The ability to deliver advanced communication and collaboration services to increasingly distributed workforces is driving rapid growth of cloud-delivered unified communications solutions. Analysts with Metrigy predict that 70 percent of businesses will be using UC-as-a-Service within two years.

In response to pandemic-triggered distancing mandates, businesses across the globe moved quickly to adopt cloud-based communications and collaboration solutions for their suddenly remote workforces. Unified Communications-as-a-Service (UCaaS) adoption surged by 86 percent at the start of the pandemic, according to one survey of U.S. enterprise organizations.

Lacking a coherent collaboration strategy, many organizations adopt multiple collaboration solutions from multiple vendors, and don’t have much of a grasp on how much it all costs. The subscription and license fees are only the tip of the iceberg. Network and IT support costs and a poor user experience add to the TCO of collaboration.

Many organizations focus all of their energy on growing the business but fail to adequately prepare for the challenges that business growth can bring. Growing pains are commonly felt in the areas of communication and collaboration, which become even more important with business expansion.

A recent report from Eastern Management Group found that more than half of all surveyed organizations are considering the adoption of a hosted unified communications solution to replace their aging phone system. The top reasons for adoption of Unified Communications-as-a-Service (UCaaS) solutions focus on popular capabilities such as VoIP, mobility, presence and collaboration tools.

Online collaboration tools have been a lifeline for employees working remotely. Voice and video conferencing, instant messaging, chat and other tools enable workers to stay connected, share information, make decisions and serve customers.

But the rapid transition to remote work caused many organizations to implement collaboration tools in an ad hoc manner.

All businesses need a reliable communications system to connect with colleagues, customers and partners — particularly with today’s increasingly distributed and mobile workforces. That’s why unified communications solutions that enhance connections across multiple channels have become a business necessity.

There is near-unanimous agreement among small to midsized businesses (SMBs) that collaboration tools are now essential to operations. In a recent Techaisle survey, 96 percent of SMBs ranked improved collaboration as their second-most important IT priority, just behind cloud.

According to the State of Remote Work report from Buffer, 99 percent of workers would prefer to work remotely at least some of the time until they retire. That’s just about everybody. Another study from FlexJobs and Global Workplace Analytics found that remote work increased by 44 percent in five years and more than 90 percent in 10 years.

If there has been one perceived drawback to advances in communication technology, it has been that emailing, texting and instant messaging has replaced face-to-face communication. As a result, relationships aren’t as strong as in the past. Thanks to the emergence of video conferencing as a core collaboration technology, this trend is being reversed.