Ever since the pandemic arrived, UCaaS has seen a surge in popularity and is now among the most widely-used communication infrastructures. Organizations are increasingly embracing the benefits of migrating an often incongruent mix of on-premises and cloud-based applications to a singular, unified platform that offers calling, meetings, team messaging, and contact center experiences.
A number of industry analysts have projected continued growth in the adoption of Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) solutions. Orion Market Research states that easy integration, compatibility, service support, and low cost of ownership will drive the market to achieve a CAGROpens a new window of nearly 25%. Recently, leading strategic consulting firm, Metrigy surveyed 476 organizations in 11 countries and 54 industry verticals to gain insights into where the UCaaS market is heading. The survey found that at present, UCaaS solutions are used by 47.3% of businesses globally – the highest since 2016.
Learn More: Why Unified Communications Has Become a Must-Have in 2021
Adoption of UCaaS Platforms to Peak in the Next Two Years
The growth opportunities in the UCaaS industry are vast. To address the emerging needs of a distributed workforce, unified communications platform providers are adding innovative features to their usual telephony and collaboration applications. The rising demand for UCaaS solutions has also given rise to many tech startups looking to tap into the opportunity.
Now, for several organizations that are still using on-prem infrastructure, shifting to the cloud is a matter of ‘when’ and not ‘if’. UCaaS has become so pervasive that organizations using on-prem infrastructure are wary of their legacy systems becoming redundant in the coming years.
According to Metrigy, by the end of 2021, at least 29% of on-prem organizations will move to the cloud while a similar proportion of organizations will start evaluating their options. Also, over half of the companies’ surveyed plan to increase their IT budget by an average of 15.6%. Irwin Lazar, Principle Analyst at Metrigy, said, “UCaaS is probably going to top out at somewhere north of 70% of the market in the next two years.â€
Enhanced IT budgets will help organizations address three major concerns – team collaboration, video, and cybersecurity. The initial stages of the pandemic, which forced organizations to adopt various remote work models, also forced them to look for UCaaS solutions to help them mimic in-office work experience for remote workers.
Learn More: 8 Trends That Will Drive the UCaaS Market in 2021
UCaaS Poised to Undergo Further Innovation With 5G & Edge NetworkingÂ
Cloud-based platforms, including UCaaS platforms, offer the flexibility and scalability to align with organizational needs. With application programming interfaces (APIs) enabling innovation and integration of artificial intelligence, business leaders are equipped with tools to understand communications behaviors and their impact on productivity and business outcomes.
2020 was a year of acquisitions and collaborations in the UCaaS market. Verizon acquired BlueJeans for meetings and events, and also launched a new CCaaS solution. Microsoft acquired Metaswitch to offer software-controlled, cloud-delivered 5G back-end services. Zoom, the most popular virtual meetings platform in 2020, acquired Keybase to create its own architecture for encryption.
The growth of 5G and SD-WAN and edge networking has opened the door for some exciting changes in the real-time communication space for vendors. With strong security, easier provisioning, and a set of managed services tools, UCaaS offers a space for limitless innovative services, which can also enable vendors to maximize revenue generation in the coming years.
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