Microsoft Again Trails Cisco as UC Collaboration Market Hits All-Time High

RENO, NV, March 17, 2015

New Q4 data from Synergy Research Group shows that Cisco surged away from Microsoft in enterprise UC collaboration as revenues from the market hit an all-time high. Microsoft’s market share hit a peak in the first half of 2014 and it briefly matched Cisco for market leadership, but since then Cisco has accelerated away and has once again achieved a clear leadership role. In Q4 Cisco benefitted from a strong 9% sequential increase in revenues while Microsoft’s sequential growth was just 2%. Revenues from UC 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 $8.5 billion in the quarter, with Cisco’s overall share standing at 16%. Total revenues for the quarter were up 2% year on year. Revenues continued to decline for enterprise voice and telepresence while segments with strong growth included hosted voice & UCaaS, hosted contact center, enterprise social networking and enterprise presence/IM. Across all applications, revenues from premise-based solutions fell 1% year on year while revenue from hosted/cloud solutions grew by 6%. Hosted/cloud solutions now account for almost half of the total UC collaboration market.

“While revenues from enterprise IP telephony are clearly continuing to decline, Cisco saw a very nice year-end bump in its telephony revenues which helped it to distance itself from Microsoft,” said Jeremy Duke, Synergy Research Group’s founder and Chief Analyst. “The real bright spot for Microsoft is that it has clear leadership in hosted/cloud solutions which are also the highest growth part of the market. Cisco dominates in premise-based solutions but the general trend is for hosted/cloud revenues to catch up with and surpass premise-based revenues."