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How UCAAS Has Changed

Gartner's Magic Quadrant is the go-to source when you want to know the players in a field such as UCAAS (unified communications as a service). The following table charts the dramatic changes from 2009 to 2021— players have appeared and players have disappeared, sometimes through acquisition, but more often not. Take a look and see if you agree with Gartner’s placements.

By Ellen Koskinen-Dodgson

Ellen Koskinen-Dodgson is President and Managing Partner of TMC IT and Telecom Consulting Inc. She is an IT and Telecommunications Management Consultant, electrical engineer, author, speaker, media resource and Expert Witness.

Gartner Magic Quadrant

The Gartner Magic Quadrant format identifies companies as Leaders, Challengers, Visionaries or Niche Players. The following table shows an extract of Magic Quadrant players over the years from 2009 to 2021.

Traditional PBX Players

The major players used to be the PBX manufacturers. In 2015, most of traditional telephony players had fallen off the grid except for Mitel., who bought Aastra in 2013 and Shoretel in 2017. Cisco didn’t make the cut for 3 years, then bought Broadsoft and were back to being a leader. Alcatel-Lucent also disappeared for 4 years.

IT Giants

IBM, Microsoft and SAP were early to the game but SAP disappeared by 2011. HP and Google (Google Hangouts, Google Voice…) appeared in 2015 but HP did not make it to 2016.

Carriers

Carriers got into the game in 2015 with AT&T, British Telecom, Verizon and others showing up. By 2019, most were gone, many brokering partnerships with RingCentral for UCAAS. Vonage remains.

Cloud-only Players

2015 was the year of new cloud-only players like 8x8, RingCentral, Star2Star, and Fuze. Zoom is a recent arrival.

Consolidations continued as 8x8 bought Fuze and Sangoma bought Star2Star in 2021.

Going Forward

RingCentral is signing a lot of deals, locking in their position as a heavyweight in this space. They signed a strategic partnership last year with Mitel to become the exclusive UCASS supplier to Mitel’s 35 million users.

Change will continue and I wonder which names will be missing in the 2022 Magic Quadrant?

Our complete table is on our website.

If you’d like to comment on this article or explore these ideas further, contact me at .

This article was published in the July 2022 edition of The TMC Advisor
- ISSN 2369-663X Volume:9 Issue:3

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