Executive Summary

Collaborative AI Platforms and Suites

Digital modernization through artificial intelligence (AI) is fundamentally transforming how enterprises collaborate and communicate—both internally among teams and externally with customers, partners and suppliers. Today’s collaborative platforms and suites enable seamless interaction across channels and devices, making business processes more efficient and cost-effective for globally distributed workforces. These applications have become essential infrastructure for organizations aiming to boost productivity, support hybrid work environments and foster meaningful connections regardless of physical location. The infusion of AI has redefined what is possible, ushering in a new generation of collaborative experiences that significantly enhance workforce productivity.

Today’s collaborative platforms and suites enable seamless interaction across channels and devices, making business processes more efficient and cost-effective for globally distributed workforces.

ISG Research defines collaborative AI platforms and suites as a comprehensive portfolio of sophisticated tools that unify the traditional capabilities of communications (voice, video, messaging), documents, email and meetings with AI-infused search, tasks, meetings and writing, along with virtual agents and digital assistants enhanced with conversational and agentic AI. These suites represent the highest tier of collaboration software, designed for enterprises with simple to complex needs and providing support for broader communication—from unstructured to structured interactions, combined with AI-powered experiences and comprehensive analytics. The suites should support broader work and productivity needs, including creating and managing any type of document, tracking interactions and following up on tasks. The market has shifted toward an experience-first approach, emphasizing seamless workflows over more features and a shift to AI-powered support for any work or team-related need.

Significant workspace convergence has been driven by the rapid consolidation of previously separate collaboration, communication and productivity tools into unified digital environments. Collaborative AI platforms and suites now offer deeper integration within communication platforms, which have become foundational infrastructure for AI-driven work. Over the past decade, these systems have evolved significantly merging formerly distinct unified communications as a service (UCaaS) and standalone collaboration tools into dynamic, cloud-based applications. Once siloed technologies have converged into integrated platform-as-a-service and software-as-a-service models, providing a robust, scalable infrastructure to meet the sophisticated needs of today’s enterprises.

Recent advancements in AI have shifted intelligence features from peripheral add-ons to a central focus of the user experience. New AI-powered collaboration assistants actively contribute to teamwork by summarizing conversations, suggesting next steps and automating routine tasks. Contextual collaboration systems intelligently surface the most relevant tools, content and contacts based on the user’s current task or project. Technological innovations have also introduced immersive communication capabilities such as spatial audio, virtual reality meeting spaces and digital twins, enabling more engaging remote collaboration.

Integrated support for webinars and training reduces the need for separate, specialized systems. Additionally, edge computing has improved global performance by reducing latency and enhancing audio and video quality through distributed processing. With the infusion of conversational and agentic AI, collaborative AI suites and platforms are rapidly evolving to deliver a new generation of automation and intelligence. Despite these advancements, many enterprises still operate with fragmented communication technologies. Through 2027, one-fifth of enterprises will employ agentic AI with collaboration and communications software to guide workers through workflows that will become intelligent and guide tasks to outcomes.

Enterprises with complex collaborative needs face significant challenges in managing interactions across distributed teams—spanning retail locations, corporate offices and remote environments. Many organizations rely on dozens of disconnected communication tools across departments, with minimal integration. This fragmentation leads to higher costs, increased security risks and administrative inefficiencies. As a result, it becomes difficult to deliver consistent collaboration experiences, enforce proper governance and effectively utilize communication data across the enterprise.

The shift to hybrid work has intensified communication challenges, demanding applications that function seamlessly across in-office and remote environments without compromising productivity or security. Meeting engagement equity has become a key priority, with a focus on ensuring balanced participation between in-person and remote attendees. Enterprises need scalable platforms that maintain high performance while complying with increasingly complex regulations—especially around data privacy, sovereignty and accessibility. New global compliance frameworks now govern international collaboration, emphasizing data residency and cross-border data transfer. At the same time, organizations must address stricter enforcement of digital accessibility standards and emerging AI governance requirements that impact how AI is used in communication and collaboration tools.

Successful collaborative AI suite software must offer advanced capabilities that go well beyond basic communication functions. At its core, it should be built on a sophisticated cloud platform that supports all communication modalities—integrating intelligent automation, workflow orchestration and comprehensive analytics across audio, text and video interactions. As security becomes more critical, the implementation of zero-trust architectures and context-aware security controls is essential. Additionally, the user experience must be seamless, allowing workers to transition effortlessly between devices and communication methods—including chat, collaboration and telephony—while ensuring consistent performance across both internal and external networks.

Workers should experience seamless transitions across devices and communication methods—from messaging and document collaboration to advanced video conferencing and telephony. Emerging composable workspace capabilities now enable enterprises to create tailored collaborative environments by assembling modular components from various applications into unified interfaces. Ambient collaboration systems, enhanced by environmental awareness and Internet of Things (IoT) integration, are improving meeting experiences across both physical and virtual spaces. To support these advancements, effective collaboration suites must include robust security measures such as role-based access control, encryption and integration with enterprise identity management systems. They must also comply with updated electronic communication retention policies to ensure collaborative content is preserved and protected.

Collaborative AI platforms and suites must offer robust administrative capabilities to support governance and management across complex organizational structures.

Collaborative AI platforms and suites must offer robust administrative capabilities to support governance and management across complex organizational structures. This includes granular policy controls for access, compliance and content management. With growing demands for consent management and personal data protection, enhanced privacy controls are now essential within communication tools. Archiving and storage applications should integrate seamlessly with enterprise information management systems and align with advanced consumption- and usage-based subscription and billing models. These platforms must also exceed standard accessibility requirements, including Section 508, Web Content Accessibility guidelines (WCAG), and European standards like EN 301 549. Deep integration with enterprise systems—such as contact centers, CRM platforms, marketing tools, sales systems, websites and customer experience software—is critical. Additionally, intelligent workflow automation must extend across multiple business systems and applications to drive efficiency and consistency at scale.

Analytics capabilities must extend beyond basic reporting to deliver conversational insights and interaction intelligence. Collaborative suites should include advanced speech and video analytics to capture usage patterns, sentiment and engagement levels. Monitoring tools need to provide comprehensive visibility into call quality, infrastructure performance and resource utilization. The integration of generative AI and large language models should further enhance communication experiences by enabling intelligent assistance, automated content creation and predictive insights that drive more effective collaboration.

Administration capabilities should support effective governance and management through configurable policies for access control, content management and compliance.

Administration capabilities should support effective governance and management through configurable policies for access control, content management and compliance. Integration capabilities must go beyond basic connections to enable deep embedding of communication and collaboration functions within business applications and workflows, with increasing integration between communication tools and broader employee experience platforms. Intelligence features powered by conversational and agentic AI should enhance user experiences through smart assistance, content generation, translation capabilities and contextual recommendations while adhering to emerging regulations on AI transparency and privacy.

Collaborative systems should fully leverage AI—spanning from generative to agentic AI—built on machine learning to deliver intuitive experiences across text, video and voice. This requires deep integration with enterprise knowledge bases, contextual understanding of conversations and intelligent workflows powered by rules and prompts. Successful collaborative suites should also include advanced digital experience features such as real-time translation, text-to-speech capabilities and intelligent notification prioritization. Meeting functionalities must support innovations like customizable avatars, participant consent mechanisms, dynamic polling, panel management and large-scale town hall support.

Depending on organizational needs, suites should offer appropriate capabilities for meeting management, webinar hosting, training administration and specialized communication functions such as contact center integration or broadcast messaging. Webinar and training support should include advanced features for event management, participant engagement and content delivery—covering registration systems, interactive presentation tools, comprehensive polling and surveys, detailed analytics and certification management. Collaborative suites should also provide comprehensive marketplace ecosystems with extensive partner networks, offering deep third-party integrations and specialized add-ons that enable enterprises to extend platform capabilities.

Enterprises should approach the selection of collaborative suites as a strategic investment that influences organizational effectiveness, customer experience and competitive advantage. This process begins with assessing the current communication landscape, identifying requirements beyond basic functionality and evaluating how advanced capabilities address specific business challenges. When choosing providers, enterprises should prioritize applications that deliver seamless user experiences across complex environments, offer sophisticated integration with business systems and provide robust security and compliance features.

When choosing providers, enterprises should prioritize applications that deliver seamless user experiences across complex environments.

IT and business leaders should work closely to develop comprehensive requirements that balance technical needs with business objectives, paying particular attention to user experience across different roles and work environments. During the evaluation, enterprises should consider factors such as integration capabilities with existing systems, security and compliance features, global performance, administrative efficiency and total cost of ownership. Buyers should also assess each provider’s approach to emerging demands, including AI governance compliance, data sovereignty controls and sustainable collaboration practices.

Enterprises should evaluate each provider’s AI innovation trajectory, focusing on advancements in ambient collaboration, composable workspaces and future industry-specific applications that will shape advances in collaborative work. By selecting the right platform and suite, organizations can build a digital workplace foundation that enhances productivity, simplifies management, improves user experiences and positions the enterprise for sustained success in an increasingly distributed business environment.

The Collaborative AI platforms and suites category research helps enterprises navigate the complex landscape of digital communication and collaboration technologies to identify applications that best align with organizational needs. This comprehensive research evaluates the full spectrum of offerings—from foundational communication platforms to AI-enabled collaboration suites—addressing essential and growing demands to deliver sophisticated capabilities for enterprises with complex requirements. Unlike evaluations that focus on individual components, this research specifically examines how these technologies work together to create unified digital workspaces that enhance productivity and engagement.

This research examines how software providers balance comprehensive functionality with usability, ensuring high adoption across diverse user groups while delivering the administrative controls required for enterprise deployment. It also assesses how applications address emerging needs such as contextual collaboration, AI-assisted teamwork and equitable hybrid meeting experiences. By evaluating providers against these evolving criteria, the research helps enterprise buyers determine which tier of software—platform, basic suite or advanced suite—best aligns with specific organizational requirements and complexity, enabling more strategic technology investments that deliver lasting value.

The ISG Buyers Guide™ for Collaborative AI Platforms and Suites evaluates software providers and products in key areas of communication platform and collaboration support with chat, meeting, phone, productivity suite with AI, analytics and insights, chat support, communication administration and integration, intelligence workflow and a marketplace for third-party applications. Critical for this software category is the use of conversational and agentic AI with key components of communication platforms. 

This research evaluates the following software providers offering products that address key elements of collaborative platforms and suites as we define them: 8x8, Cisco, GoTo, Microsoft, RingCentral, Zoho and Zoom.

Buyers Guide Overview

For over two decades, ISG Research has conducted market research in a spectrum of areas across business applications, tools and technologies. We have designed the Buyers Guide to provide a balanced perspective of software providers and products that is rooted in an understanding of the business requirements in any enterprise. Utilization of our research methodology and decades of experience enables our Buyers Guide to be an effective method to assess and select software providers and products. The findings of this research undertaking contribute to our comprehensive approach to rating software providers in a manner that is based on the assessments completed by an enterprise.

ISG Research has designed the Buyers Guide to provide a balanced perspective of software providers and products that is rooted in an understanding of business requirements in any enterprise.

The ISG Buyers Guide™ for Collaborative AI Platforms and Suites is the distillation of over a year of market and product research efforts. It is an assessment of how well software providers’ offerings address enterprises’ requirements for collaborative AI platforms and suites. The index is structured to support a request for information (RFI) that could be used in the request for proposal (RFP) process by incorporating all criteria needed to evaluate, select, utilize and maintain relationships with software providers. An effective product and customer experience with a provider can ensure the best long-term relationship and value achieved from a resource and financial investment.

In this Buyers Guide, ISG Research evaluates the software in seven key categories that are weighted to reflect buyers’ needs based on our expertise and research. Five are product-experience related: Adaptability, Capability, Manageability, Reliability, and Usability. In addition, we consider two customer-experience categories: Validation, and Total Cost of Ownership/Return on Investment (TCO/ROI). To assess functionality, one of the components of Capability, we applied the ISG Research Value Index methodology and blueprint, which links the personas and processes for collaborative AI platforms and suites to an enterprise’s requirements.

The structure of the research reflects our understanding that the effective evaluation of software providers and products involves far more than just examining product features, potential revenue or customers generated from a provider’s marketing and sales efforts. We believe it is important to take a comprehensive, research-based approach, since making the wrong choice of collaborative AI technology can raise the total cost of ownership, lower the return on investment and hamper an enterprise’s ability to reach its full performance potential. In addition, this approach can reduce the project’s development and deployment time and eliminate the risk of relying on a short list of software providers that does not represent a best fit for your enterprise.

ISG Research believes that an objective review of software providers and products is a critical business strategy for the adoption and implementation of collaborative AI platforms and suites. An enterprise’s review should include a thorough analysis of both what is possible and what is relevant. We urge enterprises to do a thorough job of evaluating collaborative AI systems and tools and offer this Buyers Guide as both the results of our in-depth analysis of these providers and as an evaluation methodology.

Key Takeaways

Collaborative AI platforms and suites are redefining enterprise communication by unifying voice, video, messaging and productivity tools with AI-driven features like generative assistants and intelligent workflows. Designed for hybrid and distributed work, these platforms integrate deeply with business systems while meeting rising demands for security, compliance and accessibility. As siloed tools converge into seamless digital workspaces, enterprises should evaluate those with efficient, adaptive and AI-powered collaboration.

Software Provider Summary

The research reveals that, while all collaborative AI platforms and suites are feature-rich, their value varies depending on enterprise needs. An excess of capabilities can introduce complexity, and TCO considerations often sway decisions more than feature breadth alone. Microsoft, Zoom, RingCentral and Zoho were rated as Exemplary providers, with Microsoft leading in seven categories. Cisco was classified as Innovative for strong Product Experience, 8x8 as Assurance for Customer Experience and GoTo as Merit, reflecting areas for growth. Close placement does not imply functional parity, emphasizing the need to evaluate closely.

Product Experience Insights

Product Experience carried the greatest weight in the assessment (80%), emphasizing Capability, Usability, Reliability, Manageability and Adaptability. Microsoft, Zoom and RingCentral stood out as Leaders in Product Experience, supported by robust functionality across AI-enhanced collaboration, platform scalability and security. Microsoft, Zoom and Zoho were tops in Adaptability, while Capability leadership came from Microsoft, Cisco and RingCentral. Manageability and Reliability saw Microsoft, Zoho and Zoom in leading positions, and Usability was driven by strengths from Zoom, 8x8 and Microsoft. Providers integrating AI and investing in configurability, security and licensing flexibility were rated highest.

Customer Experience Value

Customer Experience accounted for 20% of the overall rating, emphasizing Validation and TCO/ROI. Zoom, RingCentral and Zoho emerged as Leaders in this category, reflecting strong customer commitment, clear value communication and lifecycle support. Microsoft also performed well, though just outside the Leader threshold. Successful providers demonstrated clarity in onboarding, references and roadmaps, while others lacked depth in communicating a customer engagement approach. TCO/ROI leadership from Zoom, RingCentral and Microsoft showed the ability to help justify investments and align costs with long-term value.

Strategic Recommendations

Enterprises should view collaborative AI platform selection as a strategic decision—balancing technical capability, productivity gains and long-term value. Applications must support hybrid work, enable seamless collaboration and meet rising demands for compliance, accessibility and AI governance. Buyers are advised to assess integration depth and support for diverse roles, ensuring platforms can scale securely across environments. Evaluating innovation in conversational and agentic AI, along with adaptability to change, is key for sustainable value.

How To Use This Buyers Guide

Evaluating Software Providers: The Process

We recommend using the Buyers Guide to assess and evaluate new or existing software providers for your enterprise. The market research can be used as an evaluation framework to establish a formal request for information from providers on products and customer experience and will shorten the cycle time when creating an RFI. The steps listed below provide a process that can facilitate best possible outcomes.

1. Define the business case and goals.
   Define the mission and business case for investment and the expected outcomes from your organizational and technology efforts. 
2. Specify the business needs.
Defining the business requirements helps identify what specific capabilities are required with respect to people, processes, information and technology.
3. Assess the required roles and responsibilities.
Identify the individuals required for success at every level of the organization from executives to front line workers and determine the needs of each. 
4. Outline the project’s critical path.
What needs to be done, in what order and who will do it? This outline should make clear the prior dependencies at each step of the project plan. 
5. Ascertain the technology approach.
Determine the business and technology approach that most closely aligns to your organization’s requirements. 
6. Establish technology vendor evaluation criteria.
Utilize the product experience: Adaptability, Capability, Manageability, Reliability and Usability, and the customer experience in TCO/ROI and Validation. 
7. Evaluate and select the technology properly.
Weight the categories in the technology evaluation criteria to reflect your organization’s priorities to determine the short list of vendors and products.
8. Establish the business initiative team to start the project.
Identify who will lead the project and the members of the team needed to plan and execute it with timelines, priorities and resources. 
   
   

The Findings

All of the products we evaluated are feature-rich, but not all the capabilities offered by a software provider are equally valuable to types of workers or support everything needed to manage products on a continuous basis. Moreover, the existence of too many capabilities may be a negative factor for an enterprise if it introduces unnecessary complexity. Nonetheless, you may decide that a larger number of features in the product is a plus, especially if some of them match your enterprise’s established practices or support an initiative that is driving the purchase of new software.

Factors beyond features and functions or software provider assessments may become a deciding factor. For example, an enterprise may face budget constraints such that the TCO evaluation can tip the balance to one provider or another. This is where the Value Index methodology and the appropriate category weighting can be applied to determine the best fit of software providers and products to your specific needs.

Overall Scoring of Software Providers Across Categories

The research finds Microsoft atop the list, followed by Zoom and RingCentral. Providers that place in the top three of a category earn the designation of Leader. Microsoft has done so in seven categories; RingCentral, Zoho and Zoom in four; and 8x8 and Cisco in one category.

The overall representation of the research below places the rating of the Product Experience and Customer Experience on the x and y axes, respectively, to provide a visual representation and classification of the software providers. Those providers whose Product Experience have a higher weighted performance to the axis in aggregate of the five product categories place farther to the right, while the performance and weighting for the two Customer Experience categories determines placement on the vertical axis. In short, software providers that place closer to the upper-right on this chart performed better than those closer to the lower-left.

The research places software providers into one of four overall categories: Assurance, Exemplary, Merit or Innovative. This representation classifies providers’ overall weighted performance.

Exemplary: The categorization and placement of software providers in Exemplary (upper right) represent those that performed the best in meeting the overall Product and Customer Experience requirements. The providers rated Exemplary are: Microsoft, RingCentral, Zoho and Zoom.

Innovative: The categorization and placement of software providers in Innovative (lower right) represent those that performed the best in meeting the overall Product Experience requirements but did not achieve the highest levels of requirements in Customer Experience. The provider rated Innovative is: Cisco.

Assurance: The categorization and placement of software providers in Assurance (upper left) represent those that achieved the highest levels in the overall Customer Experience requirements but did not achieve the highest levels of Product Experience. The provider rated Assurance is: 8x8.

Merit: The categorization of software providers in Merit (lower left) represents those that did not surpass the thresholds for the Assurance, Exemplary or Innovative categories in Customer or Product Experience. The provider rated Merit is: GoTo.

We warn that close provider placement proximity should not be taken to imply that the packages evaluated are functionally identical or equally well suited for use by every enterprise or for a specific process. Although there is a high degree of commonality in how enterprises handle collaborative AI as a platform and suite of tools, there are many idiosyncrasies and differences in how they do these functions that can make one software provider’s offering a better fit than another’s for a particular enterprise’s needs.

We advise enterprises to assess and evaluate software providers based on organizational requirements and use this research as a supplement to internal evaluation of a provider and products.

Product Experience

The process of researching products to address an enterprise’s needs should be comprehensive. Our Value Index methodology examines Product Experience and how it aligns with an enterprise’s life cycle of onboarding, configuration, operations, usage and maintenance. Too often, software providers are not evaluated for the entirety of the product; instead, they are evaluated on market execution and vision of the future, which are flawed since they do not represent an enterprise’s requirements but how the provider operates. As more software providers orient to a complete product experience, evaluations will be more robust.

The research results in Product Experience are ranked at 80%, or four-fifths, of the overall rating using the specific underlying weighted category performance. Importance was placed on the categories as follows: Usability (15%), Capability (25%), Reliability (15%), Adaptability (10%) and Manageability (15%). This weighting impacted the resulting overall ratings in this research. Microsoft, Zoom and RingCentral were designated Product Experience Leaders.

Customer Experience

The importance of a customer relationship with a software provider is essential to the actual success of the products and technology. The advancement of the Customer Experience and the entire life cycle an enterprise has with its software provider is critical for ensuring satisfaction in working with that provider. Technology providers that have chief customer officers are more likely to have greater investments in the customer relationship and focus more on their success. These leaders also need to take responsibility for ensuring this commitment is made abundantly clear on the website and in the buying process and customer journey.

The research results in Customer Experience are ranked at 20%, or one-fifth, using the specific underlying weighted category performance as it relates to the framework of commitment and value to the software provider-customer relationship. The two evaluation categories are Validation (10%) and TCO/ROI (10%), which are weighted to represent their importance to the overall research.

The software providers that evaluated the highest overall in the aggregated and weighted Customer Experience categories are Zoom, RingCentral and Zoho. These category leaders best communicate commitment and dedication to customer needs. While not a Leader, Microsoft was also found to meet a broad range of enterprise customer experience requirements.

Software providers that did not perform well in this category were unable to provide sufficient information on their website on their customer experience and the leadership supporting it and why it is a world class approach and valuable for customers. The selection of a software provider means a continuous investment by the enterprise, so a holistic evaluation must include examination of how software providers support their customer experience.

Appendix: Software Provider Inclusion

For inclusion in the ISG Buyers Guide™ for Collaborative AI Platforms and Suites in 2025, a software provider must be in good standing financially and ethically, have at least $225 million in annual or projected revenue verified using independent sources, sell products and provide support on at least two continents and have at least 100 customers. The principal source of the relevant business unit’s revenue must be software-related, and there must have been at least one major software release in the past 12 months.

The ISG Buyers Guide™ for Collaborative AI Platforms and Suites requires software providers and products to have a collaborative and communication platform and support chat, meeting, phone, productivity suite with AI, analytics and insights, communication administration and integration.

The research is designed to be independent of the specifics of software provider packaging and pricing. To represent the real-world environment in which businesses operate, we include providers that offer suites or packages of products that may include relevant individual modules or applications. If a software provider is actively marketing, selling and developing a product for the general market and it is reflected on the provider’s website that the product is within the scope of the research, that provider is automatically evaluated for inclusion.

All software providers that offer relevant collaborative AI platforms and suites and meet the inclusion requirements were invited to participate in the evaluation process at no cost to them.

Software providers that meet our inclusion criteria but did not completely participate in our Buyers Guide were assessed solely on publicly available information. As this could have a significant impact on classification and ratings, we recommend additional scrutiny when evaluating those providers.

Products Evaluated

Providers of Promise

We did not include software providers that, as a result of our research and analysis, did not satisfy the criteria for inclusion in this Buyers Guide. These are listed below as “Providers of Promise.”