Will remote work boost unified communications interoperability?

As more employees work remotely from home during the pandemic, unified communications (UC) interoperability has received increasing attention. Although some progress has been made, there is still a long way to go.

[[333194]]

Some believe that remote work will remain very popular after the coronavirus outbreak is effectively controlled. If this is the case, then interoperability between enterprise-level services should be improved now, but unified communications interoperability still has a long way to go. Enterprises need to communicate with internal and external teams, customers and business partners, and employees working from home may have to switch back and forth between various vendor unified communications applications to perform their normal work duties.

Interoperability is not an issue from a traditional public switched telephone network perspective, but it is a major hurdle when it comes to in-application IP voice, IM, and video conferencing services. For example, if an IT department deploys Cisco UC voice, video, and chat services, and a business partner uses Microsoft, Zoom, Slack, or a similar unified communications tool, interoperability will become an issue. That said, having issues with vendor interoperability is nothing new, it’s just that remote work has magnified the problem as face-to-face interactions are significantly reduced in favor of technology-based alternatives.

How will unified communications vendors respond?

To that end, the need for better interoperability has probably never been greater. How will UC vendors respond to the issues that remain? The past few years have seen some attempts by vendors to work together to provide UC interoperability. Cisco and Microsoft announced last year that they would devise a way for video conferencing devices that use Cisco Webex and Session Initiation Protocol to work in Microsoft Teams meetings, just one example. While this is a good start, it falls far short of what is truly needed from an interoperability perspective.

Why is interoperability between multiple vendors so difficult to achieve? Because UC vendors want to maintain or expand their share of the UC market. If all platforms and services can interoperate out of the box, there will be little differentiation between vendors' services except for the price, and profit margins will be greatly reduced. This is one of the important reasons why UC vendors are cautious in establishing interoperability partnerships. It is foreseeable that vendors will not change this behavior quickly.