So you’ve future-proofed your contact center and cloud unified communications. Then the future arrived ahead of schedule and rewrote telephony requirements—again.
As the pace of tech speeds up and customers skyrocket their standards, it’s worth asking whether your cloud communications platform can deliver on agility, control, experience, security, and compliance (even while CFOs want all that for less).
To understand how enterprise IT leaders are working through these challenges, Bandwidth asked 757 of them about their tech challenges and priorities in an environment that won’t stay still.
Here’s what the Enterprise Communications Landscape reveals about cloud-based communications.
Enterprise cloud migration has settled, but it hasn’t stalled
Cloud migration continues to see more converts, with adoption up 11.8% for UCaaS and 7.5% for CCaaS compared to 2024. Yet the urgency to “get to the cloud” has cooled. In 2025, just 28.7% of IT leaders named enterprise cloud migration a top hurdle—a notable drop from 47.5% the previous year. The decline partly has to do with businesses having already completed their move. Nonetheless, the job isn’t over. The cloud conversation has evolved from making it there to making the infrastructure work better.
The new focus of enterprise cloud migration is also reflected in the rise of hybrid cloud communications platforms. Rather than going 100% cloud or staying tethered to on-prem, enterprises are layering both using adaptive cloud migration solutions. 39.1% use hybrid cloud unified communications, while 38.2% run hybrid contact center platforms. And this cloud-based communications trend is gaining traction: 48.8% expect to have hybrid UC and 46.3% hybrid CC by the end of this year.
IT leaders are juggling fewer carriers and cloud communications platforms
Today, 73% rely on five telecom carriers or less, and only 7.8% manage ten or more. Single-carrier usage has more than tripled, jumping from 5.9% to 17.8%. It’s a similar story with cloud communications platforms: most organizations stick to just 1–3.
Customized carrier consolidation is making all of this possible. With reliability and quality the main concerns—and price point not far behind—53.4% have already implemented cloud migration solutions such as Bring Your Own Carrier (BYOC), and another 19% plan to follow.
That narrowing brings pressure to get cloud-based communications right, especially when the average enterprise tech purchase takes 17 months and ends in regret 80% of the time. No wonder 44% of companies switch cloud communications platforms every year or two, or even sooner, and the majority are reexamining their setup: 51.9% are evaluating alternative cloud unified communications, and 43.7% are looking at contact center options.
Cloud-based communications stacks are getting rebuilt around CX and EX
User experience matters more than ever, and much of how cloud-based communications platforms drive customer engagement depends on the stack behind them.
However, when it comes to managing cloud communications platforms, almost 60% of enterprise IT leaders say their comms stack is moderately to highly difficult to wrangle, and 48.4% struggle with third-party integrations. Even so, plenty are trimming where they can. 77% use six or fewer contact center tools, up from 66.5% last year.
One thing that’s getting easier? Speed of delivery. It has fallen from 33.6% to 19.8% on the list of tech problems, thanks to contact center AI making workflows more efficient. That’s why 48% of businesses are prioritizing AI/ML implementation to improve CX/EX. Chatbot usage saw a 19% bump from 2024, call transcription by 17%, and agent assist by 12%. Dev teams especially benefit from AI with the ability to generate code up to 45% faster.
At the same time, comms leaders are doubling down on high uptime and call quality. Nearly 40% are upgrading their support plans, followed by those revisiting SLAs. About a third are investing in redundant software, hardware, or carrier services.
Fraud defense starts at the carrier now
CIOs are rethinking where fraud defense begins. A call or message has to travel through a carrier network outside their contact center’s network edge. This makes setting up fraud defenses at the carrier layer critical.
The Trust gap in outbound: When ‘connected’ doesn’t mean ‘delivered’
Most infrastructure leaders have largely solved for calls connecting. The harder problem now is getting those calls answered. As call mislabeling grows, a new challenge has emerged: the trust gap.
42% of legitimate organizational calls being mislabeled as ‘spam’ isn’t just a labeling error; it’s a breakdown in customer experience (CX) and a massive hit to operational efficiency. For industries like hospitality or finance, this isn’t a minor annoyance; it’s a tangible loss of money and customer trust. 81% of leaders believe they’ve lost money due to improper call labeling.
From reactive cleanup to proactive identity verification on outbound and inbound calls
We’re seeing a shift in how mature organizations handle customer trust in their communications:
- Reputation as an asset: Enterprises are moving toward ‘number reputation management’ where they monitor and remediate their DIDs in real-time. If a contact center or sales team’s outbound block gets improperly flagged, they need to know before it hurts their bottom line.
- Branded communication: To solve for low call answer rates, enterprises are looking at call branding to display the company name and logo directly on the mobile handset. This increases answer rates and reinforces the brand to some extent. But you may need more than branded calling to rebuild trust.
- Identity verification at the carrier level: Enterprises with advanced contact center security are now looking beyond their own network edge. They’re incorporating pre-call verification of identity for carrier analytics engines. Even with call branding applied, the risk of that call being spoofed by bad actors is still a threat. Employing a pre-call authentication API into your call flow adds another layer of security to validate the call and its origins before it even hits the customer handset – helping ensure that only legitimate calls present the branded call display.
Strengthen the first line of defense on inbound calls
The same logic applies to inbound calls. Leading contact centers are moving away from Knowledge-Based Authentication and toward silent, carrier-level authentication that happens before a call ever hits the IVR.
Voice biometrics and ANI validation are seeing rapid adoption as a result. As deepfake threats and fraud tactics grow more sophisticated, these tools are being integrated directly at the carrier layer — guarding the contact center’s front door before the conversation even begins.
Confidence in compliance is still playing catch-up
Telephony lives under constant regulation. Organizations must meet IT privacy and security protocols along with complex industry and government mandates like STIR/SHAKEN, Kari’s Law, and the RAY BAUM’s Act. And some teams know they’re not there yet.
87.5% worry about staying compliant. Multi-region enterprises struggle even more, with 26% less inclined to say they’re highly confident about meeting emergency regulations everywhere they operate. Government, finance, and energy & utilities industries face the most pressure to keep up.
Compliance gets even trickier if you factor in company structure. For instance, over 54% of companies run primarily hybrid setups and have to account for employees’ dispersed physical locations.
As industry regulation continues to evolve in 2026, it’s imperative to have a clear handle on the rules applicable to your office sites and that you have the right tools to support your compliance. The stakes are so high that 30.52% look for compliance support when choosing a telecom provider.
Explore peer insights
In a year of ever-shifting demands and escalating threats, see how enterprise IT leaders are reworking their cloud-based communications and take away what you need to map out your next move.
- Global enterprise communications landscape insights from 750+ IT leadersbased in the US
- State of EMEA enterprise communications 2026
