Analyst Kevin Kieller of EnableUC has another stellar in-depth post on No Jitter, this time offering a deep dive on feature proliferation in UCaaS and CCaaS offerings. Noting that the vendors use ever-increasing feature counts as a key marketing message, Kevin points out that few if any enterprise users are set up (or inclined) to even keep track of newly-released features, let alone familiarize themselves with them, let alone actually use them.
Ironically, this is kind of an old problem in enterprise communications. PBX manufacturers were famous for touting their “500 features” or whatever the current benchmark number was. Then, as now, hardly anyone used more than a dozen or so of the available features. Then, when PBXs went from being hardware to software, vendor execs used to vow there would be new software releases every month or week or whatever, instead of twice a year – which anyone who knew IT pros heard as more of a threat than a promise.
You should definitely read Kevin’s article in full. He explores the way AI complicates today’s feature race, and how enterprises could end up unwittingly boosting their AI-based spend simply by trying to incorporate new features into agentic processes.
Maybe the most compelling point, however, is Kevin’s recognition that users, for the most part, hate new features, and always have, going back to the user experience burdens imposed by what we used to call “bloatware.” And I’d argue the challenge for IT is worse than ever, because the problem you’re forced to pass along to your users, in the form of unsolicited “improvements,” is one that these folks encounter literally all day long.
It’s not just the collaboration platform that’s constantly roiling with new features. It’s the apps on their phone; the portal where they do their banking; the sites where they order their dog food, plan their travel, stream movies, and everything else they use to deal with the outside world. Everyone’s constantly got an upgrade they want you to install, a new option for doing the same thing you’re used to doing, but 2 seconds faster (supposedly); just one quick question about your experience with the product; or, heinously, the un-X-out-able plea, “Do you love [our product]? YES / NO.”
AI is driving a new generation of Shadow IT, now being dubbed “Shadow AI.” It’s just as dangerous as the previous generations of unauthorized products, if not more so, since AI is still such a rapidly-evolving technology. But users don’t just bring their own devices and technologies to work; they bring their own experiences, and those experiences, at least as they relate to consumer technologies, are generally not positive.
That’s the frame of reference they bring to their interactions with the communications platforms IT provides them. IT leadership needs to keep this in mind as they deal with the very real user experience and technology management issues that Kevin Kieller’s article discusses.
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