ISG Research is happy to share insights gleaned from our latest Buyers Guide, an assessment of how well software providers’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements. The Collaborative AI Platforms and Suites: ISG Research Buyers Guide is the distillation of a year of market and product research by ISG Research.
Digital modernization through artificial intelligence (AI) is fundamentally transforming how
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
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. 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. 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.
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.
This research-based index evaluates the full business and information technology value of conversational ai platforms and suites software offerings. We encourage you to learn more about our Buyers Guide and its effectiveness as a provider selection and RFI/RFP tool.
We urge organizations to do a thorough job of evaluating conversational ai platforms and suites offerings in this Buyers Guide as both the results of our in-depth analysis of these software providers and as an evaluation methodology. The Buyers Guide can be used to evaluate existing suppliers, plus provides evaluation criteria for new projects. Using it can shorten the cycle time for an RFP and the definition of an RFI.
The Buyers Guide for Collaborative AI Platforms and Suites in 2025 finds Microsoft first on the list, followed by Zoom and RingCentral.
Software providers that rated in the top three of any category ﹘ including the product and customer experience dimensions ﹘ earn the designation of Leader.
The Leaders in Product Experience are:
The Leaders in Customer Experience are:
The Leaders across any of the seven categories are:
The overall performance chart provides a visual representation of how providers rate across product and customer experience. Software providers with products scoring higher in a weighted rating of the five product experience categories place farther to the right. The combination of ratings for the two customer experience categories determines their placement on the vertical axis. As a result, providers that place closer to the upper-right are “exemplary” and rated higher than those closer to the lower-left and identified as providers of “merit.” Software providers that excelled at customer experience over product experience have an “assurance” rating, and those excelling instead in product experience have an “innovative” rating.
Note that close provider scores should not be taken to imply that the packages evaluated are functionally identical or equally well-suited for use by every enterprise or process. Although there is a high degree of commonality in how organizations handle collaborative AI platforms and suites, there are many idiosyncrasies and differences that can make one provider’s offering a better fit than another.
ISG Research has made every effort to encompass in this Buyers Guide the overall product and customer experience from our collaborative AI platforms and suites blueprint, which we believe reflects what a well-crafted RFP should contain. Even so, there may be additional areas that affect which software provider and products best fit an enterprise’s particular requirements. Therefore, while this research is complete as it stands, utilizing it in your own organizational context is critical to ensure that products deliver the highest level of support for your projects.
You can find more details on our community as well as on our expertise in the research for this Buyers Guide.