UC Today

Most enterprises have deployed Microsoft Teams Rooms and the core meeting experience is working. But beyond the meeting room sits a much larger opportunity, lobbies, huddle spaces, event venues, open collaboration areas, and most organisations are managing those with a disconnected patchwork of point solutions that wasn't designed to scale.

Marcus Law sits down with Vic Bhagat, Senior Director of Alliances at Q-SYS, to explore what a genuinely high-performance workplace requires, what changes when you connect every space type through a unified platform, and what Microsoft's decision to build Experience Center One on Q-SYS tells us about where enterprise AV is heading.

If you're responsible for a Teams Rooms estate and thinking about what comes next, this is the conversation to start with.

In this UC Today interview, host Kieran Devlin speaks with Volker Pfirsching, Partner and Head of Innovation Management (Europe) at Arthur D. Little. Together, they unpack a hard truth many CIOs are now confronting: the biggest barrier to digital transformation isn’t access to technology—it’s the way IT is organized.

If you’re navigating AI adoption, cross-functional delivery, and growing pressure to show outcomes (not activity), this conversation is worth your time. Digital transformation is accelerating—but many enterprises are still structured for a slower era. Volker Pfirsching explains why traditional IT silos create more coordination overhead than value, and what CIOs can do to shift from “service provider” to orchestrator of outcomes across internal teams and external partners.

Key takeaways include:

How siloed IT creates friction through handovers, delays, and misaligned priorities in end-to-end digital journeys

What the hybrid network model looks like day-to-day, with business and IT fused into true product-centric teams

How leading CIOs balance autonomy with enterprise guardrails to avoid an “IT Wild West” (security, architecture, governance)

Why operating model change fails without culture change—and how to align incentives, roles, and leadership routines

Join Kieran Devlin, Host at UC Today, as he sits down with Tim Jalland, Solution Manager at VOSS, to unpack the rapid evolution of IT operations. As cloud environments like Microsoft 365 undergo hundreds of feature changes a year, static automation is struggling to keep pace. This session cuts through the AI hype to explore practical, outcome-driven solutions. Tune in to see exactly how intelligent automation fabrics can empower your IT team, prevent outages before users even notice them, and secure complex collaboration ecosystems.

The landscape of unified communications is shifting rapidly, and IT teams need more than just basic automation to keep up. In this conversation, we explore how an intelligent operations layer changes the day-to-day reality for IT professionals.

Key takeaways from our discussion include:

• The limits of traditional automation: Why the sheer volume of updates in platforms like Microsoft 365 requires a shift from static orchestration to dynamic, learning-capable operations.
• AI as an operational assistant: Moving past "AI as a feature" fatigue to focus on tangible outcomes, using agentic AI to proactively support IT teams rather than replace them.
• Breaking down IT silos: How unifying automation, analytics, and monitoring on a single platform allows for cross-stack intelligence—catching and correcting negative trends before monitoring dashboards even flash red.
• Real-world proactive fixes: Tangible examples of AI detecting service degradation before a user ticket is raised, and automatically correcting configuration drift to eliminate security risks.

Related Stories: 

•  The Intelligent Control Plane: Why Cloud UC and Microsoft 365 Operations Must Move From Automation to Autonomy
• Practical AI Use Cases to Transform Cloud UC and Microsoft 365 Operations

In this executive conversation, Marcus Law is joined by Dan Nadir, Chief Product Officer at Theta Lake, and Irwin Lazar, President and Principal Analyst at Metrigy, to explore how generative and agentic AI are creating entirely new categories of governance risk.

The discussion covers why monitoring isolated prompts and outputs is no longer enough, and why organizations need forensic-level analysis of interaction patterns over time. From behavioral drift and intent detection to the growing complexity of agentic AI, this conversation sets out what enterprises need to be thinking about — and doing — right now.

Topics Include:

• why only 58% of organizations have a proactive AI governance strategy
• how traditional DLP systems miss subtle data probing and intent-based risks
• what behavioral drift looks like in practice, how agentic AI blurs the line between human and machine accountability
• practical steps CIOs and CISOs can take in the next 60 to 90 days.

In this interview, Christopher Carey sits down with Snorre Kjesbu from Cisco to unpack AI’s real impact on the employee experience. Snorre makes the case that AI is an antidote to burnout, not a cause of it – freeing employees from busy work so they can focus on strategy, creativity, and the harder intellectual challenges.

He also introduces the concept of “connected intelligence,” where collaboration is no longer just people-to-people but now includes people-to-AI and AI-to-AI interactions. The conversation covers how organisations are navigating AI adoption across their workflows, why cultural change is often harder than the technology itself, and what the next two to three years will bring – from AI agents becoming regular participants in meetings to IT teams gaining new superpowers through agentic AI and smarter manageability tools.

Join UC Today’s Kieran Devlin as he sits down with Brad Hintze, Executive Vice President of Global Marketing, and Joel Mulpeter, Senior Director of Product Marketing at Crestron. While the tech industry is understandably captivated by cloud-based software like Copilot and Zoom AI Companion, this insightful conversation shifts the focus to the physical foundation that makes these tools actually work. If you want to understand why true AI scalability requires robust, purpose-built hardware and edge computing, this session is an absolute must-watch for IT and AV leaders.

In this engaging discussion, the Crestron team unpacks the reality of deploying AI across enterprise meeting spaces. They reveal why prioritizing purpose-built compute and intelligent audio over IP is the secret to avoiding the "garbage in, garbage out" trap of AI transcription and collaboration tools.

Key takeaways from our conversation include:

• The Shift to Edge AI: Why relying solely on the cloud is inefficient, and how integrating Neural Processing Units (NPUs) at the edge enhances security, reduces latency, and processes complex tasks like facial and voice recognition directly in the room.
• AI as the Installer: How Crestron leverages computer vision, auto-measure technology, and ArUco markers to drastically slash room commissioning time from hours to mere minutes, democratizing broadcast-quality video across the business.
• Solving the Audio Challenge: An inside look at Crestron's scalable audio-over-IP processor, designed to minimize "time to audio" and deliver the crystal-clear acoustics that AI transcription tools demand to function accurately.
• Future-Proofing for 2027: Strategic advice for IT leaders on standardizing room platforms and investing in hardware with enough compute headroom to support the rapidly evolving AI software landscape.

Join UC Today host Kieran Devlin as he sits down with William Rubio, Chief Revenue Officer at CallTower, and Elka Popova, Vice President and Senior Fellow at Frost & Sullivan. As AI features rapidly light up across communications platforms, internal IT governance models are struggling to keep pace. This insightful session dives into the hidden vulnerabilities of "shadow AI" and the messy reality of multi-vendor environments. If you're looking for a practical approach to standardizing policy, monitoring data usage, and holding vendors accountable without suffocating innovation, this conversation is essential viewing.

The rush to implement AI in Unified Communications (UC) and Contact Center (CCaaS) platforms is outpacing IT's ability to safely secure it. When different teams own different parts of a fragmented tech stack, compliance risks multiply, and traditional governance breaks down. William and Elka break down the real-world friction of enterprise AI adoption and share practical strategies for maintaining control.

Key takeaways from our discussion include:

• The Threat of Shadow AI: How personal use of unauthorized AI tools and a lack of specialized AI skillsets within IT departments are exposing organizations to hidden data vulnerabilities.
• Navigating Multi-Vendor Sprawl: Why a "one size fits all" approach fails, and how to maintain unified, proactive governance across complex hybrid environments featuring platforms like Microsoft, Cisco, and Genesys.
• Building a Culture of Compliance: Moving beyond the annual "check-the-box" mentality to create dynamic, ongoing security protocols that secure buy-in from business leaders across the organization.
• Vetting Your Vendors: The critical questions IT and CX buyers must ask during procurement regarding technology roadmaps, industry-specific expertise, and global data sovereignty.

In the first episode of the UC Today AI & Productivity Show, Marcus Law hosts a roundtable on what AI productivity looks like in the real world — what’s delivering value today, what’s still not landing, and what leaders should focus on next.

Marcus is joined by Tom Arbuthnot (Founder, Empowering.Cloud & Microsoft MVP), Mark Nixon (AI Business Solutions Go-To-Market Lead, Microsoft UK & Ireland), and Andreas Welsch (Founder & Chief AI Strategist, Intelligence Briefing).

The discussion covers:
🔵 What organisations are actually doing with AI productivity and automation right now
🔵 The Microsoft Copilot/M365 direction that matters (beyond the headlines)
🔵 AI agents: what’s real in enterprise, what’s still early, and what good governance looks like

For more Unified Communications & Collaboration Tech News visit https://www.uctoday.com/

In this UC Today interview, host Christopher Carey speaks with Loopio CEO Zak Hemraj about Loopio’s latest industry report on the impact of generative AI on the workforce - and one headline stands out: over 80% of teams are now using AI in their workflows, with more than half using it daily. Zak also highlights a surprise trend - financial services and banking, often viewed as cautious adopters, are among the most aggressive in embracing AI, driven in some cases by top-down executive mandates and structured governance.

The conversation explores why “capacity” has become the top challenge even as AI reduces time spent writing, how productivity gains can be offset by rising demand, what separates top performers in how they apply AI beyond first drafts, and what comes next as enterprises push toward agentic AI - alongside growing security and risk concerns.

Kristian McCann speaks with Ryan Holmes, Digital Workspace Solution Architect at New Era Technology, about how 3D visualization is helping enterprises plan AV refreshes with far more confidence than traditional 2D drawings.

Traditional 2D plans can look polished on paper, but they often miss the messy reality of how people actually use meeting rooms. Ryan explains how New Era Technology’s immersive 3D approach helps teams test room layouts, device placement, acoustics, lighting, and camera coverage before a single cable is installed.

Points of discussion include:

• See why 2D drawings can hide real-world issues like poor sight lines, weak mic pickup, and glare.
• Learn how immersive 3D and virtual reality make AV designs feel like a true-to-scale room clone.
• Discover how the platform helps IT, facilities, contractors, and users work from the same visual reference.
• Hear how visual-first planning can improve room adoption, reduce redesigns, and boost meeting quality.

If you are planning an AV refresh and want to get it right the first time New Era Technology.

For more Unified Communications & Collaboration Tech News visit UC Today.