Images: Enterprise Connect Expo Hall — Vonage, Zoom, AWS, More

Hundreds of technology vendors, channel partners, service providers and others gathered at his year's Enterprise Connect 2024 in Orlando to showcase their latest and what they hope others would consider their "greatest" innovations in unified communications and collaboration. (Informa, Channel Futures' parent company, also owns Enterprise Connect.)

All but dominating the Enterprise Connect 2024 agenda was talk about unified-communications-as-a-service (UCaaS) and contact-center-as-a-service (CCaaS) convergence, which seems to have shown its face during various keynotes and breakout sessions. 

Unified communications (UC) experts there addressed the elephant in the room — platform consolidation and convergence. Myriad experts, from unified communications and collaboration (UCC) analysts to telephony providers, have come to terms with the "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" mentality becoming their new reality. 

Avaya made one such acknowledgment by partnering with Zoom during Enterprise Connect 2024 to enable artificial intelligence over the top of its hybrid, on-premises and cloud-based telephony in a newly minted deal. 

We learned this during a sit-down the company's CEO, Alan Masarek, who touted the benefits of what the duo are calling a "strategic partnership," while driving home a point that the notion is here to stay, bringing interoperability to the forefront of most UCC conversations today. 

Related:The Future of Collaboration Technology Requires Data Governance

Topics such as data governance also had their place at one of the world's largest gatherings of unified communication experts who sat down to unearth why it's needed in today's business climate, noting that it comes down to checks and balances. 

"We needed to have checks and balances in place to ensure security and other areas," Experian's Monica Lim said to a room packed with communications technology enthusiasts. 

And then there was AI, which also made its loud presence felt at Enterprise Connect 2024. Experts said a lot on this topic, while Microsoft stole the show with a full rundown on why it has placed its eggs in the AI basket that is Copilot. 

Last but not least, there was the expo hall, which had no shortage of exhibitors showcasing the technologies they too want to transform the workplace, be it hybrid, in-office or solely remote. In the slideshow above, see what we saw during our stroll with some of the most sizable vendors at the show this year.