By Michelle McKeown on January 26, 2018 in Blueface, Communications & VoIP, Events

On Wednesday Jan 24, Blueface welcomed an audience of over 150 CEOs, IT executives, and top technology thought leaders to the 2018 Business Communications Technology Report launch in Dublin’s Marker Hotel.

Jonathan McCrea – host of Newstalk’s Futureproof – MC’d the event and opened with warm introductions for our guests, our panelists and finished his opening by welcoming Brian Martin, SVP EMEA to the stage.

Brian briefly discussed the Blueface & Star2Star merger and how the consolidated company is now in the Top 5 UCaaS providers globally. With this in mind, Blueface can now offer robust international VoIP services with unrivalled reliability.

Joe Roche, BCT Report Author

Report author, Joe Roche then took to the stage to take us through high-level survey findings, trends and 2025 Predictions.

Key Findings

Report data revealed that while older communications practices such as faxing (45%) and voicemail (75%, astonishing!) are still regularly in use. Irish businesses have – for the most part – taken progressive steps forward in the utilisation of communications technology.

69% of companies have introduced a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policy into the workplace, allowing employees to use personal devices to access business materials.

78% of businesses now allow for a Remote Working strategy. This can be to retain, attract or grant flexibility to top talent. Fixed locations will continue for some time but we predict remote becoming the status quo.

• AI’s double-edged sword automates with the potential to eliminate job roles. This AI-surge has left 25% of people surveyed fearing automation.
• At 81%, meetings are the biggest drain on employees’ time was found to be meetings (conference calling, video and face-to-face).
• Voice communication is by far the most popular means of communications in business, with 65.5% preferring voice due to real-time conversation and easily communicable context.
• 57% of Large Enterprises have endured a phishing or hacking attack in 2017 alone. As organisations grow, so too do organisational complexities and vulnerabilities. New data protection legislation and advancements in securities should diminish this figure.

Panel

This presentation was followed by the panel discussion which included, TechIreland founder, Niamh Bushnell and SoapBox Labs Founder, Dr Patricia Scanlon who joined Blueface’s co-founder, Feargal Brady and Blueface & Star2Star Co-CTO, Nameer Kazzaz.

BCT 2018 Report Panel

The panel discussion was rangy from the future of network infrastructure, the state of telecoms and the philosophical concerns that surround AI.

Dr. Patricia Scanlon – who works closely with voice and artificial intelligence – was asked: “as a society, are we ready for AI to replace thousands of jobs?” Which led to an interesting discussion on innovation and job creation/elimination.

SoapBox Labs Founder, Dr Patricia Scanlon

Report Finding: 25% concerned their role will be automated.
Prediction 2025: Increased Public x Private Partnerships for Responsible Tech

Conclusion

As a follow up to our 2014 research, we were delighted to gain an understanding of how far the industry had come in the intervening.

Some of our findings – such as those about fax, landline telephony preferences, the devices we use and network infrastructure – are vastly different than our 2014 expectations.

This growth is punctuated by our business broadband which was majority 10MBps in 2014, ramping up to majority 50MBps with fibre rollout. The rate of innovation in the tech industry is supported by rapidly evolving infrastructure and Blueface could not be more excited.

An extra thank you to Jonathan McCrea for hosting, and to Niamh Bushnell and Dr Patricia Scanlon for sharing their expertise on the BCT Panel.

Download your copy of the BCT report here or watch a short video from the event here.