As the opportunities surrounding /unified-communications/ucaas grow more significant, innovation is accelerating across the space. It’s no surprise, then, that Gartner has created a “Magic Quadrant” solution to assess some of the vendors in the marketplace according to the common concerns of “completeness of vision” and “ability to execute”.
As always for Gartner MQ reports, the vendors in the UCaaS environment have been broken down into four categories: Leaders, Challengers, Visionaries, and Niche players. Here, we’ll take a look at the results from the latest report.
Quadrant Leaders
Leaders are chosen for the Magic Quadrant based on their ability to execute ideas and come up with innovative new solutions for the future of UCaaS. This year, the “Leader” section of the magic quadrant is particularly full, featuring vendors like 8×8, RingCentral, BT, and West.
8×8:
California-based company 8×8 provides a UCaaS solution called “Virtual Office”. 8×8 earned its spot in the leadership position for Gartner thanks to its ability to cater to the needs of SMBs and enterprises alike. 8×8 have incredible adoption rates for contact centre, cloud telephony, and unified messaging, however, the IT portal could be a little more intuitive, according to Gartner.
BT:
London-based business BT is a global network service provider, offering UCaaS in the form of the BT One Cloud. Over the last year, BT has focused heavily on enhancing their UCaaS user experience with things like self-service IT portals, and QoS dashboard monitoring. BT gives customers a huge range of services to choose from, including SIP, CCaaS, and more. However, it may not be ideal for SMB accounts outside of Europe.
Orange Business Services:
“Orange” is a global CSP in Paris, offering two UCaaS solutions, including Cisco-based “Business Together as a Service”, and Microsoft-based “Business Together Microsoft”. Orange is perfect for mid-to-large MNCs in search of global UCaaS support. The vendor can support UCaaS customers with global needs and is perfect for those seeking a digital workplace tool. However, Orange has yet to focus on complicated deployments like AI, /unified-communications/cpaas, and SMS.
RingCentral:
Located in California, RingCentral is a UCaaS specialist focused on SMBs, and enterprise customers. RingCentral is perfect for mid-size enterprises and SMBs alike, with a rich selection of UC features available through RingCentral Office, including the new Glip user interface. RingCentral provides a fantastic meeting experience for unified communications, but the vendor has limited recognition among larger enterprise customers.
Verizon:
A Global CSP located in New York, Verizon supports three different UCaaS offerings, including “Verizon UCCaaS”, Verizon One Talk, and Verizon UCCaaS (Cisco-based). As a global CSP, Verizon can offer countless UCaaS solutions for companies, but some customers suggest that Verizon may not be very reliable as a UCaaS provider. For instance, One Talk’s app for Android and iOS is still in production, and Verizon is slow to respond to unexpected change requests.
West:
Nebraska-based West is a public company about to become private. Their lead UCaaS offering is “VoiceMaxx CE” based on the Cisco platform. The West solution offers a range of great services, focusing Cisco technology that works with Cisco Spark, and similar solutions. West is a strong Cisco UCaaS stack partner, with an “integrator mindset”, but the vendor isn’t much of an innovator. Instead, the company focuses on deploying vendor offerings that have already been proven and supporting them with West customer service.
Challengers
The next vendors we need to look at are Gartner’s “challengers”. These are the brands that have measured up as being “just” shy of the Leader top spot.
AT&T
A Global CSP located in Texas, AT&T has operations that span from Europe to Asia/Pacific, and North America. There are three UCaaS offerings produced by AT&T including AT&T Collaborate, designed for the US only and based on the AT&T Integrated cloud for virtualisation and SDN. The second is the Cisco Hosted Collaboration Solution, and the third is the Microsoft Skype for Business Server. AT&T’s UCaaS services are perfect for everyone from small SMBs to large enterprises, however, the AT&T collaborate service has a long rollout cycle, and enterprises outside of the US might struggle with AT&T adoption.
Based in California, Google offers the UCaaS “Hangouts” option as part of the overall G-Suite office bundle featuring Google Calendar, Google Drive, Google Sites, and more. Google’s UCaaS is a cost-effective and innovative solution for companies of various sizes and backgrounds, and the brand continues to invest in new solutions for unified communications all the time. Unfortunately, Google doesn’t have a single Hangouts client, and most of the Hangouts improvements to be implemented aren’t fully stress-tested yet.
Microsoft
Microsoft’s UCaaS solution is “Skype for Business Online”, a part of the Office 365 suite. The SfBO solution includes a number of features like peer-to-peer video and voice, IM, presence, and screen sharing. Clients often report incredible results with the internal web conferencing, video conferencing, and audio conferencing features of SfBO. Today, Microsoft is continuously gaining market momentum and share, thanks to the success of their Office 365 portfolio. However, SfBO telephony abilities still remain behind some competing UCaaS offers.
Visionaries
Now we come to the “visionaries”- the brands that Gartner believes to have the most “completeness of vision” in the UCaaS space. So far, the section includes BroadSoft, Mitel, and Fuze.
BroadSoft
BroadSoft has two distinct UCaaS offerings “BroadCloud” and “BroadWorks”. Both options work on the same software. The BroadCloud offerings are sold under the BroadSoft Business brand, while the BroadWorks platform requires operation and deployment through the partner data centre. BroadSoft’s popular UC-One solution is ideal for enterprises in search of a complete and cost-effective UC solution, capable of supporting global engagement and networking opportunities. However, BroadSoft has yet to prove that it can be a powerful competitor in the UCaaS market according to Gartner.
Fuze
Based in Massachusetts, Fuze delivers a multi-tenant platform ideal for facilitating UC application integration throughout the workforce. Perfect for UCaaS deployments in the 500 to 5000 employee range, Fuze is continuously expanding their UCaaS capabilities, with new and improved work stream collaboration, analytics, and video. However, Gartner believes that Fuze brand awareness remains low, and some customers apparently feel underwhelmed by installation, project management, and customer service features.
Mitel
Based in Canada, Mitel offers a range of UCC services with roots in the UC and premises-based PBX markets. Mitel’s UCaaS solution is “MiCloud”, which includes an “Enterprise” offering, and an “Office Multi tenant platform”. MiCloud solutions are best suited for deployments across some Asia/Pacific markets, as well as Europe and North America. Many customers stick with Mitel because they get a cost-effective CCaaS solution complete with UCaaS. However, Mitel lacks strong recognition for larger companies, which limits their sales potential.
Niche Players
Finally, the “Niche players” are the companies that are focusing specifically on one area of the UCaaS platform. These vendors do have the opportunity to move into other categories, depending on how they grow their portfolios.
Star2Star
Based in Florida, Star2Star offers UCaaS solutions for SMBs to large enterprises, through its proprietary multi-tenant platform. Operating across Australia, the Netherlands and the US, Star2Star offers a branded “StarSystem” that delivers services in hybrid environments, or completely on the cloud. The Star2Star solution is well positioned for smaller businesses who require cost-effective OTT connectivity. However, availability is limited in Europe and the Asia/Pacific market.
Masergy
Masergy’s UCaaS offer is called “Global UCaaS” and it’s based on the BroadSoft platform. Meeting services can be delivered across a range of devices, and a cloud contact centre solution is available for omni-channel support, business analytics, and call recording. Once again, Masergy is ideal for between 100 2,500 employee companies, and the solution is great for mid-size enterprises in search of innovation, performance, and security. However, Masergy relies heavily on channel partners for accounts, and the brand is under-recognised as a UCaaS provider.
NTT Group
The NTT Group offers UCaaS through “NTT Communications”, Akadin total Connect, and Dimension Data. The company supports businesses across the world with Microsoft and Cisco-based UCaaS, assisting in the implementation of UCaaS solution, and transition services. The NTT Group has a great long-term vision and provides support to support complex multi-vendor environments. However, brand recognition is low, and the NTT group doesn’t offer high-tech solutions like bots, analytics, and AI.
UC Today Opinion – Comparing the Quadrants
This year’s Gartner Magic Quadrant compared to previous years isn’t vastly different.
- BroadSoft have now been included – but strangely only their BroadCloud platform has been covered. Otherwise I’d hope to see them in the far top right-hand corner. (If anyone knows why this is, please comment below)
- Interoute and Vonage are out. Vonage are growing in capability, again not sure why they have been left out.
- Mitel are up, with the ShoreTel acquisition they should be top right in 2018.
- Microsoft’s position is interesting. Yes, Skype for Business online has limited features at present, but in terms of vision I would have expected to see them top right.
- Good to see RingCentral, 8×8 and Fuze in the right place. These are the vendors to watch right now.
- BT – maybe I need educating but I didn’t think BT had developed their own UCaaS platform? (pls comment below)
- Where are Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise (Rainbow), Cisco (Spark), Unify (Circuit) and Amazon (Chime)?
How Do You Feel about the Gartner Report?
As always, the Gartner Magic Quadrant has changed to reflect some of the biggest changes in the UCaaS space, adding BroadSoft and Masergy to the mix, while removing Interoute, Vonage, and ShoreTel.
It’s difficult to know whether the Gartner report is a full representation of the UCaaS market overall. After all, the high qualification standards for companies that want to be included the MQ often means that a number of important brands are overlooked.
How do you feel about the latest Magic Quadrant, and how will it affect your exploration of UCaaS?