The surge in remote workers thrust UCaaS and features such as videoconferencing into the spotlight. “As a result of what’s going on with the coronavirus and the global pandemic, cloud communication is in the spotlight because it makes it so much easier for businesses to be able to work and collaborate remotely,” added Pleasant. “We’ve seen videoconferencing skyrocket.” In fact, although most people believe lockdowns are drawing to a close, experiences brought about by the pandemic will cause attitudinal changes about how we live and how we work. “I think what we’re going through is going to have long-term ramifications on how we think about re- mote work,” said Dan O’Connell, Chief Strategy Officer at Dialpad, a San Francisco-based cloud service provider. “There’s a renewed emphasis on messaging, and people are just trying to find easier ways to communicate since people are not likely to be in the office. So, leveraging video chat and texting across the various platforms will remain more commonplace than has been true in the past. As shown on page 17, interest in UCaaS prior to “What we’re going through the emergence of Coronavirus/Covid-19 al- is going to have long-term ready was strong but accelerated rapidly as the ramifications on how we pandemic forced office closures and a stronger emphasis on working from home. think about remote work.” Video, Collaboration and Digital Transformation “In the past you would see large enterprises consider UCaaS when they had what we call ‘a burning platform’ – something they needed to step away from because of things like cost or age,” said Jed Brown, Senior Vice President of Product and Design at Boston-based Fuze, a cloud communica- tions and collaboration company. “But what we are seeing now is more about digital transformation change-management – how to help your employees communicate better. I believe now we’re seeing not just heads of IT, but also HR and sales begin to think about how communications across the com- pany can start to transform.” Over the years, the corporate approach to technology has evolved, brought about in no small mea- sure by increased faith in the products and services, combined with a need to continually increase efficiency to fuel the bottom line. This includes leveraging technology for corporate collaboration among human beings (or even machines), as well as all things generally categorized under “digital transformation,” which can typically be described as an increased use and dependence on cloud ser- vices, including UCaaS “Unified communications had been progressing for quite a while,” said Pleasant. “Then came team collaboration. When UCaaS first came onto the scene, it was used by small businesses and maybe a handful of medium-sized businesses. These days, everybody is talking about [UCaaS] or cloud-based communications, and there’s not one discussion I have with companies that does not include UCaaS and cloud communications.” 18 Copyright © 2020 AVANT Communications, Inc.