Gartner Magic Quadrant for Unied Communications 2016

Raising Questions about UC!

www.ucstrategies.com /unied-communications-strategies-views/gartner-magic-quadrant-for-uniedcommunications-2016-raising-questions-about-uc.aspx
By Marty Parker July 29, 2016
Gartner Magic Quadrant for Unied Communications 2016 Raising Questions
about UC! by Marty Parker
This years 14th annual Gartner Magic Quadrant for Unied Communications (UC MQ)
was published on July 13, 2016. The well-established UC experts Bern Elliot and
Steve Blood continue as authors and are joined this year by Megan Marek
Fernandez. As always, the report is a concise summary of the UC marketplace and
vendors. Complimentary copies of the 2016 UC MQ are oered by Microsoft and
Cisco at this time. Gartner notes that the UC MQ is now a (large) enterprise, onpremises UC report, since Mid-market UC and UC as a Service (USaaS Worldwide) are covered by separate
Magic Quadrant reports.
The 2016 UC MQ has some very clear messages of the evolving maturity of the market; Gartner opens with, As the
enterprise UC market continues to mature, we expect more consolidation and increased user expectations
prompting an emphasis on vendors' telephony capabilities and nancial viability. This continues the theme from last
years report.
Also, Gartner continues their denition of UC as, The primary goal of all UC solutions is to improve user productivity
and to enhance the business processes related to communications and collaboration. Both UCStrategies and
UniComm Consulting have been supporting this denition for over a decade, summarizing UC as, Communications
integrated to optimize business processes. Even the user productivity goal, if measured, will optimize business
processes, since the productivity, by denition, results in more output per unit of input.
As always in a Gartner MQ, vendors are categorized into four quadrants. This years quadrants are:
Leaders Quadrant: Cisco, Microsoft, Mitel, Avaya
Challengers: NEC, ALE, and Huawei
Visionaries: Unify
Niche Players: ShoreTel, Interactive Intelligence
The dynamics of the relative positioning since 2015 are that Cisco held its leading position while Microsoft declined
slightly based on the eects of Microsofts evolution to Oce 365 Cloud Voice. Avaya declined slightly in ability to
execute, but remained in the Leaders quadrant. Unify moved from Niche to Visionary while ShoreTel moved the
opposite way. Huawei advanced from Niche to Challenger based on the increasing strength of their UC portfolio and
geographic coverage. IBM departed the UC MQ based on IBMs shifting emphasis to work stream collaboration via
the IBM Connections oer, in lieu of a continued emphasis on voice telephony. All others remained essentially the
same, year to year.
With those highlights, the rest of this post is the authors analysis and viewpoint.
It seems to me that this 2016 UC MQ raises far more questions than it answers, resulting in mixed messages for the

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readers and the enterprise decision makers. Lets cover a few of them, briey.

Is the future focus on Telephony or on UC?

Gartner says that consolidation of UC vendors and increased user expectations of UC prompt an emphasis on
vendors telephony capabilities. Based on our UniComm Consulting engagements, that is the exact opposite of
whats happening in many organizations. Email and IM are dominating; work stream and workow software use is
increasing; most enterprise voice is now consumed in meetings rather than calls; and a continuing growth of cellular
voice is marginalizing the PBX in most cases (run your PBX reports please!). Enterprises will be well-advised to
understand this dynamic in their businesses before investing in UC.

What is the message about Cloud UC?

Gartner points out that The integration of on-premises UC with cloud and hybrid UC services continues to play an
increasingly important role as these options (cloud and hybrid) mature. Yes, this sentence rings true; however, it
may understate the disruption that is likely to occur. Of the 20 vendors in the 2015 UCaaS MQ, only three of them
Microsoft, Mitel, ShoreTel are also in this 2016 UC MQ, and none of these three are in the UCaaS MQ Leaders
Quadrant. It seems pretty impossible to make a UC decision without evaluating the evolving state of UCaaS.
Also, Gartner says that, All UC vendors in this report have a cloud solution. But lets be clear, many of them (such
as Avaya or Cisco HCS) are just oering hosted versions of the on-premises products and do not deliver the agility,
new functionality, nor economy provided by a native cloud oer (such as provided by Interactive Intelligence Pure
Cloud, Microsoft Oce 365 Cloud Voice, NEC Blue, ShoreTel Connect Cloud). Further, cloud communications
needed by an enterprise are very unlikely to be provided all by one company interoperation in the cloud will
change the game, providing communications tools or "Apps" from a portfolio of cloud vendors.

Which vendors are nancially suitable for long-term partnerships?

As above, Gartner emphasizes the nancial viability of the UC MQ vendors. However, the necessary data are not
uniformly visible. Half of the vendors nancials (Cisco, Huawei, Microsoft, NEC and Unify) are buried in their parent
companys results. In these cases its more important to know the overall corporate strategies related to networks
(2), productivity software, technology portfolio, and IT Services. Which strategy are you betting on for UC?
Gartner raises questions or advises caution for ALE, Avaya, and Mitel and does not comment on Interactive
Intelligence or ShoreTel nancials. However, ININ and SHOR are public companies and it is easy to see that they
are each operating at breakeven levels with revenues in the range of $400M per year, an order of magnitude below
the largest rms in the UC market.
Thus, nancial viability is not a sure thing for any of the UC MQ vendors.

How will work stream collaboration be adopted in the enterprise?

Our UCStrategies Expert Dave Michels was the rst analyst with the work stream collaboration theme, as I recall. It
is a powerful concept, very closely related to CEBP, in which communications is intrinsic to the work stream of the
worker (which UniComm Consulting categorizes into Usage Proles). If this plays out in the ways it seems to be
going, the leaders of work stream collaboration will not come from this 2016 UC MQ vendor list, with the possible
exception of Microsofts blend of Oce 365 and Dynamics. Rather, the leaders are likely to be Salesforce.com,
Slack, IBM Connections, and others. Perhaps, IBMs exit from the UC MQ shows foresight, not failure.
Gartner says that, Half of the vendors in this years Magic Quadrant have added this capability to their UC
portfolios... However, its not clear that any of them, including Microsoft, are prepared to win in this emerging space
lled by native cloud-based work stream services.

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If Communications-Enabled Business Processes (CEBP) are an important direction, then is

an IP PBX architecture the best platform for CEBP?
Gartner notes that communications platform as a service (cPaaS) is increasingly seen as an important option for
partners and clients wishing to develop digital business initiatives. However, much as with work stream
collaboration, this market for communications platforms is developing very independently from the UC vendor list.
Sure, the incumbent UC vendors are rebranding and repackaging their application development and integration
suites; some are investing in this area as part of their portfolio (e.g. Ciscos acquisition of Tropo). But we dont see
much evidence that the UC (often the telephony department) in enterprise IT departments are making themselves
known to the application developers as the cPaaS of choice.

What are the correct designs for the enterprise UC User Experiences (UXs)?
Finally, Gartner places great emphasis on the UX as the vehicle for integrating the communications services. Yes,
this is important, but for work stream communications and CEBP, where the greatest value will be found for business
processes and user productivity, the UX will more likely be driven by the business process or work stream or
workow software packages, rather than by the UC vendors software client.
These are all important questions. Answering these questions would seem mandatory in order to develop an
enterprise communications strategy as the basis for continuing UC investment. However, these questions cannot be
answered within the limits of this UC MQ. Besides the Mid-Market UC and UCaaS MQs, decision makers will need
to look at Magic Quadrants such as Social Software for the Workplace, Enterprise Content Management, Web
Conferencing, CRM applications, and more.
The bottom line, it seems, is that UC can be analyzed as a stand-alone decision only at the peril of the
organizations agility and economic eciency. Communications has been diversied and modularized to such an
extent that investment decisions will require an understanding of how communications will support and enhance the
business processes and will support the participants (employees, contractors, partners, customers, clients) in those
business processes.
Enterprise decision makers (and their vendors) are faced with a tough choice. The instinct at this time is to watch
and wait as native cloud, work stream communications, CEBP and cPaaS mature. Yet waiting runs the risk of
missing the boat, as they say. My advice is to pick one or two Usage Proles where these innovations will have the
greatest benet and run one or more pilot projects right now, from a mix of cloud-based vendors, whether those are
from the UC MQ or UCaaS MQ or not. Things are changing dramatically and you want to be ready for the pivot.
Again, this year, the Gartner UC MQ is extremely valuable. Asking the right questions is often much more important
than just having the right answer to the wrong question. So, thanks, Gartner, for posing these important questions.

Also on UCStrategies.com on this topic:

UCStrategies' Take on the Gartner Magic Quadrant for UC, Industry Buzz Podcast

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