Where work happens, and increasingly where AI does too.
Unified communications is calling, meetings, messaging and the spaces people work in, on one platform or several. It now includes the meeting rooms, the devices, the AI that sits in every meeting, and the work of making platforms talk to each other.
Collaboration platforms became the place work happens: chat, meetings, calling, files and now AI assistants that summarise, draft and act. For IT that means owning an estate that spans software, rooms, devices, identity, security and the networks that carry all of it.
Few organisations run a single platform. Acquisitions, regional choices and specialist needs leave most with two or three, so interoperability, governance and a consistent experience across them have become the real engineering challenges.
Then and now
If your picture of UC is a few years old, this is what moved.
| It used to mean | It now means | |
|---|---|---|
| Meetings | A dial-in number and a speakerphone | Video-first meetings with AI notes, actions and translation |
| Meeting spaces | One vendor's kit in each space | Rooms that join any major platform, managed centrally |
| Assistants | None | AI companions and agents in every meeting and chat |
| The estate | One standard platform, in theory | Several platforms, kept working together |
| Who uses it | Office staff at desks | Hybrid, mobile and frontline workers on the same platform |
The landscape
Teams, Zoom, Webex, Google Workspace and the rest: deployment, governance, licensing, and getting value from what is already paid for.
The physical side of hybrid work: room systems, cameras, audio, displays, and the management tools that keep hundreds of spaces working.
AI companions and agents that take notes, summarise, follow up, translate, and increasingly act for the people in the meeting.
Making platforms, rooms and devices work across vendors, from joining another company's meeting to running a mixed estate after a merger.
Telephony delivered within the collaboration platform, joined up with voice, contact centre and mobile.
Bringing staff who do not sit at desks into the same communications: shift workers, field teams, retail and healthcare.
Protecting conversations, files and AI output: retention, eDiscovery, information protection, and the risks of assistants that can see everything.
Measuring whether people can actually use what was rolled out, and fixing the network, device and training gaps when they cannot.
What is emerging
The developments the UC programme is built around, and the ones every exhibitor will be asked about.
AI moving from taking notes to taking part: following up actions, coordinating workflows and working with other AI agents.
Room systems able to run more than one major platform, easing the pressure to standardise every space on one vendor.
With AI assistants working across platforms, the vendors that connect well with others may matter more than the ones trying to own everything.
Assistants with wide access to email, files and meetings forcing new controls on what they can see and share.
Organisations asking hard questions about what AI add-on licences deliver before giving them to everyone.
Collaboration tools designed for people without desks, rather than desktop tools squeezed onto a phone.
UC sessions
Every PACKETLOSS session is Level 200 to 400. These show the depth, not the final programme, which members help shape.
Who should come
For the people who run the platforms, spaces and devices everyone else works on.
For exhibitors
Visitors to the UC zone manage real estates: platforms, rooms, devices and the users in between. They want to see how your product behaves in a mixed, multi-vendor environment, not in a showroom built around one platform.
What works: live demonstrations, technical people on the stand, and a straight answer about which platforms you work with. Nothing at PACKETLOSS is Level 100, and that includes the stands.
The other disciplines
The phone system moved to the cloud. The job got bigger.
Explore →From answering contacts to resolving customers.
Explore →Software that listens, speaks, sees and understands.
Explore →Communications as building blocks.
Explore →PACKETLOSS 2028 · UC
Two days. Every platform. No beginner content.
Register your interest, put a session forward for the UC programme, or ask about exhibiting.
The next PACKETLOSS is in 2028. The date, venue and exhibitor packages are announced once confirmed.