The latest market report updates from Synergy Research Group, which covered activities in the collaboration market over the fourth quarter of 2016, showed strong performance from Cisco, alongside other market leaders, Avaya, IBM, and Microsoft. Beyond the top-name vendors, Synergy also drew attention to Polycom, AT&T, Verizon, Unify, Mitel, and Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise (ALE) as major players.
The strength of companies like Uc, and Novell was quite a surprising result in the report. Similarly, the low shares of Genband and BroadSoft appeared deceptive, thanks to the fact that many of their customers are reported separately.
Looking at the Results In-depth
According to Synergy, Cisco is massively ahead of Microsoft, particularly since the report indicates email, a category that Microsoft is particularly strong in. Cisco has beaten Microsoft in collaboration, and has increased shares over three consecutive quarters, thanks to WebEx, and Cisco on-premise solutions.
Both Microsoft and Cisco have been focused on cloud-based solutions, but neither has yet offered a UCaaS solution that matches the functionality and features of their premises-based options. This could prove to be a problem, as Synergy reports that cloud-delivered services have grown 9% year-over-year, while premises-based solutions decline. With that in mind, the cloud/hosted market for collaboration is still in anyone’s court.
Synergy’s report has been published in the form of an interactive database, where customers can zoom in on various regions, vendors, and segments. The leaders in the UCaaS, and PBX category were Verizon, CenturyLink, AT&T, BT, and Telstra. In the end-points and premises-based PBX categories, the leaders were Mitel, Unify, Avaya, and Cisco.
The Teamwork Applications Category
This is the first report in the market so far that has attempted to look into “work stream messaging”, or “teamwork applications”, as Synergy calls it. According to Synergy, this sector is growing faster than other hosted categories, at a rate of over 400%. The other fast-growing segments were video as a service, contact centre as a service, and file-sharing.
Ultimately, the winners in the world of teamwork will be those who have solutions that work seamlessly with /unified-communications/ucaas. Unify, Cisco, and RingCentral all have a great head-start, with various providers on their heels.
Synergy data has also given us an insight into how collaboration is changing around the world. For instance, Cisco is particularly strong in Northern America, though the picture was different in Europe, where in-market carriers and Microsoft were much stronger.
The Issue with Market Share
The problem with market share reports is that they’re never completely accurate. Though each publisher does an incredible job, the reports are only quarterly snapshots, and most don’t measure the installed-base or look into the facts that vendors offer longer-lasting solutions. Additionally, market share reports frequently look backward, and though the past can predict parts of the future, it’s harder to make a solid prediction in these disruptive times.
Additionally, these reports also force connections between unlikely couples. For instance, Synergy’s collaboration report includes UC applications, enterprise voice, email software, telepresence, enterprise content management, and a range of hosted applications and communications. Though all of these things lead to collaboration, they come from different providers and vendors, leading to a confusing bundle of outcomes.
