Constellation ShortList™ Enterprise Group Messaging

Enterprise group messaging platforms sit at the center of an enterprise’s comprehensive, unified communications strategy, enabling people to connect, share status and whereabouts, trade information, ask questions, post pictures, videos and links, and even access line-of-business applications, all within a stream or chat-based user experience. These platforms serve as “collaboration hubs” for teams combining conversations, channels, content and business data into a single user interface. More importantly, they enable and empower asynchronous collaboration in an age of hybrid, global work. These aggregated experiences improve the context of conversations, decisions and business processes without asking users to switch and toggle between applications.

The top vendors in this space require more than just the standard checklist of features. It is important to have a robust and enthusiastic partner ecosystem that develops integrations, which extend the value of the platform. At the leading edge are support for business workflows like customer care, case management, and AI enablement.

To win in the enterprise market, vendors in this space must have a platform that is highly scalable, is secure, modern features for hybrid work, and has a global footprint. It must meet administration requirements for managing people, groups and content. The most advanced solutions will combine channels, including e-mail, and enable customer/external communication as well.

Threshold Criteria

Constellation considers the following criteria for these offerings:

• Administration controls, governance and compliance
• Analytics, metrics, dashboards, and AI insights
• Application development: APIs/SDKs, documentation, samples
• Audience support for workers, partners, customers that is secure and compartmentalized
• Business operations: funding, acquisitions, executive leadership
• Business partner ecosystem
• Channel types: public, private, broadcast, shared inbox, direct messages
• Client options: desktop, web, mobile, wearables, voice
• Filters and content highlighting to quickly access the most relevant conversations
• Collaboration features that support in-office, hybrid work, and remote work
• Global customer references
• Deployment options: on-premises, cloud, hybrid, data center locations
• Integration with other business tools, platforms, and workflows
• Licensing options
• Search and discovery
• Security and regulatory compliance features (data residency control, GDPR, etc.)
• Templated solutions and use cases
• Unified communication features (50 simultaneous users or more preferred): voice, screen sharing-, email