Cisco Live EMEA 2026 in Amsterdam offered an interesting lens on how enterprise IT priorities continue to evolve. From a collaboration and unified communications perspective, the themes and signals emerging from the event reflect broader market trends — particularly the growing focus on operational visibility, centralized control, and consistent governance across hybrid and multi-vendor environments. These directions closely mirror what we continue to observe in the collaboration and communications space, where the priority is shifting from deploying new tools to operating complex environments more reliably and at scale.
Artificial intelligence was naturally a central topic, though the conversation appears to be shifting toward practical value. Rather than focusing only on user facing assistants, interest is growing around how AI can support operational awareness — correlating data across platforms, identifying anomalies, and helping teams act before issues impact users. From an operational standpoint, the emphasis on connected intelligence and agent driven operations reflects a pragmatic expectation that AI should improve clarity and efficiency, not simply add complexity.
Organizations increasingly recognize collaboration as a strategic asset for the modern workplace, driving new requirements around governance, visibility, and operational control. The focus extends beyond features to lifecycle management, cloud migration, identity consistency, and maintaining service reliability across hybrid and multi-vendor environments as organizations shape more flexible digital workspaces.
From our perspective, these insights reinforce broader market trends: growing demand for automation, centralized visibility, and stronger operational control across complex collaboration ecosystems. As communication environments become more distributed, the ability to manage them consistently becomes a strategic priority. For organizations operating hybrid and multi-vendor collaboration platforms, this means moving beyond tool adoption toward structured governance, operational clarity, and sustainable lifecycle management — areas that will continue to shape the evolution of the modern workplace.
To learn more about how Flexcom helps organizations address these challenges and manage complex collaboration environments, explore our blog or contact our team at insight@flexcom.com
