I am incredibly excited and proud to announce that Gartner has recognized Cisco as a Leader in the 2026 Gartner Magic Quadrant for our Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) for the 8th consecutive year! To us, this positioning continues to be the result of our unwavering vision and proven ability to execute. We are truly honored by this recognition.
Webex has always been about connection — people, devices, tools. This past year, we’ve taken that further: connecting people with AI, and AI with AI. This recognition reflects what drives us every day: meeting customers where they are with innovation, security, and reliability — so they can focus on the work that matters most.
I believe these three areas are core to our continued acknowledgement:
1. Delivering mission critical, high trust collaboration solutions.
Offering advanced reliability and resiliency, flexible deployment options (on-premises, hybrid, cloud), data sovereignty, and complete control and governance over AI.
- Reliability and resiliency are foundational. With a 99.999% Webex Calling SLA and enhanced Survivability for Calling and Meetings, the mission keeps running regardless of network state — ensuring that an essential set of collaboration capabilities remain available if connectivity to the cloud is disrupted.
- Sovereignty is prioritized by design, baked into the architecture from the ground up. Your organization stays in full control of its data and encryption, backed by a global footprint of more than 110 data centers, with residency in the US, Canada, the EU, Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands, Saudi Arabia, and India, with Japan and the UK expansion underway.
- Every organization has different control requirements, and Webex is built to meet them. Keys can live fully on premises in your own data center, in the cloud with you retaining exclusive control over who can access them, or anywhere in between. However your organization needs to manage them, no one outside your organization holds the keys to your conversations.
- Security is the engine of our AI strategy. Cisco governs intelligence by default at every layer. Our Zero Trust architecture extends across every surface where collaboration happens — meetings, messages, recordings, whiteboards — with end-to-end encryption that’s tamper-proof today and quantum-safe for tomorrow.
- AI that runs without ever touching the cloud. Cisco AI PODs for Collaboration, now generally available, mean organizations can have AI-powered transcription and summarization running fully on-premises. Deployed against Cisco Meeting Server, AI PODs run on-premises or air-gapped with zero external connectivity. The data never leaves the defined boundary.
- Regulatory and corporate compliance requirements are met. Webex Compliance Hub captures, retains, monitors, and governs communications across calling, meetings, messaging, and AI interactions. It simplifies eDiscovery, legal hold, compliance recording, and AI-powered surveillance, enabling organizations to reduce risk and respond more efficiently to audits and investigations.
2. Connected Intelligence Collaboration Platform
We are seeing a fundamental shift in collaboration. AI is now embedded in every interaction — every call, every meeting, every chat. Webex Suite has evolved into a Connected Intelligence Platform, where Context, Conversations, and Outcomes are the engine driving workplace efficiency.
Today, context is continuous and everywhere. It doesn’t just flow across every interaction — it flows across People, Places, and Devices too. Every interaction makes the next one smarter. Webex is built on a platform that’s open, extensible, and AI-native — designed to support interoperability at scale while delivering the resiliency, security, flexibility, and observability our customers need.
We started with a standard AI Assistant to help users with daily tasks. In the past eleven months, we’ve seen a 9x increase in AI Assistant adoption in meetings. That tells us two things: it’s solving a real problem, and customers are building lasting habits around it.
We’ve also announced a suite of coordinated Productivity Agents that can handle routine work autonomously: capturing discussions, scheduling meetings, translating conversations in real time, and managing front-desk operations around the clock. Working in the background, these capabilities return time and attention to the work that actually matters.
Beyond productivity, we’re taking this further: Webex is transforming enterprise engagement by extending our comprehensive, secure AI Agent Studio across our entire Collaboration portfolio. The ability to build, deploy, and manage voice and digital multi-modal AI agents across any internal or external use case allows IT and admins to prioritize consistency.
And lastly, we have a robust Agentic Ecosystem of integration partners and MCPs, with integrations across Microsoft Copilot, Google Gemini, Anthropic Claude, Amazon Quick, and so much more — all governed through the same security architecture as every other Webex AI capability.
Taken together, this is what a Connected Intelligence Platform looks like in practice — not a single feature, but a system where context, agents, and partners work hand in hand to make every interaction better than the last.
3. Delivering highly connected and unified management experiences across UCaaS, CCaaS, CPaaS, and Collaboration Hardware (Devices)
This approach delivers more innovative, faster, and more intuitive employee and customer experiences. From automating complex processes and enhancing customer journeys to providing actionable intelligence about Devices or office spaces, our unified innovations such as Cisco AI Assistant, and Collaboration Agents work effortlessly across hardware and software to deliver seamless experiences that don’t just help our customers innovate but make their lives and work easier.
Everything comes together in Control Hub for IT. Delivering exceptional user experiences is at the heart of what we do— but IT is the unsung hero who makes all of this possible in the real world. Webex is built to supercharge IT with Collaboration Control Hub, a single-pane-of-glass experience for managing Suite, Calling, Contact Center, and Collaboration Devices and providing a comprehensive, platform-wide approach to security and sustainability.
This year, we announced Cisco Cloud Control, Cisco’s unified platform for administration and AgenticOps. This AI-native management platform reimagines how organizations manage, operate, and optimize their IT infrastructure and gives teams one destination to access their complete Cisco estate from a secure, single sign-on experience.
Control Hub is now part of the Cisco Cloud Control experience. The powerful tools teams rely on to manage users, devices, workspaces, and collaboration services are now part of Cisco’s unified platform for AgenticOps, bringing collaboration management into a broader, AI-native operating experience.
4. Unmatched Cloud Calling global availability.
Webex enterprise-grade cloud Calling delivers market-leading availability to over 19 million cloud calling users worldwide with three flexible options for PSTN connectivity and domestic calling in over 200 markets.
We continue to deliver enterprise calling and AI innovations to a global customer base, such as AI Receptionist, Cisco AI Assistant for Webex Calling, Collaboration Voice Agents and more.
Cisco also supports customers across both on-premises and cloud deployments, with Cisco Unified Communications Manager serving more than 30 million users worldwide, including organizations in government, defense, critical infrastructure, retail, manufacturing, healthcare, and financial services.
Hardware meets software, built for how people actually work
Cisco’s next generation of collaboration devices makes it easy to video-enable every space, embeds intelligence into every device, and reimagines shared workspaces with desk reservation and modern hot desking. Our team has long been at the forefront of video collaboration, pioneering innovations that remove the impact of distance and change how work gets done.
We’re able to provide that AI-driven intelligence because of our visionary NVIDIA partnership. The tight integration of Cisco’s world-class hardware, our leading conference room operating system RoomOS, and NVIDIA’s AI capabilities allows Cisco to deliver the industry’s most capable AI and machine learning platform, with up to 25x the AI capability of previous generations. It’s a depth of integration few UCaaS providers can match, because few build the room and the software running inside it.
The power of one Cisco – the AI-powered platform advantage
What makes this possible is Cisco’s integrated, end-to-end solution. From the network to the software to the device, every layer is designed to work in harmony. This foundation enables us to embed intelligence deeply and securely across the entire collaboration experience, creating a seamless ecosystem where everything—and everyone—works better together.
Join us at WebexOne!
Our commitment to delivering innovation and business outcomes remains stronger than ever. Expect even more advancements that improve employee and customer experience, with exciting announcements coming at WebexOne, October 5-8.
We’d love for you to join us—register today for WebexOne—and see what’s next for Webex.
In closing, we’re so proud of what we’ve accomplished this year, but none of this is possible without our amazing customers and partners. Our innovation is driven by the needs of our customers, partners, and end users globally and in every industry. We truly owe this success to all of you!
Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Unified Communications as a Service, Pankil Sheth, Megan Fernandez, Nitin Narang, 28 July 2026.
Gartner and Magic Quadrant are trademarks of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates.
Gartner does not endorse any company, vendor, product or service depicted in its publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s business and technology insights organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this publication, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.
This graphic was published by Gartner, Inc. as part of a larger research document and should be evaluated in the context of the entire document. The Gartner document is available upon request from Cisco Media.
About The Author
