In 2022, the upcoming trends are a promising collection of great features and high-tech adaptations to the new hybrid-ready business world.
As mobile phones and internet communication become the norm, "landlines" are falling out of fashion. Already, most homes don't have a landline in favor of the cellphones held by every post-middle-school family member. As we enter 2022, we are also seeing fewer businesses choose to install wired phone sets as part of their UCaaS installation.
Between remote work and hybrid teams, hot-desking, and office redesign; why tether any phone to a single location? Today, we are more likely to see installations that include laptops, cellphones, even tablets, combined with wireless Bluetooth headsets instead of wired handsets - even the clever Cat6 connected desktop units that VOIP was originally known for.
5G is the fastest and most reliable wireless source of signal in the country right now. While it is primarily part of the cellular network, UC is tapping into the 5G network as a source of internet - just like cellphones do. UCaaS makes it possible for companies and teams to include mobile 5G access in their plan instead of relying entirely on local wired and wireless network availability.
With the integration of 5G into the UCaaS service model, it becomes possible for members to connect from almost anywhere with cell signal. This follows the mandate to create a truly mobile, remote, and hybrid-ready workforce.
BYOD or Bring Your Own Device became a big part of the post-pandemic New Normal. With so many employees sent home, it became impossible for most employers to enforce a company-devices-only policy. Instead, they relied on employees installing the company applications on home computers, personal laptops, and communicate through personal mobile phones.
UCaaS offers a way to keep business communications inside a private business network while also making use of personal employee-owned devices. Through the multi-device following feature, it won't matter if employees are connected at a company workstation in the office, on the road visiting clients, or at home with their personal computer and devices - their work number and contact channels will still be the same and remain secure.
Speaking of the New Normal, many companies realized that they needed a more comprehensive communications plan when in-office become impossible to maintain. USaaS creates an office communication culture and internal network that can be accessed from anywhere, whether a team is in the office, working from home, spread out all over the country, or in a hybrid office/remote mix.
In fact, it's more than pandemic preparedness. UCaaS as business continuity makes it possible to withstand everything from ransomware attacks that take down the company internal networks to natural disasters that take down the office itself.
AI has also been advancing to become more than just an automated phone tree inside a Universal Communications system. Once just chatbots and phone trees, a UC AI can now provide far more intuitive self-help support both for customers on the outside and employees on the inside.
In 2022, we fully expect to see UCaaS systems start to integrate personality AIs, like Alexa and Siri, who will learn to work intuitively with the company based on the most common queries, phases used, and extensions across multiple channels. You will be dealing with the same AI as your chatbot, virtual phone assistant, customer service dispatch, and more through the power of advanced self-learning.
A big issue moving into 2022, for all tech services, is cybersecurity. Hackers are getting more sophisticated and are making use of the internet mob to accumulate and share their hacking techniques. This has made it necessary for every application and business system to tighten up the defenses - and UCaaS is no exception.
UCaaS providers in 2022 will be honing their integral and API cybersecurity to help businesses that use the service to maintain a solid security wall between company business and hacker access.
Interested in more news and innovations in UCaaS? Universal communications is seeing some incredible development this year and 2022 looks to be an incredible year for new technology - especially in the realms of AI and security. For a free UCaaS solution consultation from CallTower, please click on the Microsoft Teams logo below.