The IDC European Enterprise Communication and Collaboration Survey 2025 reveals increasing market segmentation in the UC space, as customers demand more choice and flexibility. This underlines the need for UC providers to evaluate their strategies and align more closely with evolving market trends. Below are the key findings from the European survey.
Businesses Demand Greater Choice and Flexibility
Most current UC offerings present binary, mutually exclusive choices that lock customers into a single platform. These options fail to address the full spectrum of business requirements, forcing organizations into trade-offs between critical capabilities such as transparency and control versus scalability and flexibility. As a result, many are unable to achieve their desired outcomes to the fullest extent.
A Resurgence of On-Premises Deployments
Cloud solutions provide scalability and eliminate upfront infrastructure costs, but some organizations are reverting to on-premises models to regain greater control and transparency over their IT environments. Regulatory constraints and geopolitical concerns — including the implications of the US Cloud Act — are driving this shift, particularly in sensitive verticals. However, this choice also involves trade-offs, with transparency and control being prioritized over flexibility. But it is not just reverting back to on-premises UCC – 60% across the board have stated that they will replace their existing solutions.
A New Era of Choice in Deployment Models
As customer demand for flexibility increases, the market is seeing greater segmentation and a shift away from traditional “either/or” approaches. Deployment models no longer need to be substitutes for one another. Instead, they can coexist, with each bringing unique, often irreplaceable value. Applications can now be decoupled from the underlying infrastructure, offering a wider range of hosting options across environments. This represents a market inflection point, where customers have more choice and flexibility to adopt solutions that best meet their needs.
Hybrid Deployments Are Becoming the Standard
Two-thirds of European businesses are already using multiple UC solutions across different deployment models to meet diverse requirements. While this hybrid approach enables organizations to capture the strengths of various models, it also introduces challenges — including higher maintenance costs, operational complexity, and integration issues. In the context of AI-driven automation, this creates opportunities for innovation to simplify hybrid environments and reduce complexity.
Strategic Implications for UC Providers
No single vendor can cover all requirements alone. A clear understanding of customer priorities, combined with close ecosystem collaboration, will be critical as the market continues to evolve. IDC’s European UCC research provides the insights needed to help providers align strategies with shifting customer needs.
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