31 October 2024

The UK’s unified collaboration and communications (UC&C) market is witnessing heightened competition, benefiting enterprise customers with a broader range of service options, according to GlobalData.

Providers are increasingly transitioning from on-premises to cloud-based solutions, enhancing flexibility and scalability. With the rise of AI-driven features, businesses are strategically selecting partners that offer both cost efficiency and innovative tools to improve collaboration and productivity in a rapidly evolving market landscape.

“The UK businesses have a wide choice of UC&C service providers as options expand to include former data network specialists adding cloud-based solutions to their offerings, and smaller niche players expanding their portfolios to gain greater share of customer wallet,” said Robert Pritchard, Principal Analyst, Enterprise Technology & Services at GlobalData.

The journey from on-premises solutions to cloud-based services continues apace, with several service providers that had originally focused on providing data connectivity solutions now also targeting the cloud-based UC&C and contact centre markets.

The battle for market share is intense with a rocket boost to demand for collaboration tools during the COVID-19 pandemic. With most providers using the same base technology platforms, it has been hard for service providers to differentiate themselves, so the options have been price, customer service, and value-added features based on artificial intelligence, GenAI, and data analytics.

“Having seen market adoption accelerate during the pandemic with ‘Zoom’ entering the national lexicon, AI and GenAI are driving hype, change and new product development. This is also being accelerated by the January 2027 PSTN switch-off meaning that many legacy systems and services will no longer be usable,” said Pritchard.

Collaboration services have proven their merit for facilitating internal and external communications across all locations, and they are increasingly being integrated with and complemented by unified contact centre services – so the choice of a reliable and trusted service provider partner is of strategic importance to businesses.

“Inevitably, UC&C services are a focus of GenAI-related speculation. Widespread fears of mass employee redundancies remain overblown. These new technologies should be seen as a complement to most existing roles, helping workers to be more productive, and to concentrate on improving the value-add they can offer to their company or organization,” said Pritchard.