The 10 Hottest Collaboration Tools Of 2023 (So Far)

The leading collaboration and videoconferencing leaders have begun injecting generative AI into their offerings. Meanwhile, CCaaS is rising in importance as vendors realize it just makes sense for businesses to have one robust experience platform for their communications needs.

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

8x8 XCaaS

UCaaS provider 8x8’s Experience Communications as a Service (XCaaS) offering is a single-vendor UCaaS and CCaaS platform that supports business voice, video, chat, and AI-powered contact center functions to achieve “one platform, one experience,” according to the Campbell, Calif.-based company. The platform also lets companies embed communications into any process, app, or website.

8x8’s XCaaS platform today has more than 2 million users and the company counts the likes of McDonald’s and the Kansas City Royals as customers.

Avaya Experience Platform

The omnichannel public cloud-based Avaya Experience Platform (AXP) — the company’s flagship collaboration and customer experience offering — is a Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) and collaboration platform that allows customers and partners to add on new communication features as they go to create their own unique solution. AXP includes voice and call routing, AI-based speech analytics and noise removal, video, chat, and messaging features.

Avaya refers to AXP as the “North Star” of its blossoming cloud communications strategy.

Cisco Webex Go

Webex Go, the company’s mobile option for enterprise-grade business calling, gives users a dedicated business line baked into their personal mobile phone’s native dialer so there is no longer any need to carry two mobile devices for personal and business use. At the same time, the mobile communications service ensures that all mobile phones become a secure and compliant endpoint. For administrators, Webex Go enables easily provisioning and management in Webex Control Hub with features such as call recording and call analytics.

In June, Cisco joined forces with AT&T to natively integrate Webex Calling with the carrier giant’s mobile network to shift more users to the cloud for their voice needs. AT&T and Cisco are also working together to bring SD-WAN connectivity with add-on carrier services such as 5G and broadband for businesses of all sizes, Cisco told CRN last month.

DTEN D7X Interactive Whiteboard Display

The DTEN D7X interactive whiteboard is a product that can easily transforms every meeting room into an engaging, modern workspace, according to the company.

The D7X, available in both a Windows and Android Edition in 55” and 75” inch displays, is packed with AI and enhanced compute capabilities in addition to speakers, camera, microphones and touch functionality. Users can bring their own devices and simply connect their laptop via a single USB-C charging cable to join a meeting.

D7X is a certified solution for Zoom Rooms and Microsoft Teams.

Google Workspace

Google Workspace suite, formerly known as G Suite, is the company’s portfolio of productivity and collaboration tools. Google Workspace includes access to popular tools such as Gmail, Calendar, Meet, Chat, Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides, Forms, Sites and more.

Google Cloud in March revealed that it was injecting generative AI capabilities into Google Workspace, beginning with Gmail and Docs. Google said generative AI will be baked into other Workspace products including Meet, Chat, Slides and Sheets throughout the year.

Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams has enjoyed its dominance in the collaboration space with its popular platform that offers document storage, chat and online meetings. Teams integrates with Office 365 applications that get used every day by many business users, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, SharePoint and Outlook.

On the AI front, Microsoft in April rolled out automated reminder emails to help drive attendance for webinars in Teams Premium. The Premium version also has gained speaker timeline markers, AI-generated notes and AI-generated tasks and action items. Teams Premium, according to the Redmond, Wash.-based company, uses the generative pre-trained transformer, or GPT language model that powers popular AI offerings from OpenAI, including ChatGPT and Dall-E. Microsoft is an investor in OpenAI.

Poly Studio X Series Video Bars

Poly, part of HP Inc., has been on a mission to improve the hybrid collaboration experience for end users. Poly’s Studio X series of video bars lets users connect easily in huddle spaces and conference rooms using whatever video collaboration software they use. The video bars provide boardroom quality audio, advanced camera capabilities, and wireless content sharing, Poly said.

The company in March revealed that its Android-based Studio X suite of video bars are now certified for Google Meet. The Poly Studio X70 video bar for large conference spaces and boardrooms now certified for Microsoft Teams. The company’s latest version of its operating system, Poly Video OS 4.0, is now available on the Studio X series and G7500 video conferencing kits for medium-sized spaces to give users higher quality software and video experiences, according to the company.

RingCentral RingSense For Sales

UCaaS specialist RingCentral in March revealed RingSense, a platform that uses generative AI which the company said brings conversation intelligence to business communications and collaboration. RingSense for Sales, the first offering in the RingSense AI portfolio, analyzes interactions among salespeople and their prospects to pull out insights and performance measures, which RingCentral said helps salespeople increase their efficiency and close deals faster. It can also help them train and mentor their teams.

RingSense for Sales provides interaction summaries, notes, and follow-ups that can be automatically loaded into a CRM or productivity tool, interaction-level scoring and reporting, as well as integrations with third party applications, including CRM tools like Salesforce, Hubspot, and Zoho; calendar applications such as Google Calendar and Microsoft Outlook and call and video meeting providers, according to the Belmont, Calif.-based company.

Vonage Meetings and Meetings API

Vonage Meetings is the business telecom provider’s complimentary video conference service that’s available for both scheduled and instant meetings. Vonage Meetings is available on Windows and Mac via the Vonage Desktop app and/or iOS and Android devices through the Vonage Business Communications (VBC) Mobile app.

The Holmdel, N.J.-based company in March unveiled Vonage Meetings API, a no-code, embeddable video conferencing offering that lets businesses create customizable video conferencing capabilities to any website or platform to enhance end user interactions, no development expertise required. Vonage said that Meetings API’s no-code design lets enterprises enhance their existing applications with embedded, configurable and customizable video that can also improve internal collaboration.

Test123

Zoom Phone

Zoom Video Communications’ cloud-based voice offering, Zoom Phone, was first introduced in 2019 and has taken off as a popular option for businesses around the globe. The offering provides unlimited domestic calls, SMS messaging, voicemail transcription, call recording, and integrations with third-party applications. The videoconferencing giant in March announced that Zoom Phone had climbed to more than 5.5 million seats and is in 47 countries.

Zoom in 2022 announced that reseller partners would be able to sell Zoom Phone, following the success that the offering saw through the master and sub agent channel.