Blog | FORTE

Reliability Remains #1 Meeting Barrier (Even as Orgs Add AI)

Written by Chuck Grothaus | March 26, 2026

When we surveyed 512 U.S. IT decision makers about the biggest barriers to productive meetings, the answer wasn't AI readiness, user adoption, or budget constraints. It was reliability.

Why is reliability a challenge after years of investment and AI-fueled innovation? We think it has a lot to do with how we define it.

A Broader Definition of Meeting Room Reliability

Many organizations evaluate meeting room and collaboration space reliability in binary terms: did the room work today, or did it go down? That's a reasonable place to start, but modern workplaces rely on dozens (or even hundreds) of collaboration spaces across multiple locations.  

Viewing reliability from a system level rather than a room level encompasses four things:

  1. Consistency across rooms: Standardized room designs, consistent interfaces, predictable join workflows  
  2. Consistency across locations: Global platform alignment, standard deployment models, unified collaboration ecosystems  
  3. Reliability over time: Performance that holds up months and years after installation through lifecycle planning and maintenance
  4. Operational visibility: Monitoring that lets IT teams detect and resolve issues before employees encounter them.

When any of these four break down, reliability becomes the barrier, regardless of how sophisticated the technology is. 

This is where much of the AI investment is quietly stalling. Advanced capabilities only create value when the core experience is stable and trusted. Layer AI on top of an environment that employees have already learned not to rely on, and adoption suffers accordingly.

We asked 512 IT decision-makers to share the state of their collaboration spaces, including AI adoption. Download the full research report here. 

The Impact of Reliability Challenges

How To Assess Your Environment’s Reliability

IT leaders estimate their teams would save an average of 52 hours per month if one major meeting-related workload driver were eliminated. If any of the four areas of reliability we've outlined feel like a gap in your organization, the assessment below is worth a few minutes of your time.  

Assess Your Collaboration Environment

 

The Foundation Comes First

Download The State of Modern Collaboration Spaces to see what 512 IT decision makers identified as their top barriers, where AI investment is heading, and how organizations are prioritizing reliability as the foundation for what comes next. 

About FORTÉ: We help enterprise organizations build the reliable collaboration infrastructure this research describes. Click to learn more.