Staying Connected

The Unified Communications & Collaboration (UC&C) space heated up during the pandemic, but these products and services continue to take center stage three years later thanks to the resulting hybrid work trend that has employees all over the world doing a mix of working remotely, as well as from within the office.

In fact, worldwide revenues in the UC&C market grew 7.2 percent year over year to $15.4 billion in the first quarter of 2023, according to research firm IDC. For the full year 2023, worldwide UC&C revenue is forecasted to climb 8.2 percent year over year to $64.2 billion. This market doesn’t just include Unified Communications as a service (UCaaS) and collaboration products anymore. It also includes Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) offerings as many vendors realize that user and end customer experience are equally as important and rely on the same communication tools. And it goes without saying that these vendors have realized the importance of AI and automation and have begun injecting generative AI into their solutions to further simplify meeting experiences for all users.

Leading collaboration players such as Cisco, Microsoft and Teams are still among the frontrunners in this space, but there’s plenty of UCaaS and collaboration hardware specialists that are packing their own offerings with capabilities to help keep teams connected.

From the biggest of the big collaboration and videoconferencing leaders to the UCaaS and CCaaS and videoconferencing hardware specialists that have been packing their platforms and devices with new features for enterprises and SMBs, here are 10 of the hottest collaboration tools of 2023.

8x8 XCaaS

Avaya Experience Platform

Cisco Webex Go

DTEN D7X Interactive Whiteboard Display

Google Workspace

Microsoft Teams

Poly Studio X Series Video Bars

RingCentral RingSense For Sales

Vonage Meetings and Meetings API

Zoom Phone