By now, you've learned the differences between the expectations and realities of external federation.
In this post, we'll take a look at what the state of external federation will be in a year's time.
Table of Contents:
Perhaps, it will even be a precursor to our next piece of independent research?
If you haven't already seen our Workplace Messaging Report for 2019, you can download it for free here. (This post will remain open so feel free to switch between tabs to compare the state of workplace messaging today and in a year's time).
We covered the full history of external federation in this post but we'll break it down for you here too - platform by platform.
Today, we know that 91% of businesses use at least 2 messaging apps internally.
Typically, the more employees per company, the more messaging apps in place.
Mio has been solving that issue for some time now. Internal messaging is solved with our full synchronization feature in our enterprise product.
When it comes to external communications, the experience is equally as fragmented.
Messaging should be conducted from one app. But the reality is we are drowning in apps.
As Dave Michels points out below, often up to 6 messaging apps are in use, not rolled out across all devices, and messages often get missed.
Here's a list of use cases our customers have asked us to replicate from our internal messaging interoperability product...
A major issue when defining the current state of external federation is the lack of it.
As mentioned three times in the above section, there is no way to natively chat to external contact across platform.
This means both parties often resort back to email - the very tool your team collaboration app was bought in to replace - and go back to previous and less productive ways of working.
Outside of email, it is not uncommon for niche groups or departments to break out and start using their own tool that is ungoverned by IT.
When I spoke with Chad Reese, IT Director at Pro Football Hall of Fame, he mentioned the challenge IT faces with shadow messaging.
"People didn’t know you could install Microsoft Teams on your phone. We saw the younger generation start using WhatsApp groups.”
Rather than letting your app count increase and increase, which is the current state of external federation, there must be a solution to remedy this mass collaboration chaos.
I could tell you what I hope will happen in a year's time. It would go along the lines of everybody will be using Mio with the team collaboration tools of their choice, triggering an exponential increase in productivity in external communications.
Instead, I reached out to analysts in the Unified Comms and Team Collaboration industry to hear what they had to say about the future of external federation...
Dom Black, Cavell Group
Dom Black, Head of Research at Cavell Group, mentioned consumer demand for federation and how it will force collaboration providers to start to work closer together.
He said that Cavell already sees this happening but it is not full federation and the services do not work seamlessly together.
Dom references the Cavell Group 2019 Enterprise Survey (sample: 1800, North America, EMEA) and points out one of the key improvements enterprises want is different collaboration tools integrated together.
"One collaboration tool does not solve all business needs. Multiple tools are used to communicate internally and externally - causing operational silos."
Dom Black, Head of Research at Cavell Group
Dom added that "Over 28% of organizations not using collaboration tools want to adopt within 2 years."
Concluding that huge growth is anticipated, Dom said: "Federation is likely but will be a gradual process with different services federating at different levels to start."
Irwin Lazar, Metrigy
Irwin Lazar, President and Principal Analyst at Metrigy, said we’ll see more federation option for two uses cases:
Irwin also added that he thinks there will be growth of cross-company focused services like CafeX and Avaya IX Spaces.
"The need to support cross-company collaboration will continue to grow."
Irwin Lazar, Nemertes Research
You, actually.
The simple answer to this is the disconnected experience you experience every day in intercompany collaboration.
I'll run through some examples and you might read one that reflects how you work...
Said it was you, didn't I?
Mio has created universal channels to enable external federation between Microsoft Teams, Slack, and Cisco Webex…
You can stay in Teams and send messages to your contractors, suppliers, or clients that use Slack or Webex (and vice versa).
They stay in their platform too and Mio translates the messages across platform.
And it’s not just messages that are supported! GIFs, emojis, channels, DMs, and message edits/deletes are all supported.
If this sounds like something you need, install your first universal channel free here.
From there, you can start benefiting from federation for your combination of Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Webex.
Read next: 7 Problems With External Federation And How You Can Fix Them