What’s What with Digital Work Hubs for TodayWhat’s What with Digital Work Hubs for Today
Does the concept of a connected workspace for collaborative work finally have legs?
March 13, 2025
Giving employees a digital “place” to call home is a recurrent theme in IT, especially among those of us with communications and collaboration top of mind. I’ve talked about it myself many times over the years, on these pages of No Jitter as well as from the speaker’s podium at Enterprise Connect.
In the last few years, the rapid rise and continued widespread support for work from home or hybrid work has lent more gravitas to the goal of creating this digital home. For one, the use of cloud apps has exploded, which means some employees end up spending far too much time throughout the day clicking their way among them. For another, employees should be able to collaborate with each other, regardless of where they’re geographically located, with ease. And, yes, video meetings and team chat apps achieve this purpose—but only to a certain extent. More is needed.
Enter the latest iteration of the digital hub, what Metrigy likes to call a connected workspace for collaborative work. This is the place employees click into at the start of their day and, if done well, will not need to leave until they sign out at night. From this connected workspace, employees can find information and people they need to accomplish work, communicate about/collaborate on their projects, automate different processes, and manage their work.
The connected workspace typically brings together some or all of the following core capabilities: productivity applications such as project and task management, knowledge bases and document repositories, content collaboration and management tools, and communications and collaboration apps, plus integrations with other apps important to an individual or team.
The question is, which type of provider owns this prime digital real estate, vs. providing apps for integration?
Communications and collaboration providers have put their stake in the ground. For example, Google describes Google Workspace as a collection of cloud-based productivity and collaboration tools integrated into a workspace so that individuals and teams can communicate, collaborate, and get work done from anywhere. Microsoft calls Microsoft Teams a central hub for communications and productivity. And Zoom talks about Zoom Workplace in terms of creating a unified experience for communication, productivity, and employee engagement.
There are others—Slack and Zoho, for example—but I mention these three companies in particular because executives from each will be joining me for a discussion of connected workspaces at Enterprise Connect: Sanket Amberkar, Head of Applied AI Product Marketing at Google, Mahendra Sekaran, Corporate VP, M365-Intelligent Communications at Microsoft, and Gary Sorrentino, Global CIO, Zoom. This is a fantastic lineup, and I can’t wait to pick their brains.
Among questions we’ll be delving into are:
What are the biggest problems enterprises are trying to address with a connected workspace? And, what are the biggest obstacles to success?
Speaking of success, what are the best ways to measure success?
Do different teams are using different connected workspace platforms, should standardizing on a single one be the path forward?
And, lastly—but certainly not least—what is the role of generative AI within a connected workspace, and what role do AI agents play?
This promises to be a lively discussion. Don’t miss out! Join us for this session, The Digital Work Hub Reimagined: What’s Next For Collaboration And Productivity, on Tuesday, March 18, at 8:00 a.m. to 8:30 a.m., in Osceola 1 &2.
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Enterprise ConnectProductivityCollaboration ToolsConnected space for collaborative workAbout the Author
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