Cisco in 2017 Gartner Unified Communications Reports

Digitization, workplace transformation, investment protection. These are all top-of-mind subjects that come up in my conversations. Many of you are currently evaluating your collaboration strategies and thinking about how to evolve your unified communications solutions.

There’s no doubt that the UC market is dynamic and fast-paced. Products and vendor solutions evolve constantly, as do user requirements and the very nature of work. Analysts can provide unbiased product evaluations to help you make the right decisions for your business.

Gartner’s Magic Quadrant reports provide a wide-angle view of the relative positions of a market’s competitors. The placement of the Magic Quadrant “dots” is based on each vendors’ ability to execute and completeness of vision. Gartner divides UC into six broad communications product areas:

Telephony

Meeting solutions

Messaging

Presence and IM

Clients

Communication-enabled business processes

Gartner analysts evaluated many factors across both execution and completeness of vision for each vendor. For example in the ability to execute category, “Gartner analysts evaluate UC product providers based on the quality, efficacy and overall maturity of the products, systems, tools and procedures that enhance individual, group and enterprise communications.” Highest weighted criteria in this category are “product or service” and “overall viability.” In the completeness of vision category, “Gartner analysts evaluate UC product providers and their ability to convincingly articulate logical statements about current and future market directions, innovations, customer needs and competitive forces, and how well those map to Gartner’s overall evaluation of the market.” Highest weighted criteria in this category are “market strategy” and “vertical/industry strategy.”

It’s an extensive process. We’re pleased that Gartner has positioned Cisco as a leader in its 2017 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Unified Communications based on “completeness of vision” and “ability to execute” for the last 10 years.

We continue to expand and integrate our UC and collaboration portfolio to serve organizations of all sizes. Our goal: Offer flexible deployment options and simplify platform choices to serve your business today and as it evolves. An essential part of that is enabling consistent and easy-to-use collaboration experiences that help your teams easily work and be more productive anywhere. Based on user feedback and assessments like Gartner’s, we believe this strategy is working.

Gartner also scored Cisco highly in its companion report, Critical Capabilities for Unified Communications 2017. According to Gartner “this research is intended to help organizations define their requirements and select specific products that match their needs from the vendors included in the ‘Magic Quadrant for Unified Communications.’’’

Cisco achieved the highest scores across all five critical capabilities use cases:

Full UC with strong telephony

Full UC with strong collaboration

Full UC for midsize organizations

Ability to offer hybrid solutions

Integration with contact center solutions

We believe, the report structure lets you focus on those uses cases that are most strategic for your business. Combining the perspectives from the two Gartner reports gives you a strong view both of the business and technical capabilities of UC vendors, as well as an evaluation of future direction.

Looking for more insight? Find these and more analyst evaluations of collaboration solutions, including contact center and web conferencing.

Source: Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Unified Communications, Steve Blood, Megan Marek Fernandez, Mike Fasciani, Rafael A Benitez, 19 July 2017. 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.

Source: Gartner, Critical Capabilities for Unified Communications, Mike Fasciani, Megan Marek Fernandez, Steve Blood, Rafael A Benitez, 19 July 2017.