Cisco Recognized by Gartner as a Leader for Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS)
We are proud to be named a leader for a repeat year in the Gartner 2020 Magic Quadrant for Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS). This is especially significant in this transformative year: When full, integrated collaboration – what UCaaS is all about – becomes vital to the effectiveness and survivability of businesses worldwide.
First, I’d like to touch on two related and highly significant strategic assumptions Gartner is making this year: Gartner assumes that by 2022, 74% of organizations will move at least 5% of their workers into permanent remote-working positions. And by 2024, 74% of all new unified communications licenses purchased by organizations will be cloud-based. These assumptions reflect the unprecedented demand for collaboration options to support flexible work, and highlight that integrated cloud collaboration solutions are the primary means to meet this demand.
“By 2024, 74% of the new unified communications licenses purchased
by organizations will be cloud based, up from 48% in 2019.”
Recent Progress
For us at Cisco, the focus over the past year has been very consistent with Gartner’s strategic assumptions. We accelerated the enhancement of the Webex cloud collaboration platform in terms of user experience and device and business apps integration — all assisted by new AI based capabilities and unified platform management and control. At the same time we responded to the surge in demand for remote work with a rapid build-out of the Webex cloud capacity and further hardening of security, resilience, and performance.
In fact, Gartner recognizes three key areas of progress for Cisco Webex in the last year:
Unified Webex experience: The single Webex app brings together calling, messaging, meetings, devices, and business app integrations for a complete, seamless collaboration user experience. At the same time management and IT control are fully integrated across the platform via our Webex Control Hub.
Calling in Webex: Gartner notes our full calling integration in the Webex app and our Cloud Connected PSTN capability — which allows customers and Service Providers to connect directly via the Webex cloud without separate connectivity and infrastructure requirements. This adds to our full range of Bring-Your-Own-Carrier (BYOC) options, as well as our extensive Service Provider global partner bundled PSTN offers. We are working to expand our leading range of PSTN capabilities even further – stay tuned!
As I noted in a recent post, calling remains the most essential and critical element of both internal and external communication, and of business continuity. We are privileged to be by far the global cloud calling leader, with over 34M users and over 50%* market share. Many of our users are served by the world’s leading service providers and are hosted in their cloud via the Webex calling platform. Our partners are able to offer the full Webex collaboration experience to this massive cloud calling user community. We are hard at work incorporating Webex video, AI and mobile integration capabilities to our calling experiences, making calling more intelligent and productive.
Webex powered by AI: Gartner notes our progress in integrating AI throughout the Webex experience including voice recognition, facial and participant recognition, context and contact awareness, and intelligent transcription. These capabilities provide an efficiency advantage during Webex meetings and work seamlessly together with our integrated personal and room collaboration devices. In fact, Gartner has recognized Webex Meetings as a leader in their separate Meeting Solutions Magic Quadrant, 2020 for the 13th time in a row.
Webex Collaboration Strengths
I’m pleased to say that given this progress, Gartner notes that their client inquiries regarding Cisco collaboration rose by 70% in the first three quarters of 2020 compared to the previous year.
Finally, Gartner highlights how many of Cisco’s overall core strengths translate to significant advantages when it comes to Webex collaboration. These include our deep and global enterprise relationships, our extensive community of partners and our complimentary portfolio of security and networking to deliver cross-architecture benefits.
What’s Next?
While it’s already been a transformative year for collaboration and our Webex portfolio, I see tremendous opportunities ahead. As UCaaS demand and cloud adoption rapidly expand, we’ll continue to build Webex as the integrated, secure, and intelligent platform businesses can trust for the full range of their mission-critical calling and collaboration needs.
The Best Practices for Moving to Cloud Collaboration at Your Own Pace [Nemertes Whitepaper]
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