingCentral Video. The company has promised improved and new experience for video meetings, specially designed to leverage RingCentral’s open platform.
The rich RingCentral experience comes with a smart analytics platform, which offers access to a host of KPIs like adoption, usage, quality of service, and beyond. The easy-to-read dashboards ensure matching up the expected level of communications experience.
Product Launch: Launched new browser-based video meetings solution
6. Slack
Slack is on a strong path to growth. Microsoft Teams will now support Slack for its calling services — introducing calls integration directly to the Slack app. Other than Microsoft Teams, Slack has actively enabled VoIP phone integration for various other players like — Zoom, RingCentral, Jabber, and DialPad, along with the already available WebEx. The combination, once activated, will allow the users to make or join calls directly on Microsoft Teams. This enables users to launch calls to phone numbers directly within the Slack app. The integration will also collaborate with the existing calendar apps — allowing them to join Team meetings directly through the calendar reminders in Slack via Google Calendar apps.
Product Upgrade: Call integrations with Zoom, Microsoft Teams, RingCentral, and more
7. Sangoma
Sangoma Technologies Corporation, one of the most trusted UCaaS leaders, announced its new video conferencing and collaboration tool called Sangoma Meet, in response to the current high demand in the COVID-19 situation. This multi-party, desktop sharing and video conferencing, cloud-based service, will focus on delivering enriched work from home experiences giving complete collaboration support. HD video support is the most promising feature of this new launch, ensuring the highest quality video calls delivered to clients.
Product Launch: Video conferencing platform Sangoma Meet
8. Zoom
Zoom’s oft-touted security vulnerabilitiesOpens a new window made it the company of the moment. Zoom CEO Eric Yuan stepped up to implement essential security updates to improve customer experience, reliability and gain back user trust. The most visible and recent update regarding the software is that the meeting hosts can now see a new option in the Zoom meeting controls called “Security.â€
This control will only be visible and available to the hosts and co-hosts of the Zoom Meetings, which enables them to:
- Lock the meeting
- Remove unwanted participants
- Enable waiting room
- Restricting the participants from options like – sharing the screen, chatting, or renaming themselves
The most popular video conferencing app also added AI transcription softwareOpens a new window to its portfolio.
Product Upgrade: Security updates and integrated AI transcription
Learn More: Zoom Pulls Off a Virtual Conference for NKF Amid COVID-19Opens a new window
9. 8×8 Inc.
8×8 has partnered with Jabra to expand its remote working capabilities during the coronavirus crisis. In addition, 8×8 which has emerged as a winner in secure video meeting solutions with Oracle-cloud powered video meetings recently launched the 8×8 Video MeetingsPro, with Jitsi Opens a new window – an open-source community providing seamless meeting solutions that run on the exceptional Oracle Cloud Infrastructure with end-to-end encryption.
Product Upgrade: Adds end-to-end encryption in video conferencing solution
10. 3CX
- 3CX’s latest update, dubbed v16 Update 5, takes the pain out of remote work and eases the process for businesses transitioning seamlessly to the remote-work during the crisis. The 3CX video collaborationOpens a new window tool, coupled with the latest e911 options along with the Google Chrome extension, has made it ideal for the business communications during the quarantine situation.
- The newest update 5 comes with all the below-improved feature:
- Emergency notification enabled for custom emails, chats, message templates, with audio notification options to use while dialing emergency response numbers.
- Configurable emergency numbers to manage and add emergency numbers with group/extension filtering options with designated SIP trunk routes.
- Outbound Caller ID allows the user to set a custom Caller ID, like an Emergency Location Identification Number, for emergency calls.
- Online backup is made available now via Google Buckets, which makes it reliable and cost-efficient for storage.
- Turbo-charged Windows App – Updated to be in sync with Update 5 controls and APIs, this version requires v16 Update 5 or later.
- Updated Chat feature focused on optimizing chat performance in 3CX Live Chat & Talk and Web Client promising an efficient messaging experience.
3CX has streamlined its elements for faster response time in order to service larger call center requests.
Product Update: Call features and revamped video calling
Wrapping Up
The UCaaS marketOpens a new window is evolving at a rapid clip amid the lockdown economy. A market report Opens a new window indicated the UCaaS industry is estimated to touch $24.8 billion by 2024. The rising popularity of remote communication tools has resulted in a slew of product upgrades, launches, and company collaborations. The pandemic has pushed companies to shift to cloud communications platforms, and ramp up remote collaboration platforms to deliver measurable business value with security and compliance during these times.
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