Tim Banting
For years, unified communications has been positioned as “the place you go to get work done.” I think that era is ending. The real opportunity is for UC to disappear into the background. Acting as a connective tissue for communication and collaboration, quietly embedded in the tools your workforce already thrives in.
This is reflected in the data we’re seeing at Techtelligence. For example, in UC-related buyer activity for the past month, the largest spikes are no longer around meetings or messaging. They’re focused on Workplace Management & Analytics, Productivity & Automation, and AI governance topics.
UC Shouldn’t Be Where Work Starts
Most employees don’t start their day in a UC client. They start in Excel, a CRM, a design tool, and a ticketing system. My view is simple: let them stay there. UC should show up contextually – surfacing the right people, conversations, and content inside the workflow. Rather than dragging users back into yet another app.
The intent data reinforces this shift. Categories tied to automation and workflow intelligence – not traditional UC clients – rank among the highest across time windows.
This tells us buyers are prioritizing tools that unify work across systems, not tools that expect users to live inside them.
From AI Features to an AI Work Coach
I’m far less interested in another meeting summary than in an AI that can act as a genuine work coach.
Imagine an AI layer that knows a colleague is waiting for a piece of work you promised, sees you have a meeting at 2pm, and pushes that task to the top of your day. Or an AI avatar you can simply ask:
- “What should I focus on next?”
- “Block an hour for this report.”
- “Pull in all relevant research.”
- “Check with my manager if we’re missing any data.”
That’s where I believe we’re heading. But to get there safely, enterprises will need clear guardrails around data access, AI behavior, monitoring and accountability – especially as UC becomes entangled with broader AI strategies.
The Real Risk: More Noise, Not More Value
The pessimistic scenario is that we keep doing what we’re doing: more transcripts, more translations, more notifications – and even less focus. If AI and UC simply add new channels and alerts, you’re compounding the problem, not solving it.
Anything that quietly helps employees prioritize, focus and reduce context switching deserves attention. Anything that just adds another stream to check will not stand up to scrutiny from productivity owners or risk officers.
Teasing the 2025 UC Reset
In my latest interview with UC Today – “The 2025 UC Reset: 5 Trends Every Enterprise Buyer Needs to Know” – we dig into how this shift plays out in practice. We explore the new role of UC in workplace strategy, and where agent-driven collaboration and immersive experiences actually earn their keep.
Overall, if you’re planning UC investments for 2026 and beyond, the key question you should be asking yourself is:
“What kind of invisible communication fabric – and AI layer on top of it – do we want shaping how our organization really works?”
