UC Today

After recent job cuts, many are asking if the metaverse dream is over. In this UC Today interview, Christopher Carey sits down with technology evangelist Kevin O'Donovan to unpack the rise, fall, and future of the Metaverse.

Discover:
🔵 How digital twins and physics-based simulations are quietly transforming industries like manufacturing, energy, and autonomous vehicles.

🔵 Why early VR hype and virtual office experiments failed to gain widespread adoption, and what that teaches about realistic expectations.

🔵 The lessons from hardware limitations, fragmented standards, and over-optimism that shaped the Metaverse’s current trajectory.

🔵 How emerging technologies—generative AI, AI-powered glasses, and augmented reality—are redefining how organizations interact with digital environments.

Join the conversation: share your thoughts on the metaverse’s evolution in the comments.

In this January 2026 edition of the UC Big News Show, Kieran Devlin (Host, UC Today) sits down with a sharp panel: Blair Pleasant, Craig Durr (The Collab Collective), Jon Arnold (J. Arnold & Associates) and Dom Black (Cavell). Together, they unpack where Unified Communications, collaboration, and workplace AI are really headed—cutting through hype to ask the questions IT buyers and business leaders actually care about: Where’s the value, who’s getting it, and what needs to change for 2026 to be the year pilots turn into outcomes?

AI is everywhere—but the results aren’t. The panel reacts to sobering CEO sentiment on AI value, digs into why trust, training, and culture keep getting overlooked, and debates whether Zoom’s AI Companion benchmark moment signals a real shift toward orchestration and multi-model strategies. Then the conversation turns to a hot industry reality: with budgets tight and vendors building their own roadshows, are independent events like Enterprise Connect evolving—or sliding toward irrelevance?

In this episode, we cover:

Why the “AI value gap” is widening—and why revenue growth deserves as much attention as cost cutting
The overlooked blockers: responsible AI processes, transparency, user adoption, and prompting skills
What Zoom’s federated, multimodal approach suggests about the future: orchestration, connectors, and “best model for the job”
The 2026 events debate: why ISE is booming, why software shows must reinvent themselves, and why vertical-specific events may win

Next steps:
Audit where AI is actually used in your org (including shadow AI) and map it to measurable outcomes
Publish and socialize a responsible AI policy employees can understand and trust
If you’re attending ISE / IT Expo / CCW Berlin / Enterprise Connect, drop a comment with where you’ll be—UC Today’s team would love to connect

Join Kristian McCann, host at UC Today, as he sits down with Chris Reed, Head of Product and Technology at Wordwatch, to discuss how phased, risk-free data migration protects compliance and unlocks operational value.
Communication data migration in regulated financial sectors is often seen as risky and resource-intensive, and Reed dives deep into why legacy data formats, metadata preservation, and regulatory compliance make migrations daunting. 
Reed explains how approaches like Wordwatch's, with a phased, controlled approach, mitigates the fear and the risk by ensuring zero modification to original records, maintaining their integrity and audit trails throughout. 
Key points include:
The paramount risk of data loss or corruption during migration, especially preserving metadata such as retention and legal holds, which is crucial for compliance with regulators like FINRA and FCA.
Common pitfalls financial institutions face, including budget constraints and the complexity of handling legacy codecs that modern systems struggle to support.
Wordwatch’s solution: migrating metadata first, preserving original call recordings unchanged, and providing continuous validation to guarantee the completeness and authenticity of data.
The benefits of consolidating legacy and live data into a single, secure archive, enabling rapid searches, easing regulatory response times, breaking vendor lock-in, and unlocking insights from communication data.
Explore how Wordwatch’s phased migration strategy can be tailored to your organization’s legacy systems by visiting https://wordwatch.io/.

In this episode of UC Today, host Christopher Carey sits down with Tim Ward, Product Marketing Specialist at Global Relay, and Irwin Lazar, President and Principal Analyst at Metrigy, to unpack the findings of Metrigy’s latest report on the rapidly expanding compliance risks across unified communications.
With enterprises adopting Teams, WhatsApp, SMS, AI assistants, and more, the discussion digs into why compliance can no longer lag behind innovation – and how leaders can avoid costly missteps that impact productivity, security, and regulatory accountability.

Unified communications is evolving faster than most compliance frameworks can keep up – and the consequences are real. In this candid conversation, Tim and Irwin reveal where organizations are slipping, how AI-generated content complicates record-keeping, and why blocking apps often backfires. They share first-hand examples of multimillion-dollar fines, the hidden risks of employee workarounds, and the operational insights companies can unlock when they treat compliance data as a strategic asset rather than a burden.

Kristian McCann of UC Today talks to Chris Reed, Head of Product and Technology at Wordwatch, to explore how financial and regulated firms can transform their communication governance from a mere compliance task into a powerful source of business intelligence. 
This video dives deep into how companies can convert compliance data into actionable insights rather than viewing it as a checklist obligation. 
Key discussion points include:
How legacy compliance systems create silos that limit insight and operational efficiency.
The AI-driven opportunities unlocked by making communication data fully searchable.
The strategic benefits of a single unified archive for compliance, technical, and client management teams.
Real measurable improvements in compliance effectiveness, risk management, and customer satisfaction driven by turning communication data into a single trusted source of truth.
If you want to discover how to unlock the hidden intelligence in your data and future-proof your compliance and risk strategy with AI-powered governance, visit https://wordwatch.io/.