Unified Communications Featured Article

Gartner Identifies UCaaS Leaders, Challengers, Others

By Paula Bernier
Executive Editor, TMC

Gartner this week came out with its latest unified communications as a service Magic Quadrant report. Verizon (News - Alert), RingCentral, BT, Orange Business Services, 8x8, and West are all in the Leaders box.

The Challengers box contains Microsoft (News - Alert), Google, and AT&T. NTT Group, Masergy, and Star2Star are identified as Niche Players. And Gartner considers Fuze, Mitel, and BroadSoft as Visionaries.

Verizon employs the Cisco (News - Alert) HCS platform to cater to larger customers in North America, Asia Pacific, and Europe. It uses a BroadSoft-based platform to serve small and medium businesses in the U.S.

“As a global CSP (News - Alert), Verizon is well-positioned to complement UCaaS with related offerings in SIP trunks, carrier-grade networks, CCaaS, wireless, security and managed IT services,” Gartner says. “Verizon's bundles can result in a reduced total cost of ownership for the combined offering.”

RingCentral is a UCaaS specialist with roots in the small business market and a strategy to expand upmarket. Gartner notes that RingCentral “has successfully expanded support during the past four years to include the midmarket, enterprise and global accounts. Through 2016 and 2017, RingCentral has increased its European footprint, and it now sells directly in 14 European country markets (along with offering local language support). New accounts are obtained through a combination of direct sales (spanning e-commerce, inside sales and in-territory sales representatives) and indirect channel partners, including CSPs such as BT and Telus.”

Speaking of BT, it’s the other company more toward the top of Gartner’s UCaaS Leaders box.

“BT has a deep base of skills in both the Cisco and Microsoft UCaaS stacks, and it can support large accounts across the globe, including Latin America,” Gartner notes. “Most BT UCaaS customers purchase a bundle of complementary services, spanning CCaaS, data networks, Session Initiation Protocol (News - Alert) trunking, Dolby audio, security, and managed services. BT also does a good job explaining the product portfolio and roadmap of these offerings.”