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ARN Virtual Exchange: the role of unified comms in a post-COVID world

ARN Virtual Exchange - in association with LogMeIn, NBN Co and RingCentral
Mark Iles (Tech Research Asia)

Mark Iles (Tech Research Asia)

The disruptions caused by COVID-19 have seen organisations around the world rush to implement and utilise solutions that let their people work remotely, with unified communications (UC) a core technology in these efforts. 

But, as discussed during a recent ARN Virtual Exchange event held in association with LogMeIn, NBN Co and RingCentral, the shift to this new working reality was already well underway before the novel coronavirus struck and will continue to be driven forward once things get back to a new normal — a state of play that will work well for partners playing in the UC space. 

According to Tech Research Asia (TRA) executive consultant and industry analyst Mark Iles, who delivered a keynote address during the virtual event, we were already at the point where 60 per cent of employees were using more than one work space on any given day when the pandemic hit. 

Moreover, research conducted in Australia by TRA before COVID-19 reared its head found that 69 per cent of Australian organisations already had a modern workplace policy in place, while 80 per cent of those organisations had already made a significant change to their policy in the last 24 months.

Nearly half of these companies, according to Iles, said that they needed to make more changes just to be successful. 

“As a nation, Australia was actually relatively advanced, in terms of the development of workplace policies,” Iles told attendees during the event. 

The shift to flexible or remote working arrangements prior to COVID-19, according to Iles, was also compounded by linked trends, with nearly 60 per cent of Australia corporates set to reduce their space and use more co-working space prior to the pandemic. 

“There are two trends we’re seeing...the concept of these smaller satellite offices that allow for regional hubs,” Iles said, “rather than this very binary switch between either working from home or commuting into the office, we were starting to see the beginning of what we were calling this satellite outfits. 

“And we think that, with COVID-19, what’s happened there is going to push that even further,” he added.

Once COVID-19 hit, the work that was already being done to get employees into more flexible working environments, or at least provide them with access to more flexible work options, switched into overdrive, with organisations of all sizes working to create a workplace that did not require people to physically be in a central office. 

And then, according to Iles, everything paused. 

“When COVID-19 landed...first off, we went to crisis mode, and when we look at some of the speeds at which we were able to operate...it’s been a very interesting time to figure out just now quickly you can move when you’re forced to,” Iles said. 

“And then what we saw was a huge pause button, hit by most customers. Then we saw a little bit of service reduction and efficiency drives, started to see some discount requests, started to see requests for free trial licences to burst up on things like...unified comms, and on network capacity — a lot of things you’d expect to be fairly obvious, with a massive move to working from home,” he added. 

So, what comes next? From Iles’ perspective, this is where a new priorities phase comes into play. This phase, according to Iles, is where the market evolution was up to as of late June. 

This new phase represents a complete reassessment that most customers are going through about what transformations make sense, as they find themselves thinking about where they are going to spend their IT dollars. But this won’t mean ruin for IT budgets and the money that will flow into the partner ecosystem. 

Indeed, the IT industry will be healthier than most sectors in the coming months, especially for partners specialising in unified comms and cloud, among other areas. 

“We are anticipating a decline in total IT spend in 2020, just by the nature of how that’s happening, it’s more a question of where that’s going,” Iles said. “I do think...IT will be one of the areas that’s less troubled than most. 

“Do you think technology is more relevant with a disparate workforce than less relevant? We would all hopefully know the answer to that, especially given the world that we’re working in. 

“We see technology as highly relevant. However, the brutal reality of most customers having declining revenues means everything is going to be trimmed to a certain extent, but the prioritisation of actually where they are going to put that money is where we think it is going to get interesting. And we think that’s going to be very beneficial, obviously, in the UC space,” Iles added.

Although there is expected to be some tightening of corporate wallets in the near future, it is anticipated that there will continue to be substantially more appetite for unified comms solutions into the future, even when things return to normal. 

Indeed, Iles suggested that when things settle down into a more normal environment, the number of true remote workers is expected to be double that of pre-pandemic conditions.

Breaking out the figures, Iles noted that pre-COVID, at a global level, roughly 20 per cent of the global workforce had been engaging in some degree of remote work. During COVID-19, that figure has flipped and indeed quadrupled to around 80 per cent. In a post COVID-19 world, however, it is expected that the figure will be 40 per cent, twice that of pre-pandemic times. 

“We’ve gone from this 20 per cent world globally, to 80 per cent during COVID, to now 40 per cent post-COVID. So, if you think about that to a pre-COVID to post-COVID, when we settle down into a more normal environment, we’re anticipating the number of true remote workers to double,” Iles said.

And of course, unified communications will play a central role in how those 40 per cent of workers can continue to do their jobs remotely in an ongoing capacity, especially when the need for remote collaboration comes into the picture.

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As Iles pointed out, remote work during COVID-19 and beyond is about much more than just keeping in touch with colleagues via the phone or messaging platforms, but rather is about the ability to collaborate effectively and freely, just as people might while together in a physical office. 

“The trend that we’re seeing is that as people move forward...the need for more collaboration, more tight collaboration, less structured collaboration is driving the future of work,” Iles said. 

This is a problem for some organisations still using legacy systems that weren’t designed with a mobile-first office in mind. From Iles’ perspective, however, the pandemic has provided a catalyst for organisations to ramp up their digital transformations and embrace the new technology that will enable remote work in an ongoing capacity.

“What we see going forward, two particularly good areas we see, cloud telephony — there’s a lot of space left in terms of moving to softphone and cloud, and a lot of room left in terms of cloud-based web and video conferencing, and also, of course, networking,” Iles said.

“And if you look at the total UCaaS [unified communications-as-a-service] market in the next three years in Australia, we still see that being in excess of around $1 billion. And underpinning all of this, the huge need for networks...and being able to leverage technologies like SD-WAN. 

“Collaboration, we think, is going to be key,” Iles added. “Not just the technologies, but also in terms of looking at how people work together. Those secure, easy to use systems will dominate the new landscape."

For LogMeIn's head of channel in Asia Pacific, Mark Harvey, who spoke in the panel discussion during the Virtual Exchange event, one of the challenges faced by organisations as they turn towards a new workplace reality involving remote workers and a distributed network, along with a plethora of devices dispersed across a broad area, is the issue of security. 

“Eighty per cent of verifiable data breaches globally over the last year have involved stolen credentials, so that’s security’s major issue, particularly with people using their own end devices, working from home,” Harvey said.  

“How secure are those networks? I think that’s a major element — device management in security and password management,” he added.

But, as with the other technology areas noted by Iles, this too provides opportunities for partners, as does the prospect of training and other resources needed to assist organisations as they transition from a standard working environment to a home environment.

From the perspective of Keith Masterton, general manager of business channels at NBN Co, who also spoke during the panel discussion, one big area of opportunity for partners was the prospect of scaling down, not necessarily scaling up, when it comes to technology implementations.

“[There is an] opportunity to take solutions into SMBs [small- to medium-sized businesses], essentially, and almost, in some sense, to a market of one, when you’ve got home workers,” Masterton said. “How do you scale down, not just scale up? It’s easy to sell a solution to a 1000-person site, but how about 1000 people at 1000 sites? That’s a little bit more difficult.

“Obviously cloud comes into play, but I [think] that [is] one that we should really think about. In the industry, how do we scale these options for SMBs? Because now they want enterprise solutions, which really were not addressable earlier,” he added.

Along with further opportunities for partners in the areas of flexible and agile networking, Masterton also pointed to managed services as being a particular bright spot for partners going forward, as organisations work to manage and maintain the systems they have put in place to continue operating through the COVID-19-hit climate. 

“In terms of helping these customers, some of whom are not tech savvy....there’s a managed service opportunity and there’s a consulting opportunity to take them on the journey,” Masterton said. 

Meanwhile, RingCentral senior director and head of channels for Asia Pacific Ben Swanson, who joined Masterton and Harvey in the panel discussion, suggested that a fair chunk of the technology projects that were already in the pipeline among many enterprises have simply been rejigged to focus a little more on cloud communications, in turn offering up additional work in that particular area. 

“We certainly saw a state of panic and then huge demand up front, where we needed to get in place working environments to provide remote working capability,” Swanson said. “And it was about the continuation of business, but what was becoming evident...is that there’s a continuation of projects, which were already in the pipeline, and in actual fact, it’s a re-prioritisation to cloud communications. 

“And for a business that’s been on a digital transformation plan for this year and the next three years, it just got turned on its head to implement this type of solution in days and weeks. And that’s what we’re coming out of right now,” he added. 

At the same time, Swanson noted that individual lines of business within organisations are discovering a new appetite for solutions in the unified comms space, another factor opening up new areas of opportunity for partners. 

“Rather than looking at the verticals in the industries, [we're] seeing a huge demand from a line of business, which we’ve never seen in UC before,” Swanson said, pointing to the likes of the human resources and marketing departments, along with chief marketing officers.

These lines of business are putting new demands on their IT departments as they want to be more collaborative and move away from legacy environments, instead adopting newer tools within their business, according to Swanson.

“Because, as we’re all working remotely or with an increase of serviced offices, being able to collaborate is actually where it is driving the business where we have never seen it before,” he said, echoing Iles’ comments placing collaboration at the core of the future of work and reaffirming the rising need of unified communications now and in the coming years.