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 Suites: ISG Research Buyers Guide is the distillation of a year of market and product research by ISG Research.
The necessity for collaboration across the enterprise has evolved dramatically, modernizing
ISG Research defines collaborative AI suites as a comprehensive portfolio of sophisticated tools that integrate traditional communication methods (voice, video, messaging), documents, email and meetings with AI-infused capabilities for search, tasks, writing, meetings, virtual agents and digital assistants. These suites are designed for enterprises with simple to more complex needs, supporting a wide range of communications—from unstructured to structured interactions—while providing AI-powered experiences and comprehensive analytics. Essential capabilities that support broader work and productivity needs include creating and managing documents, tracking interactions and following up on tasks. The market has shifted toward an experience-first approach, emphasizing seamless workflows over feature sets and prioritizing AI-powered support for all work- and team-related needs.
The evolution of collaborative capabilities can be traced through the development of unified communications software over the past decade. The technology industry has focused on creating sophisticated platforms that support unified communication as a service (UCaaS), alongside deeply integrated collaboration tools and embedded communication among all business systems and stakeholders. This integration combines traditional unified communication experiences across departments, locations and devices while also providing the governance, security and management capabilities necessary for enterprise-scale deployments.
Recent technological advances have introduced immersive communication capabilities that enhance remote collaboration, including spatial audio, virtual reality meeting spaces and digital twin technology. The integration of edge computing has improved performance through distributed processing for video and audio streams, reducing latency and
Enterprises with complex collaborative needs struggle to manage interactions among distributed teams across retail locations, corporate offices and remote work environments. Many operate dozens of disconnected communication tools across departments with minimal integration, leading to unnecessary costs, security vulnerabilities and administrative inefficiencies. This fragmentation hinders the ability to maintain consistent collaborative experiences, ensure proper governance and effectively leverage communication data across the enterprise.
Enterprises require collaborative software that integrates with existing business applications and offers advanced capabilities for specialized use cases. The market has shifted decisively toward a hybrid-first design, focusing on creating applications specifically for hybrid work environments rather than simply retrofitting remote capabilities. Collaborative AI suites must support these sophisticated hybrid work models by providing seamless experiences across all devices and communication channels.
Today’s enterprises need platforms that scale globally while ensuring consistent performance and compliance with complex data sovereignty and cross-border transfer regulations. Also critical are applications that leverage generative artificial intelligence for purposes beyond basic assistance, such as content creation, meeting summaries and contextual recommendations. These systems must strike a balance between functionality and intuitive interfaces to encourage adoption among both technical and non-technical users while also meeting new demands for transparency and accountability in AI-powered communication features.
Successful collaborative AI suite software must offer extensive capabilities beyond basic functions. It should be built on a sophisticated cloud platform that supports all communication modalities through intelligent automation and workflows, with comprehensive analytics that provide insights across audio, text and video interactions. Implementing zero-trust architecture and context-aware security controls is increasingly essential for communications security. Additionally, workers should experience seamless transitions between devices and communication methods, including chat, collaboration and telephony features that function consistently across internal and external networks.
Collaborative AI suites must provide robust administration capabilities for governance and management, catering to complex organizational structures with detailed policies for access, compliance and content management. Enhanced privacy controls have emerged in response to stricter consent management and personal data protection requirements. Archiving and storage applications should integrate seamlessly with enterprise information management systems while utilizing advanced consumption and usage-based subscription and billing models. Additionally, these platforms must surpass standard accessibility requirements, including Section 508, Web Content Accessibility guidelines (WCAG), and European standards like EN 301 549. Moreover, their integration capabilities should foster deep connections with enterprise applications, including contact centers, CRM systems, marketing platforms, sales tools, websites and customer experience applications.
Importantly, 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 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.
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.
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 together to establish detailed requirements based on specific use cases and strategic objectives. During the evaluation, enterprises need to assess customization capabilities, integration flexibility, global deployment support and long-term platform evolution. Additionally, buyers should consider each provider's innovation trajectory, particularly regarding artificial intelligence capabilities, immersive collaboration technologies, workflow automation and compliance with emerging AI regulations and cross-border data governance. By selecting the right collaborative AI suite, enterprises can create a robust communication foundation that enhances collaboration, streamlines processes, improves experiences and positions the organization for ongoing innovation and adaptation to evolving business needs.
The Collaborative AI Suites category research is a specialized evaluation focused on the most advanced collaborative and communication technologies for enterprises with complex requirements. This research emphasizes suites that offer extensive capabilities beyond basic collaboration functions. It addresses the unique needs of enterprises seeking seamless collaborative experiences across distributed teams, sophisticated integration with business processes and advanced features for specialized use cases.
This research aids enterprises in identifying software that offers comprehensive functionality for complex collaborative scenarios, including global deployments, regulated industries and those with unique security or compliance requirements. By evaluating providers against detailed criteria, the research helps enterprises find technologies that meet the most challenging collaborative needs while allowing flexibility to adapt to evolving business requirements. It recognizes that while many enterprises' collaborative AI needs are still evolving, those with complex requirements often need more foundational platform support, sophisticated functionality, robust integration and comprehensive management capabilities.
The ISG Buyers Guide™ for Collaborative AI Suites evaluates software providers and products in key areas of 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.
This research evaluates the following software providers offering products that address key elements of advanced communication suites as we define them: 8x8, Avaya, Cisco, Dialpad, Google, GoTo, HCLSoftware, Microsoft, RingCentral, Salesforce, Zoho and Zoom.
This research-based index evaluates the full business and information technology value of collaborative AI 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 collaborative AI 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 Suites in 2025 finds Microsoft first on the list, followed by Google and Zoom.
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 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 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.