5 UC and collaboration trends reshaping the market in 2025
Expect GenAI and agentic AI to dominate unified communications and collaboration trends, plus employees and businesses weigh return-to-office edicts and heightened cyberattacks.
The year 2024 is when generative AI arrived in unified communications and collaboration. But 2024 wasn't just about AI. Companies are increasingly focused on optimizing hybrid work models to improve in-office and remote work. These trends will continue to evolve in 2025.
1. Widespread GenAI adoption
Generative AI (GenAI) went from buzzword to reality in 2024, while 2025 is shaping up to be the year of widespread adoption and operational management challenges. Among the 400 companies participating in Metrigy's "Employee Engagement Optimization: 2025" global research study released in November 2024, 46% of respondents are already using GenAI and 21% plan to adopt it in 2025. Businesses expect GenAI tools, such as copilots and virtual assistants, will be used by 70% of employees by the end of 2025. As GenAI rollouts accelerate, companies are faced with the same primary concerns as in 2024.
Defining the business case. The market has bifurcated into those that charge for GenAI capabilities, including Google, Microsoft, and Slack, and those that don't, such as Cisco and Zoom. Obviously, the business case and ROI are major concerns for companies that are paying for additional licenses. But even the free offerings create some expense around training and governance to ensure optimal use of GenAI tools. Businesses will increase their focus on determining the true value of AI by measuring financial gains resulting from productivity, revenue or cost minimization.
Ensuring security and compliance. Security and compliance concerns top Metrigy's list of factors slowing GenAI adoption. But only about half of respondents to the employee engagement survey have a governance strategy for GenAI that defines security, testing, compliance and data protection. Companies, especially those in regulated industries, will continue to increase their focus on ensuring the safe use of GenAI and support for local regulatory requirements.
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2. The rise of agentic AI
The latest buzzword for 2025 is agentic AI -- the ability to create AI-based agents that automate tasks ranging from responding to customer inquiries to managing tasks and schedules. These agents might be off-the-shelf for specific repeatable use cases or designed using a studio offered by an AI vendor. Expect to see a lot of interest in agentic AI, tempered by concerns over what actions an agent can take on a human's behalf. Many of the same compliance and security concerns remain as we enter the age of agents.
3. AI driving application consolidation
About 23% of companies responding to Metrigy's employee engagement survey are considering consolidating collaboration apps onto a single vendor's platform to better support AI. The driving force is to expand AI's reach in accessing company data. For those using separate email, calendar, chat, meeting and document creation platforms, each with their own AI, they might find that AI bots can only query data from within their own app, which can limit usefulness. In addition to the drive to consolidate applications, AI will promulgate efforts by vendors to share data and avoid silos of data confined to specific apps.
4. The office
Metrigy has tracked work location for the last several years and found that the majority of companies now require employees to be in the office for at least some portion of the work week, with 23% of respondents to the employee engagement study requiring full-time in-office attendance. Our research further showed a state of flux with nearly one-third of respondents expecting "more" remote work options in 2025. Independent studies have shown no correlation between return-to-office programs and improvements in company key performance indicators. Expect a reconsideration of the push to return to the office and a return to more acceptance of remote work in 2025.
Meantime, the return to the office will continue to drive workspace changes into 2025. There's a small but gradual shift in floor space design away from individual work locations to meeting spaces. And individual workspaces will shift from assigned desks to hot desks that employees can reserve on an as-needed basis. This shift will drive the adoption of workspace management and reservation platforms to streamline desk reservations, provide utilization analytics, and support features like digital signage and easily accessible workspaces for teammates.
5. Security, governance and compliance concerns remain
Security, governance and compliance concerns will continue into 2025 and for all UC and collaboration apps. Metrigy's "Workplace Collaboration Security and Compliance: 2024-25" global study of 338 companies released in August of 2024 showed that attacks on UC and collaboration applications have increased almost three-fold since 2021. Meanwhile, 35% of survey respondents said their security strategy governing collaboration apps remained virtually unchanged since 2023. Companies with a strategy in place are mostly focused on remote worker security using methods like VPNs and mobile device management systems.
Irwin Lazar is president and principal analyst at Metrigy, where he leads coverage on the digital workplace. His research focus includes unified communications, VoIP, video conferencing and team collaboration.
