Cisco is recognized by Gartner as a leader for Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS)

We are proud to again be named a Leader in the 2021 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS), Worldwide. We believe, this is especially significant since this was a year of transition from responding to the pandemic and helping customers navigate this challenging time, to supporting robust remote work solutions at scale. As a result, this drove huge growth in the UCaaS industry.

This year, we are seeing a change in strategy from something that was a reactionary solution to a long-term strategic UCaaS decision for hybrid work. In speaking with our customers, we are seeing several key considerations becoming top of mind:

• The need for optimized communications through streamlined tool deployment in a single UCaaS vendor
• The right tools and devices for safe return to the office and long-term hybrid work
• Improved IT management at scale to support the combination of office and remote workforce across software, accessories, and conference rooms
• Improved employee health through better workstyle insights, improvement plans and streamlined workflows
• Minimal business impact and disruption when moving on-prem architecture to the cloud

A year of unprecedented progress

For us at Webex, our focus over the past year has been very consistent with our customers’ strategic direction. First, we accelerated innovation and development speed to unprecedented levels to deliver over 1000 functional and experience enhancements in the past 12 months! Second, we improved our GTM strategy with upgraded commercial offers and delivery channels to provide simple, all-inclusive bundles that are easy to buy and scale up or down based on business needs. We also doubled down on enhancing the Webex Calling portfolio – calling remains the communication lifeline for most businesses and its transition to the cloud is both mission critical and challenging. Here are some notable highlights:

Innovation for Hybrid Work

• Unified Webex experience: The Webex App provides a complete and seamless collaboration experience with calling, meetings, team collaboration and intelligent device support. To enhance the experience, we continue to make hundreds of updates each month. This demonstrates our commitment to deliver upon our vision of taking the calling experience from hearing, to seeing and doing with features like escalating from a call to a meeting. As part of the Webex experience, we also make it easy for IT admins to manage analytics across these workloads as well as with our Cisco devices through the Control Hub. Webex delivers an end-to-end solution for UCaaS.
• Increased productivity and inclusiveness from anywhere: Our AI-based features are becoming increasingly important to enhance the UCaaS experience with work from anywhere. In the past year we introduced a number of market leading capabilities including noise removal, real-time translation in over 120 languages, gesture recognition, rich audience engagement via Slido and People Focus –  facial recognition and scaling to give on-site and remote meeting participants an equal presence. No matter where you work, Webex delivers an inclusive experience for everyone.
• Cloud transition and hybrid deployment: We meet our customers on their journey to the cloud and have managed to move many of them successfully without interrupting their business. We lead the industry with a range of solutions from multi-tenant, dedicated tenant, and the ability to connect targeted on-prem sites to the cloud enabling us to deliver cloud value to all our customers. To deliver immediate value to all our customers regardless of where their architecture is, the new Webex app can support every user, on any architecture (on-prem, cloud, and anywhere in between).
• Webex Contact Center: We recognize that our UcaaS customers are also making cloud contact center decisions as part of their journey planning to the cloud. We have made significant investment to expand the capabilities of our Webex Contact Center offer to better meet customers’ needs and further integrate it with the rest of the Webex Suite. This included the acquisition of imimobile to deliver superior and flexible omnichannel  customer engagement, and the integration of the Webex App with the Webex  Contact Center application. Now, collaborating within the business on behalf of the customer is easier and more effective than ever.

Get more from Webex faster

• Single Offer with Webex Suite: In reaction to the new needs of hybrid work we launched our Webex Suite, that serves your traditional UCaaS needs of calling, meetings and messaging and delivers solutions for new hybrid work needs like events, polling, and broadcast. All of this at a much more competitive price, with high device discounting within enterprise agreements.
• Instant Purchasing on Webex.com: To meet every customer need in the market from the large enterprise to small – we have been investing to grow our product offerings digitally. On Webex.com, customers can learn about what we are doing, how we can help and how to get our Webex solutions. Customers can now get Calling and Meeting solutions directly on Webex.com.
• Calling plans and PSTN flexibility: Flexible and cost effective PSTN integration remains a critical component of UCaaS. We offer a wide range of options to address each customer’s needs: New Cisco provided calling plans, bring your own carrier via local gateways or direct cloud connection, and fully integrated cloud connected providers that can be provisioned directly from within Webex. Our Cisco Calling Plans are available in the U.S., Canada, and the United Kingdom. Webex Calling is available in 85+ countries with Cloud Connected PSTN supporting domestic calling in more than 65 countries.
• Webex partner ecosystem. We continue to engage our customers with our partners to provide local expertise across deployment, integration, and support worldwide. With over 1000 specialized Webex partners we have largest partner ecosystem of any UcaaS vendor. Our partner ecosystem is also the most experienced in the industry with deep expertise in all areas of collaboration.

Looking ahead

While it’s been a blistering year of progress in the collaboration space and our Webex portfolio, I see many transformative opportunities still ahead. With mobile usage exploding during the pandemic and continued need to support flexible hybrid work environments – we will continue to focus on meeting these growing customer needs with our innovation across collaboration and the mobile device. Last year, we all went through the increased usage of video experiences – this is another paradigm shift that we are excited to drive into the future especially with all workflows that start from a call. Regardless of how you communicate with someone, overtime, that should be as rich as speaking to them in person, even when you are miles apart. This is why we believe in taking the call from a hearing to seeing and eventually doing experience on Webex. Overall, our team is optimistic about what Webex will bring to market as a UCaaS solution provider to support our customers and partners in the hybrid world of tomorrow.

Click here to read the Gartner report

In the meantime make sure to join us at our annual WebexONE Event. We’ll provide exciting perspectives on key industry trends, our vision for Webex and detailed announcement on new product launches and future plans.

Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Unified Communications as a Service, Worldwide, Rafael Benitez, Megan Fernandez, Daniel O’Connell, Christopher Trueman, Pankil Sheth, 18 October 2021 

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. 

Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. 

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