Cisco Systems has managed to maintain a narrow lead over main challenger Microsoft in the enterprise collaboration market in Q4 2017.
Cisco’s market share in the global enterprise collaboration market was stable over the four quarters of 2017, while Microsoft share rose during the year.
Cisco’s collaboration market share topped Microsoft by a percentage point or more over the first three quarters, but narrowed to substantially less than a percentage point in Q4. IBM and Avaya are the two technology vendors in the global collaboration market.
Cisco’s leadership is due to maintaining a dominant position in premise-based solutions while also growing its revenues in the hosted/cloud market segments. Microsoft holds a strong lead in hosted/cloud collaboration.
Other technology companies in the collaboration market include Mitel, Google, Polycom, LogMeIn, Genesys, AT&T, Verizon, RingCentral, UNIFY and ALE.
“Cisco and Microsoft clearly set themselves apart as large-scale vendors whose portfolios span multiple major segments of the market and whose activities span the globe,” Jeremy Duke, Synergy Research Group’s founder and Chief Analyst, said.
Cisco is a clear market leader in North America and APAC regions, while Microsoft has a lead in EMEA and Latin America.
Zoom, Fuze, RingCentral, Five9, Vonage, BlueJeans, Polycom and 8×8 achieved 20 percent growth.
The global collaboration revenues from enterprise voice, UC applications, telepresence, email software, enterprise content management, enterprise social networks and hosted/cloud communications and applications reached nearly $10 billion in Q4 2017.
Revenues from hosted/cloud solutions rose 26 percent. Revenue from premise-based systems declined 4 percent. Teamwork applications, cloud/hosted email, cloud file sharing and contact center as a service (CCaaS) achieved strong growth.
Teamwork applications is an emerging area that features Cisco’s Spark and vendors like Slack.
