UCaaS Subscriber Numbers are Blossoming; Mitel and RingCentral Lead

RENO, NV, March 6, 2018

New Q4 data from Synergy Research Group shows that UCaaS market growth continues unabated. For the fourth consecutive quarter, more than 300,000 subscriber seats were added to the global installed base, which is now growing by 29% per year. Mitel and RingCentral remain locked in a battle for market leadership. RingCentral has marginally more seats, but in Q4 Mitel growth was stronger. The two combined accounted for well over half of all seat growth in the quarter. Ranked numbers three and four for seat growth in Q4 were 8x8 and Fuze. In terms of installed base, the number three and four slots are taken by 8x8 and Cisco/Broadsoft. Synergy defines the UCaaS market as a communications service where service providers host and develop their own proprietary Cloud PBX platform, enabling PSTN connectivity and offering an integrated UC applications portfolio stack (Conferencing, Team Collaboration, IM&P). Service providers utilizing 3rd party call control including technology such as Broadsoft Broadworks or Cisco HCS are defined by Synergy as Hosted PBX.  Hosted PBX is excluded from Synergy's UCaaS Market Tracker but is tracked separately in another Synergy report. 

“UCaaS seat additions in 2017 were 16% higher than in 2016, which were themselves 11% up on 2015, demonstrating the robust demand for these services to displace traditional premise based telephony and UC,” said Jeremy Duke, Synergy Research Group’s founder and Chief Analyst. “Our firmographic analysis of this market also shows that UCaaS is gaining market acceptance momentum with large businesses and enterprises. Given the sheer scale of PBX installed base and the low penetration of UCaaS into those segments, this bodes well for continued strong growth.”