The global Unified Communication as a Service (UCaaS) market is projected to grow from $32.01 billion in 2023 to $85.77 billion by 2030, exhibiting a CAGR of 15.1 percent, according to a report published by Fortune Business Insights. A whole range of factors are responsible for the growth of this industry globally. Earlier, corporate calling was completely hardware-based but with the advent of high-speed global internet connectivity, and the forced WFH scenario due to the pandemic, Unified Communication as a Service has gained widespread acceptance. Today, businesses work with different solutions providers for different components of their enterprise communication requirements and to provide employees with seamless communication and collaboration platforms and experiences. However, on a global scale, complexity can arise due to vendor sprawl or not having the right partner in a particular geography. The right partner should not only provide the right kind of collaboration solution but also help clients in the journey to the cloud. It was Tata Communications who observed this gap in the industry and became the UCaaS partner of choice with their in-house expertise built on a foundation of voice and strategic OEM relationships. CIO Insider Magazine engaged in a discussion with Vivek Kar, AVP, Tata Communications in order to know more about the company and the kind of impact it is making in the unified communications sector.

What are the developments that have taken place in the Unified Communications sector globally over the past decade?
Communication and Collaboration have always been important for an organization. The pandemic has made us understand that employee experience is important and hybrid work has changed the way we collaborate and communicate. Earlier, this sector was dominated by hardware equipment manufacturers and OEMs like Cisco. During and post-COVID, there was a huge increase in the demand for cloud based collaboration and communication solutions. Companies like Microsoft and Zoom excelled because they could offer a complete range of user-friendly UCaaS capabilities. As a result, a major shift has taken place where we can now see offline calling has reduced drastically because corporations at large are mostly using platforms like Teams, Webex, and JAMVEE for calling or meeting purposes.

Give us an overview of Tata Communications and tell us about the

impact the company is trying to make in this segment.
Tata Communications was earlier Videsh Sanchar Nigam (VSNL), established in 1986. In 2008, we started our enterprise communication solutions and in 2011, we partnered with Microsoft and Cisco for UCaaS solutions, with the managed service layer under the Tata Communications GlobalRapide brand to help our clients migration to UCaaS seamlessly. We are an end-to-end managed service provider for UCaaS solutions, providing frictionless collaboration and communication at scale. We help our clients right from the point of assessment; we help them in migration, deployment, monitoring, and management of their entire collaboration and voice tech stack. In April 2023, we launched our own calling solution, Tata Communications JAMVEE, which is perfect for organizations looking to provide an affordable communication application for their frontline and roaming workforce. JAMVEE can be easily deployed and integrated with other business applications it gives organizations control over business operations while allowing employees to maintain dual personas - personal and business profiles separate. JAMVEE can be deployed on iOS, Android, on the desktop, and through WebRTC.

seamlessly. Many other service providers are MNOs and are restricted to their home countries. If you delve deeper, it can be observed that other international operators are mostly restricted to a specific country or region. We, at Tata Communications, have our presence in the Americas, 17+ countries in Europe and 11 countries in APAC, including India. We offer domestic services in India through our UL-VNO license and recently, were announced as a launch partner for Microsoft Operator Connect India.

Tata Communications provides end-to-end managed services to our clients, where we partner with our clients at every stage of their journey to UCaaS. We offer integrated SLAs across voice, collaboration platforms, and other touch points such as endpoint management for smart meeting rooms, cloud video interoperability, and third-party carrier management. We help our clients to simplify their UC estate on a daily basis.

Tata Communications’ fraud prevention as a service is embedded in our voice infrastructure. Our AI and ML capabilities can detect anomalies occurring on the cloud voice layer of Global Rapide. Alerts are promptly sent to customers in case of any such incidence, and proactive prevention is also taken care of. Our entire fraud protection system is a patented system which is a big differentiator for us in the market, and our customers rely on us to keep them secure and mitigate risks.

Compliance is crucial in the UCaaS space, and Tata Communications focuses on ensuring that our customers and we are compliant with regulations in the different countries in which we operate. Our international and domestic calling services always adhere to in-country telecom regulations. Our local legal counsel takes care of our domestic and international collaborations with operators. We have the expertise and experience of over three decades to stay compliant with local and global regulations when it comes to UCaaS.

What is the road ahead for the company? Where do you see Tata Communications in the years to come?
As our clients grow in their businesses, Tata Communications is their trusted partner through the evolution. Our solution stack, GlobalRapide, will continue to expand to address changing employee experience needs, in line with how the hybrid workspace transforms. We see our global coverage expanding to more geographies. BYOC (Bring your own carrier) relationships are growing – currently, we have partnered with Zoom, Google, and Genesys and this list will only expand in the future. Just like we introduced JAMVEE and strengthened our portfolio, we will be looking at further strategic growth in the collaboration platform and communications applications area. We use AI and ML in our products and will infuse them further in our roadmap, to ensure that we are connecting the workforce seamlessly in the hyperconnected ecosystem.