MARKET REPORT 2020 and beyond
2020 and beyond
It’s that time of year when our market voices like to shout about their predictions for 2020. As usual, we asked
a wide range of people from different types of Channel businesses to share their thoughts
One of the big trends
we’ve seen in the Unied
Communications (UC)
market is he rise of
collaboration services, with a
particular buzz surrounding
Microsoft Teams and their Direct
Routing story. We asked the
market what they thought the
UC market would produce in
2020.
RingCentral’s VP of EMEA
Channel, Richard Massey,
says “e workplace will
continue to transform in 2020
and beyond—recent research
shows that 86 per cent of
workers expect simplicity
and ease of use from their
workplace tools. is means
that unied communications
(UC) will continue to be a
highly competitive market
in 2020—and for the
Channel this will create both
opportunities and challenges.
e partner community
needs to be innovative in its
approach and go-to-market
strategy to make the most of
these opportunities, and bring
disruptive solutions to market.
As communications within the
workplace continue to change,
the ability to integrate dierent
communications channels into
workow processes to drive
productivity will be key. But
channel partners shouldn’t
be looking at this solely as a
technology play—they need
to work with partners and
customers to contextualise
deployments, individual to
each and every business. If
channel partners don’t bring
innovative new solutions to
market and position themselves
as consultants, they will be left
behind.
“Channel partners also need
to look at verticalised plays
TOP 2020 TRENDS
• FIBRE DEPLOYMENTS
• 5G
• MICROSOFT TEAMS
• ESIMS
• ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
to nd new opportunities for
growth. e contact centre
is a huge opportunity for the
Channel—but many don’t see
the crossover between UC and
Contact Centre. Most channels
in the UK haven’t gone deep
enough in understanding the
processes, issues and drivers for
digital customer engagement.
But again, if the Channel wants
to maximise this opportunity,
it needs to understand the value
it can add, rather than thinking
of this as an opportunity to
simply sell a Contact Centre
solution to customers.”
Paul Taylor, Sales Director
at Voiceex commented
“e most signicant
change we see for 2020 is
Unied Communications &
Collaboration (UC&C). For
many years UC was an app
on a mobile device or specic
software on a laptop/PC. We
are seeing UC&C entering
the market from dierent
directions; Microsoft is pushing
MS Teams as a standalone
UC&C application; Voiceex
is promoting Circuit from
Unify as a standalone UC&C
application, add the awardwinning
OpenScape Cloud as
the voice element, which is fully
multi-tenanted, and you have a
winning combination.
“UC&C is a quantum leap in
technology, for many years the
way we communicate has been
changing, look at most people’s
screen time, voice will be there
but it’s not at the top of the list.
WhatsApp, Messenger, text
messaging, Snapchat, Instagram
have entered the workplace
& they’re all UC and some
UC&C. ey’re all fantastic
applications, but should they
be in the workplace? I’m all for
bringing your own device but
not your own platform.”
Myles Leach, MD of NFON
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UK said “In 2020 I predict
one of the biggest shifts will be
in the increasing adoption of
collaboration tools, especially in
the SME market. is is being
fueled by business demand and
the revolution in collaboration
technologies. e design of
them is meant to be inherently
standard. is means the best
solution for businesses is one
that has features that already
cover the standard requirements
of their organisation and is easy
to integrate into their existing
infrastructure. For the channel,
there is huge scope to sell in
cloud services with integrated
collaboration tools, which are
designed to be as cost eective
and scalable for as many users
as possible - after all bespoke
requests cost time, money,
and productivity. is is why
we recently launched Nvoice
for Microsoft Teams. is
combines two communication
24 | Comms Business Magazine | December 2019 www.commsbusiness.co.uk
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