Improved user experience (UX) will drive adoption of unified communications and collaboration solutions, industry experts said at InfoComm 2017. The ‘UCC State of the Industry Lunch and Learn’, held by the IMCCA, saw a panel of 11 representatives from UCC companies offer their views on the state of the market and future industry directions.
With only 4% of meeting spaces in the world having any video functionality, the opportunity for the industry is significant. In the drive to ubiquity, UX must be addressed, said Greg Pelton, CTO and VP of infrastructure engineering, Polycom: “Being able to easily get into sessions, easily collaborate, being able to access what happened afterwards, being able to participate if you weren’t in the meeting – those are all key things that we have to solve.”
David Berman, president of Zoom, felt that user experience is improving, particularly with regard to eliminating the “ten-minute tax” – the delay in getting meetings underway. “We’re now doing one-click connect on these different [partner] platforms. By us working together and getting a better user experience, making it so simple for people to get in, it’s really going to change how people view video going forward.”
Among the panels’ predictions for the future: fierce competition between vendors will drive down prices over the next year; a “whirlwind effect” will see deployments accelerate across the market; and, looking further ahead, artificial intelligence will be the next big thing in enterprise technology.
“The market is probably in the most exciting place it’s been,” said Simon Dudley, director of product strategy, video collaboration, Logitech. “I have sat here for over 20 years thinking next year will be the year of videoconferencing… actually, I think it’s going to happen. I can’t tell you how excited I am.”
