According to data published in the fourth quarter of 2017, the /unified-communications/ucaas market is continuing to see growth at an astronomical rate. The Synergy Research Group revealed that subscriber seats are on the rise for the fourth quarter in a row, with more than 300,000 seats added into the global installed base – which is currently growing at a rate of 29% per year.
As for the companies leading the UCaaS adoption parade, RingCentral and Mitel remain at the head of the pack, both struggling to achieve market leadership. While RingCentral certainly has more seats to boast about, Mitel saw a huge amount of growth in Q4 that could indicate they’re about to close the gap. The combined subscription rates of Mitel and RingCentral accounted for more than half of all the seat growth during the final quarter of the year, while the third and fourth seat positions were taken by 8×8 and Fuze.
The Synergy Research Q4 UCaaS Report
The Synergy Research Group has a strong reputation in the marketplace for delivering useful and insightful market tracking and segmentation data. Synergy has been responsible for several insights into the cloud and IT marketplaces in the past, and now they’re delivering information on the growth of the UCaaS space too. The forecasts provided by Synergy in this report are based on the Q4 results revealed by organisations in the UCaaS space.
According to a release shared by the Synergy Research Group, they define the “UCaaS” market as a communications service environment where providers develop and host their own proprietary PBX platforms in the cloud, allow for PTSN connectivity, and deliver integrated UC application stacks. Alternatively, service providers who access third-party solutions for call control like BroadSoft BroadWorks, for instance, are “Hosted PBX” companies, which are excluded from the UCaaS Market Tracker.
Though these companies using third-party systems may not be part of the UCaaS market trend report, they are addressed by a different Synergy report into hosted PBX organisations.
Key Points of the UCaaS Report
Ultimately, the latest Synergy Research information indicates that the UCaaS seat additions delivered in 2017 were around 16% higher than those in 2016, which were already up by 11% on the year before. In other words, the UCaaS market is in a persistent and healthy state of growth. It seems clear that the demand is there for UCaaS systems to displace the traditional on-premise telephony and UC solutions available in the past.
According to the founder and Chief Analyst of the Synergy Research Group, Jeremy Duke, the firmographic analysis of the marketplace shows that the UCaaS space is gaining a huge amount of market acceptance with enterprises and large businesses. As we continue to move into the future, it seems likely that adoption will continue to grow.
