Gartners 2018 UCaaS Magic Quadrant Rundown

This post originally appeared on GetVOIP.com. Access the original article by clicking here.

With much anticipation, we have finally managed to get our hands on the latest UCaaS Magic Quadrant release from Gartner this year. We utilize the Magic Quadrant results in a number of industries to help us better understand the current market landscape, as well as dramatic shifts that occur year over year. Gartner analysis is of course highly respected, and serves as a strong authority.

This latest UCaaS Magic Quadrant was released in early October, and covers the entire worldwide UCaaS market, highlighting vendors that have a strong domestic as well as international presence. According to Gartner’s recent findings, the UC market is currently making a fundamental shift away from legacy and premise-based solutions, in favor of cloud delivered Unified Communications as a Service options.

Gartner’s UCaaS Definition

In order to provide greater context, it always makes sense to go back and make sure we establish a common understanding for exactly whatever it is we’re discussing. We offer our own guide to Unified Communications and Collaboration, but also Gartner places a specific definition behind the term UCaaS, and separates the technology a bit from its older legacy brother, Unified Communications.

Simply put, Unified Communications (UC) represents legacy, premise based solutions. These require costly hardware to be installed within the premises of an organization, then established and maintained by an in-house IT department. Legacy UC solutions are, of course, falling in popularity and have been for years now.

On the other hand, we have Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS), which is what this most recent Magic Quadrant focuses on. Now this is an important distinction, primarily to understand who and what we’re looking at, but also to recognize that Gartner puts out a Magic Quadrant for both UCaaS and UC, independently.

UC and UCaaS are roughly the same, and differ mostly on their delivery methods. According to the UCaaS Magic Quadrant, “Gartner defines unified communications as a service as supporting the same functions as its premises-based unified communications counterpart.” These platforms generally includes six specific functionalities:

• Voice and Telephony
• Meeting Solutions
• Messaging
• Presence and IM
• Clients
• Communications-enabled business processes

Now that we understand the distinction being placed, and what solutions we are focusing our attention on, we can better understand Gartner’s future predictions, and current assessments.

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