Cisco Strengthens Collaboration Leadership Despite Disruptive Competitors

RENO, NV, September 11, 2015

New Q2 data from Synergy Research Group shows that collaboration market leader Cisco widened the gap with its chief challenger Microsoft, thanks to achieving considerably stronger growth in premise-based solutions where it has a 25% market share. For the second consecutive quarter total revenues from hosted/cloud solutions exceeded those of premise-based collaboration, but the competitive landscape is very different in this segment with no single vendor able to achieve a 10% market share. Microsoft continues to lead in hosted/cloud collaboration followed by Cisco, Google, Verizon and AT&T – with the latter three having almost identical market shares. The total collaboration market grew 5% year on year with Cisco increasing its share to 15%. Other major players in the market include Avaya, IBM, Polycom, Citrix, Mitel, UNIFY and ALE. Total revenues from collaboration - which includes enterprise voice, UC applications, telepresence, email software, enterprise content management, enterprise social networks and a range of hosted/cloud communications and applications - were approaching $9 billion in the quarter. Revenues from hosted/cloud solutions continue to grow strongly - up 10% year on year - while revenue from premise-based systems were flat. During the quarter particularly strong growth was seen in hosted contact center, hosted video, hosted voice & UCaaS, and a range of other hosted solutions. Hosted teamwork applications is a new emerging area that will see aggressive growth, featuring Cisco's Spark and vendors like Slack, Cotap and Redbooth.

“Microsoft has been a significant disruptor in collaboration but it is now joined by a range of other disruptive companies, including inContact, BlueJeans, RingCentral, and 8x8. A dozen companies achieved annual growth rates in excess of 25% with some achieving over 50%,” said Jeremy Duke, Synergy Research Group’s founder and Chief Analyst. “However, thanks to a strong position across a wide range of segments Cisco continues to fend them off and its market share in Q2 was actually marginally ahead of what it achieved throughout 2014.”