The Aragon Research Globe for Unified Communications and Collaboration, 2021 - Fuze
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The Aragon Research Globe™ for Unified
Communications and Collaboration, 2021
Hybrid Work Requires a Full Voice, Video, and Messaging Platform
Author: Jim Lundy June 22, 2021 | Research Note 2021-22
Topic: Unified communications
and collaboration
Issue: Who are the unified
communications and collaboration
providers, and how will they
evolve?
SUMMARY
Aragon Research releases its fifth Aragon Research
Globe™ for Unified Communications and Collaboration
(UC&C) that examines 16 major providers. The demand
for an integrated UC&C platform is growing as the need
for integrated voice, video meetings, and messaging is
vital to allow people to work together and also to
collaborate with customers. UC&C platforms have come
of age, and the new race is to deliver an intelligent
experience.
Copyright © 2021 Aragon Research Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction .................................................................................................................................................. 3
The Surge in Video Meetings—the New Hybrid Work Model....................................................................... 3
The Vital Need for Omnichannel UC&C Capabilities—Voice and Messaging .............................................. 3
Team Collaboration as the New Dial Tone in the COVID Era ....................................................................... 3
The Strategic Nature of Team Collaboration—The Chatbots Are Coming ................................................... 4
The Intelligent UC&C Platform ..................................................................................................................... 4
The Automation of Meetings: Assistants, Notes, and Actions are Just the Start ........................................ 5
Seamless Modalities and Full Functionality ................................................................................................. 6
Going Beyond a Unified Client to a Unified Experience............................................................................... 7
The UC&C and Contact Center—Better Together ....................................................................................... 8
The Key Elements of the UC&C Platform ..................................................................................................... 8
Voice: Cloud Migration Continues, But Containerization Is an Option ........................................................ 8
The Debate Is Over—Video Meetings Become a Key Part of the Workplace .............................................. 8
The Race to HD Video: 1080p Slowly Comes Online .................................................................................. 9
4K Video Is Still a Desired State ................................................................................................................... 9
Team Collaboration—A Remote Work Catalyst ......................................................................................... 10
CPaaS and Use Cases—APIs and the Promise of New Experiences........................................................ 10
Cloud-Based UC&C and Marketplaces—Keys to Better Integration ......................................................... 11
The Landscape of UC&C............................................................................................................................ 11
How to Use This Globe .............................................................................................................................. 11
Aragon Research Globe Overview ............................................................................................................. 12
The Aragon Research Globe™ for Unified Communications and Collaboration, 2021............................... 13
Leaders....................................................................................................................................................... 14
Contenders ................................................................................................................................................. 23
Innovators................................................................................................................................................... 28
UC&C and the Digital Enterprise—Communications for Hybrid Work ....................................................... 29
Aragon Advisory ......................................................................................................................................... 30
Bottom Line ................................................................................................................................................ 30
Dimensions of Analysis .............................................................................................................................. 31
The Four Sectors of the Globe ................................................................................................................... 32
Inclusion Criteria......................................................................................................................................... 32
Inclusions ................................................................................................................................................... 33
Exclusions .................................................................................................................................................. 33
Copyright © 2021 Aragon Research Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Aragon Research and the Aragon Research Globe are
trademarks of Aragon Research Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. This publication may not be distributed
in any form without Aragon Research’s prior written permission. The information contained in this publication has been obtained from sources
believed to be reliable. Nevertheless, Aragon Research provides this publication and the information contained in it "AS IS," without warranty
of any kind. To the maximum extent allowed by law, Aragon Research expressly disclaims all warranties as to the accuracy, completeness or
adequacy of such information and shall have no liability for errors, omissions or inadequacies in such information.
This publication consists of the opinions of Aragon Research and Advisory Services organization and should not be construed as statements
of fact. The opinions expressed herein are subject to change without notice. Although Aragon Research may include a discussion of related
legal issues, Aragon Research does not provide legal advice or services and its research should not be construed or used as such. Aragon
Research is a private company and its clients may include firms or financial institutions that have financial interests in entities covered by Aragon
Research. Further information about the objectivity of Aragon Research can be found at aragonresearch.com
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Introduction
As the world starts to return to normal, we can observe that video communications
became the dominant form of interaction during the pandemic. The need for
communications and collaboration became vital, as did the need for omnichannel
capabilities due to the way that people interact both internally and externally. Many
providers have been updated during this time, and nearly all providers have significantly
increased their capabilities in video conferencing. While messaging is still the area to
watch, video has overtaken voice calls as the most sought-after collaboration medium.
The big theme for 2021 and beyond is intelligent communications and collaboration as
the age of understanding is now here. In this fifth Globe for Unified Communications and
Collaboration (UC&C), Aragon examines 16 providers.
The Surge in Video Meetings—the New Hybrid Work Model
Video conferencing surged to the forefront in 2020, as people around the globe had to
work from home. Now, in 2021, video conferencing is the must-have UC&C application
to support hybrid work. It isn’t that meetings were not held with video conferencing in
the past, but that for so many use cases, video is a more proven way to collaborate
effectively.
During the pandemic, remote learning was conducted using video conferencing.
Similarly, telehealth, which uses video conferencing for doctor-patient communication,
took off as well. For the enterprise, video meetings are also the de facto UC&C use case.
Due to demand, many enterprises have multiple best-of-breed video conferencing
services but are settling for one UC&C provider for overall communications.
The Vital Need for Omnichannel UC&C Capabilities—Voice and Messaging
The reason for the UC&C platform’s demand is that providers can offer multiple means
of communicating—calls, voice, video meetings, and enterprise-grade messaging. In
particular, the need to contact people during emergencies often requires omnichannel
communications capabilities such as voice or messaging.
New emergency broadcast capabilities are becoming important features that many
UC&C providers are now offering. We note that emergency broadcast capabilities have
become popular on higher education campuses, but we see this transitioning to the
enterprise as well.
Team Collaboration as the New Dial Tone in the COVID Era
Team collaboration became more important over the last year mainly because people had
© 2021 Aragon Research Inc. and or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
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to work remotely due to COVID-19. Now, more firms have a team collaboration offering as
one of their go-to applications.
Many front-line worker jobs depend on team collaboration, which was the case before
COVID. How many knowledge workers are also depending on team collaboration because
of the lack of being together with co-workers?
The Strategic Nature of Team Collaboration—The Chatbots Are Coming
We are on the cusp of a change in the way work gets done. Computer interfaces are
becoming more human-like. The ability to chat with an application is what this is all about.
Digital labor will become a force in the digital workplace. Because it uses both bots and
chat, team collaboration is the ideal interface for humans to converse with each other and
for humans and bots to do the same.
Today, many team collaboration providers offer their own chatbot, build a platform, or
partner with best-of-breed chatbot providers. While today, the justification for
collaboration is for human-to-human collaboration, Aragon expects that by 2023, human-
to-human and human-to-chatbot conversations will be at nearly the same ratio.
Prediction: By YE 2023, 50% of knowledge workers will have as many conversations with
a chatbot as they do with humans (60% probability).
The Intelligent UC&C Platform
We are in a transition from analog features that merge together to true intelligent
communications platforms. Combining the ability to communicate via multiple channels
based on profiles is vital for situations such as emergencies. Outside exceptional
circumstances, though, the ability to understand current and past communications can
provide powerful insights. These are just some aspects of intelligent UC&C platforms.
Aragon is predicting that by 2025 a majority of the enterprise UC&C offerings will have
significant intelligence capabilities. In the short term, conversational intelligence, also
known as voice analytics, is increasingly becoming a key part of UC&C offerings.
In video conferencing and voice conferencing, new features such as the ability to
automatically create transcripts that translate conversations, take notes, and share those
notes and actions post-call are becoming core to platform intelligence. The new level of
intelligence that is being added to UC&C offerings means that the setup experience, the
meeting experience, and the access to post-event content are more seamless and more
automated (see Table 1 below).
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Capability Intelligent UC&C Platforms Traditional UC&C
Emergency Broadcast Yes Optional
Sound Management Yes Optional
Auto Transcription Yes Optional
Virtual Agent for Note- Yes No
taking & Action Items
Auto Language Translation Yes No
Gesture Control Yes No
Intelligent Cameras Yes Yes
Speaker Track Yes Optional
HD Video 1080P and higher 360P and higher
HD Content Sharing Yes Standard Resolution
Integrated Hardware and Yes Optional
Software
Digital White Board Yes Optional
APIs and Integrations Advanced Basic
People and Meeting Advanced Basic
Analytics
Table 1: Intelligent UC&C platform capabilities vs. traditional UC&C capabilities.
The Automation of Meetings: Assistants, Notes, and Actions are Just the Start
Over the past year, many providers have added automatic transcription to their platform
(Cisco, Google, LogMeIn, Microsoft, and Zoom). It isn’t just about transcription; it is
about translation. Microsoft started this trend in 2019 and currently supports about 36
languages that can be translated at the desktop. Cisco recently upped the game and
now supports up to 100 different languages being translated during a single meeting.
This now means that global audiences can listen to and understand a live meeting in
their native language with no translators required.
Note-taking is also not new, but more providers now enable automated note-taking
during a meeting. Some providers such as BlueJeans and Cisco now allow action items
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to be shared. Many providers partner for such capabilities but more of them are adding
it in as a native capability, which is truly shifting the video conferencing category towards
intelligent video conferencing.
The final part of the automation play is adding virtual agents or assistants to the mix.
Conversational AI is starting to come online in many use cases, such as internal help
desk and customer support. To date, Cisco is still one of the only vendors that has an
integrated virtual assistant that will take commands from humans and do actions such
as document action items and then distribute them.
Prediction: By YE 2021, 50% of UC&C providers will offer an AI-based digital assistant
to enable a more seamless collaboration experience.
Seamless Modalities and Full Functionality
With the features of UC&C well-established, now begins the race to offer a seamless
experience, robust analytics, automation, and intelligence. Seamless switching between
modalities is a given, but for many providers, it is still about making this process as easy
as possible. Real-time interactions, particularly messaging and meetings, have seen
huge increases in usage due to the current global health crisis.
Aragon recommends that all modalities—calling, meetings, and messaging—need to be
full UC&C capabilities when it comes to functionality. Team collaboration is key here,
and comparisons should be made with current tools in use to make sure that they can
deliver the desired functionality.
Figure 1: Best-of-breed applications are evolving to become complete UC&C platforms as enterprises want more
options for communications and collaboration.
© 2021 Aragon Research Inc. and or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
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Going Beyond a Unified Client to a Unified Experience
The vision of people-centric collaboration involves putting the user first. An integrated
client has become a standard capability for UC&C platforms. Many vendors now offer a
single unified client—including Cisco, Fuze, Microsoft, RingCentral, Vonage, and
Zoom—but now the challenge is to offer a unified experience. Use cases are helping to
drive this, as will the addition of intelligence through predictive and prescriptive analytics.
At its core, people-centric collaboration is about enabling seamless communications and
collaboration. It allows for calls that are both voice-based and video-based; it enables
meetings with users and rooms; it is about the shift from instant messaging to mobile
messaging, a shift that we have termed mobile collaboration. However, not all have been
quick to recognize these changes in the market, particularly the impact of mobile
messaging.
Figure 2: Unified clients make the communications and collaboration experience more seamless.
© 2021 Aragon Research Inc. and or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
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The UC&C and Contact Center—Better Together
There are many use cases, such as sales communications, where UC&C and contact
center capabilities are needed. That said, more enterprises see the value of having a
broader range of contact center features to offer. At the same time, contact center
buyers see the value in leveraging existing telephony investments.
So, while contact center is not part of this Globe criteria, the integration of UC&C and
intelligent contact centers is a reality. Many providers in this report offer their own
contact center solution or they partner.
The Key Elements of the UC&C Platform
Just like contact center, UC&C platforms have become adept at multi-channel
communications and collaboration. Each element of UC&C is important, and a common
client that allows for seamless shifts between modalities is key. The demand for the key
elements of the UC&C platform is being influenced by current shifts in the market.
Voice: Cloud Migration Continues, But Containerization Is an Option
While the shift to a cloud-based PBX has been one of the key drivers for the growth of
UC&C, there is now another option that enterprises have called hybrid cloud. Kubernetes
containerization (aka hybrid cloud) means that enterprises can run their service in a local
data center while still having a vendor manage the service.
Cloud telephony, also called unified communications as a service (UCaaS), has been the
largest trend in migrating legacy PBXs. Voice telephony is vital to both employee
engagement and customer experience.
The key thing that enterprises need to do is decide on one platform—either full cloud or
hybrid cloud. Note that the cost of keeping old and new systems isn’t beneficial and can
be very expensive. In some cases, a hosted offering that gives the benefit of cloud and
data privacy will be as popular as a multi-tenant offering.
Post-pandemic, there is a desire to upgrade or replace aging PBXs. However, large
enterprises should evaluate hybrid cloud offerings due to specific needs, such as
security and data residency.
The Debate Is Over—Video Meetings Become a Key Part of the Workplace
Over the last ten years, there has been a debate about the value of video meetings. Given
the COVID pandemic and the forced nature of remote work, that debate is over. Video
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meetings are here to stay. The challenge is to continually make them more seamless,
more automated, and with better overall quality.
The workplace truly did become digital in 2020, and while demand for all forms of
communication and collaboration increased, it was video meetings that kept teams on
track, kept customer engagement moving, and kept the enterprise operating. Aragon
has espoused the benefits of video conferencing for years—but now it is mandatory.
There is better recall from a video conference, and Aragon believes that video meetings
are now 50% more effective than traditional audio conferences.
Not only do video conferencing providers need to provide a seamless experience, but
they also need to do it across devices. While conference rooms took a back seat in 2020,
the fact remains that users have different ways of connecting to a meeting, and providers
are responding with better solutions.
The Race to HD Video: 1080p Slowly Comes Online
Video quality does make a difference for a small or a large event. Video resolution should
be a buying criterion that plays into which service is selected. Users still prefer 1080p
over 720p, and vendors that can provide higher quality generally can win more business
than those that can’t.
One of the issues with higher resolution video has to do with compression and codecs.
While H.264 has been one of the standards for 1080p, new compression algorithms have
come online, such as NVIDIA’s Maxine platform. Maxine provides the ability to offer both
lower and higher resolution without needing more bandwidth. Avaya Spaces is currently
one of the few providers that is leveraging NVIDIA Maxine in its offering.
4K Video Is Still a Desired State
4K video for the enterprise remains a desired capability, but one that most enterprises are not
leveraging. We feel that offerings such as NVIDIA Maxine demonstrate the potential for this to
happen faster. To date, Avaya, Cisco, Google, Haivision, and Lifesize offer true 4K support.
Besides NVIDIA Maxine, the secure reliable transport (SRT) standard, pioneered by Haivision,
enables better encoding and compression and has more providers supporting it.
© 2021 Aragon Research Inc. and or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
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Team Collaboration—A Remote Work Catalyst
Before team collaboration, there was instant messaging. Remote work has always been
about collaborating, and now, as remote work has become the new normal, the usage
of team collaboration is at an all-time high and poised to go higher.
For workers, team collaboration allows them to stay in touch with teammates, which is
vital to enable team members to have a feeling of connection to their work. Likewise, for
managers, team collaboration is a key way to collaborate with groups and with
individuals. It does not replace regular 1:1s, but it does make the ad-hoc chat and check-
in far less obtrusive.
Increasingly, team collaboration is becoming the container for work and work projects.
Team collaboration is well-positioned to challenge email as a go-to application for day-to-
day interactions and ad-hoc work.
We see team collaboration being adopted by teams and entire enterprises. Some
enterprises use team collaboration apps to simplify company-wide messaging, either for
company updates or, more importantly, for emergency notifications. Notifications have
become important in university settings and are now becoming a priority in the enterprise.
However, team collaboration often still starts with a specific team that decides to
implement collaboration at work. For example, we see marketing teams using team
collaboration for events to coordinate and communicate with both the internal and external
teams involved.
Today, team collaboration is about teams interacting, but it is also about bots interacting.
This is one of the biggest trends that has come about in the last year.
CPaaS and Use Cases—APIs and the Promise of New Experiences
There is no doubt that UC&C providers that have full APIs offer enterprises more integration
capabilities. CPaaS (APIs) is enabling the integration of voice, video, and team collaboration
with other applications. Many providers are making their CPaaS capabilities a core part of
their platform, which powers their solution efforts.
A number of providers offer standalone CPaaS services so enterprises can build applications.
Vonage is a good example of this. Cisco has allowed providers to leverage its full APIs to build
new offerings, such as Webex Legislate.
© 2021 Aragon Research Inc. and or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
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Cloud-Based UC&C and Marketplaces—Keys to Better Integration
More providers offer out-of-the-box integrations with third-party applications, and they are
offering these integrations via a marketplace. These app integrations work through pre-
configured connectors that leverage the APIs mentioned above.
Nearly every vendor in this report now offers a UC&C marketplace (see Table 2 below). Buyers
will still need to validate that the connector they are interested in actually works.
The Landscape of UC&C
The UC&C market has matured, and while there are still a few providers that lack in one
area of functionality, most can deliver on the promise of calling, meetings, and messaging
and do so in an integrated fashion. Some of the capabilities to consider when evaluating
a provider:
1. Providers that have a complete offering and can do it all.
2. Best-of-breed providers that may offer a superior experience for one modality.
For this, refer to additional research on video conferencing and team
collaboration.
3. Global execution capabilities. Providers that have national and global delivery
capabilities with proven reliability.
Many of the providers evaluated in this Globe report are at different stages of an
integrated UC&C offering—all have different strengths across their portfolios.
Partnerships and integrations are an area to watch for enterprise buyers.
How to Use This Globe
With the features of UC&C well-established, now begins the race to differentiate
offerings through better analytics and national and global availability. Seamless
switching between modalities is a given. The decision to select a UC&C provider has
now become more strategic, as these platforms will see a surge in usage. Real-time
interactions, particularly messaging and meetings, are expected to grow above industry
averages due to the current global health crisis.
Our advice to enterprise buyers is to first consider what your core requirements are in
regard to UC&C. We encourage buyers to go beyond just the positions on the Globe
graph: consider which capabilities and products best fit the required use cases that
pertain to your enterprise or buying center. For example, if the requirement is for global
calling, this may change the list of finalist providers that you consider.
© 2021 Aragon Research Inc. and or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
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The table below segments the providers in this report by the key capabilities they support:
Vendor On- Cloud Video Team Unified Marketplace
Premise Voice PBX Meetings Collaboration Client
Offering
8x8 ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
Avaya ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
Cisco ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
Dialpad ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
Fuze ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
Google ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
Intermedia ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
LogMeIn ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
Microsoft ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
Mitel ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
NEC ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
Nextiva ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
RingCentral ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
Unify ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
Vonage ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
Zoom ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
Table 2: Comparing the capabilities of the different providers.
Aragon Research Globe Overview
The Aragon Research Globe graphically represents our analysis of a specific market and
its component vendors. We do a rigorous analysis of each vendor, using three dimensions
that enable comparative evaluation of the participants in a given market.
The Aragon Research Globe looks beyond size and market share, which often dominate
this type of analysis, and instead uses those as comparative factors in evaluating
providers’ product-oriented capabilities. Positioning in the Globe will reflect how complete
a provider’s future strategy is, relative to their performance in fulfilling that strategy in the
market.
A further differentiating factor is the global market reach of each vendor. This allows all
vendors with similar strategy and performance to be compared regardless of their size and
market share. It will improve recognition of providers with a comprehensive strategy and
strong performance, but limited or targeted global penetration, which will be compared
more directly to others with similar perspectives.
© 2021 Aragon Research Inc. and or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
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The Aragon Research Globe™ for Unified Communications and
Collaboration, 2021
(As of 6/22/21)
Figure 3: The Aragon Research Globe for Unified Communications and Collaboration, 2021.
© 2021 Aragon Research Inc. and or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
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Leaders
8x8
8x8, which announced industry veteran David Sipes as CEO in December 2020, offers the 8x8
X Series that includes integrated unified communications and contact center. In addition to Dave
Sipes, 8x8 has added a number of new executives to the firm, including Walt Weisner as Chief
Customer Officer and Amritesh Chaudhuri as Chief Marketing Officer. In May 2021, 8x8
announced its integrated UC&C and contact center offering that it calls XCaaS or experience
communications as a service. The 8x8 XCaaS platform includes calling, messaging, and video
meetings as well as contact center and CPaaS.
8x8 also offers 8x8 Team Messaging, its team collaboration offering that is bundled with its X
Series plans. The enhanced capabilities include SMS, MMS, and 1:1 and team chat with file
sharing. Besides its own messaging offering, 8x8 also offers 8x8 Voice for Microsoft Teams, and
with it, the ability to offer voice calling in 43 countries. Part of the renewed product focus at 8x8
also means that it announced a financially backed SLA that offers a 99.99% uptime guarantee
across its platforms.
With 8x8 Meet, it offers a full web and mobile experience as part of the 8x8 Work desktop, mobile
and web client. 8x8 also offers a room solution. 8x8 X Series also includes an integration
framework that allows 8x8 users to have more seamless connectivity with over 35 partner apps,
including Microsoft Dynamics, Salesforce, and Slack. 8x8 has a growing global cloud footprint
that includes data centers in North America, the UK, Amsterdam, APAC, and Brazil.
Strengths Challenges
● Cloud-based PBX ● Overall focus on team collaboration
● Video meetings
● UC&C and contact center integration
● Contact center
● Partner integrations
● CRM integration
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Avaya
Avaya continued to invest and innovate in UC&C in 2020. As part of Avaya OneCloud UCaaS, it offers
a broad portfolio of UC&C offerings available both on-premise and in the cloud. Avaya Cloud Office,
powered by RingCentral, has seen strong adoption and has been embraced by Avaya’s large partner
network. Avaya Spaces is Avaya’s native platform, which provides a complete UC&C solution with
meetings, messaging, and telephony backed by both its enterprise and midmarket platforms. Spaces
is built on a modular CPaaS architecture for composable and customizable experiences, enabling
organizations to quickly build the experience they need for verticals or workflows.
Avaya Spaces recently added integration with on-premise telephony where organizations can leverage
their existing on-premise telephony capabilities combined with meetings and team collaboration from
the cloud within the Spaces browser interface, putting everything in one convenient place for the user.
Avaya leverages its highly resilient core platforms into its cloud offerings, providing full native support
for the underlying communications and collaboration capabilities, including voice, video, meetings,
mobility, team collaboration, messaging, and customer contact. Avaya is one of the few providers
whose room-based systems support 4K video. Avaya also integrates with Apple, Google, Microsoft
Teams and Office, and Salesforce/Slack. Avaya has made AI part of its overall UC&C focus, and its
partnership with NVIDIA is a move that others will most likely emulate.
Avaya’s contact center offering, Avaya OneCloud CCaaS, has been enhanced by partnerships with
Google, along with its own chatbot, Ava. With Avaya’s ability to deliver cloud, on-premise, and hybrid
cloud offerings, enterprises have significant choices to meet their needs. With the shift to a focus on
video meetings, Avaya is well-positioned to meet the needs of enterprises with its growing portfolio
of intelligent video offerings.
Strengths Challenges
• UC&C platform • Balancing cloud and on-premise offerings
• Cloud and on-premise capabilities
• Overall user experience
• Extensive video portfolio
• Highly reliable telephony and UC
• Partner network and ecosystem
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Cisco
Cisco, which transitioned the leadership of the Collaboration group to Javed Khan in 2020, now
offers an integrated UC&C portfolio with support for both on-premise and cloud offerings that has a
significant focus on AI and automation. Cisco released a completely new Webex App experience
that allows people to focus on work with seamless calling, messaging, meetings and team
collaboration, all in a single app experience that is easier for customers to use. The new Webex
App features new collaboration capabilities and new automation and intelligence features,
including people insights, which positions Webex as an intelligent UC&C provider.
Cisco’s native cloud calling solution—Webex Calling—is powered by Cisco’s Webex cloud and is
integrated with Webex Meetings and team collaboration globally. Cisco also offers Webex Contact
Center—a cloud contact center service integrated with the Webex UC&C suite. Cisco also offers a
range of collaboration devices including room and personal video endpoints, IP phones and headsets
that are integrated with the Webex user and service management experience.
One of the highlights that works across the Cisco UC&C Platform is the new Webex Assistant, which
can take notes and assign action items. Combined with people insights from Webex, gesture
recognition, built-in noise reduction, new secure ways of joining meetings, better audio and video
quality, and real-time translation support for more than 100 languages, it is a different Webex offering
than it was at the beginning of 2020.
Cisco has continued to invest in security across its collaboration portfolio. This includes support
for privacy, encryption, data loss prevention, mobile security, and legal hold. Cisco offers one of
the most complete sets of voice and video conferencing platforms, now fully integrated within the
Webex App, its integrated cloud-based collaboration offering.
Strengths Challenges
• The Cisco and Webex brands • Balancing focus on hardware and software
• High-quality video and voice across devices,
including mobile
• Unified and modular user experience and
management across applications
• Advanced intelligence including people insights,
Webex Assistant, transcription, and translation
capabilities.
• Collaboration video devices for rooms, groups, and
personal endpoints—including intelligent headsets
• Flexible cloud, on-premise, and hybrid deployment
options
• Built-in security, including End-to-end encryption—
in transit, at rest, and in-use
• Cisco mobile collaboration capabilities
© 2021 Aragon Research Inc. and or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
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Fuze
Fuze has continued to offer its flagship UC&C platform that features its robust video meeting
platform, Fuze Meetings. In February 2021, Fuze CEO Brian Day announced that its revenues
are over $100 Million annually, and also that industry veteran Christopher Jones was joining as
Chief Revenue Officer. Fuze continues to offer a complete UC&C platform that supports a
seamless user experience across all UC&C modalities.
The Fuze platform has continued to push the envelope on ease of use, leveraging its wholly-
owned IP for audio, video, and chat. This is why it has continued to win large enterprise deals.
Besides its full UC&C platform, Fuze is one of the only UCC vendors that includes its own native
contact center offering within the overall Fuze experience and has always offered its own contact
center offering, while also partnering with others. The combination of Fuze’s UC&C offering and
a solid and growing install base for contact center positions Fuze well for the growing demand
for an integrated UC&C suite.
Fuze offers a full room experience in addition to optional webcasting, supporting up to 1,000
participants. In 2021, Fuze announced that it was partnering with Big Marker for webinars and virtual
events. Given its overall capabilities in unified communications and collaboration and its market
growth, Fuze can meet the needs of small and large enterprises for video meetings and the complete
UC&C portfolio.
Strengths Challenges
• UC&C platform • Focus on meetings
• Voice and video quality
• Large global enterprise deployments
• Mobility experience
• Video conferencing across desktop, mobile, and
rooms
© 2021 Aragon Research Inc. and or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
Page 17Digital Workplace Service RESEARCH NOTE
Number: 2021-22
June 22, 2021
Google
Google, under the leadership of VP and GM Javier Soltero, has been executing the transition
from G Suite to the improved Google Workspace and the full global rollout of Google Voice.
Google has made significant investments into Google Workspace, and much of that has been
for its UC&C portfolio . Google Voice is available globally, and calling plans range from $10 to
$30 per user per month, which is in addition to regular Google Workspace licensing.
Besides Google Voice, Google, in the last year, has made significant updates to Google Meet
and Google Chat. This included a makeover of its flagship video conferencing platform Google
Meet. By launching a series of new features and tighter integrations within Google Workspace,
Google Meet grew its customer base substantially. New features in Google Meet include
background noise suppression, new user backgrounds, and auto transcription of the
conversation.
Google Voice, Chat, and Meet are also seamlessly integrated with the broader family of Google
Workspace collaboration offerings, which allow users to launch straight into a full Meet video
call from Calendar, Gmail, and Chat. Administration is also seamless and can be done via the
Administration interface within Google Workspace. Google Meet and the full Google UC&C
offerings work on a global basis making global calls a seamless experience.
Strengths Challenges
• Enterprise penetration with Google Workspace • Market awareness of its Voice offering
• Global cloud infrastructure
• Partner ecosystem
• Team collaboration
• Growing AI capabilities
• Video meetings
• Cloud-native collaboration applications
• Ease of use
© 2021 Aragon Research Inc. and or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
Page 18Digital Workplace Service RESEARCH NOTE
Number: 2021-22
June 22, 2021
Microsoft
Microsoft Teams is the flagship UC&C platform that evolved significantly in 2020 to become a leading
video conferencing offering. Besides Meetings, Microsoft Teams is the primary work hub for all voice
and messaging-based communications. As part of the Microsoft 365 and Office 365 bundles,
Microsoft Teams has become the lead interface for collaboration, overtaking Outlook, which now can
run as a tab inside Teams. Microsoft 365 adoption has been growing because it is a full digital work
hub with a set of independent applications that are increasingly integrated together.
It is important to note that Microsoft still has a large customer base of Skype for Business (SfB).
Microsoft continues to enhance Microsoft Teams to encourage migration to the cloud, but it still offers
full support to SfB customers.
Microsoft Office has calling plans for Teams. For it to be a full UC&C offering, enterprises must license
the E1, E3, or E5 versions of Office 365 to gain the calling features. Microsoft Teams has continued
to focus on front-line workers, which has helped to position Teams as both a communications
platform and a digital work hub. With all of the enhancements to Microsoft Teams, it has become
a first-class video meeting experience. Existing Microsoft customers can take advantage of this
since many have had the licenses for teams and have now started to use them.
Strengths Challenges
• Microsoft brand • Making all SfB server capabilities available in
• Video meetings and webcasts Teams
• Global PSTN conferencing coverage
• HD video quality on point-to-point calls
• Overall collaboration applications
• Global footprint
• Full hybrid scenarios enabling migrating strategies
to the cloud
© 2021 Aragon Research Inc. and or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
Page 19Digital Workplace Service RESEARCH NOTE
Number: 2021-22
June 22, 2021
RingCentral
RingCentral, which named a new President Anand Eswaran in 2020 has continued to grow
RingCentral MVP via robust partnerships with providers such as Avaya, Alcatel-Lucent, and
Atos, as well as with global service providers such as AT&T, TELUS, BT, Vodafone Business,
and Verizon. RingCentral also has generated continued growth through its numerous
integrations, for example, a recent updated integration with Salesforce, education integration
with Canvas, and its overall updates to its app gallery. RingCentral’s flagship solution, which was
previously called Office, is now called MVP and features messaging, video, and phone.
RingCentral touts seamless switching between modes, and even switching between devices –
so an end-user can continue to collaborate in a hybrid manner, moving a video meeting or call
from their home office to their car if needed. In addition, RingCentral has a freemium version of
its video conferencing offering called RingCentral Video, which features both video and
messaging and focuses on pre-, during-, and post-meeting collaboration. The RingCentral UC&C
platform is now available in 44 countries with its full set of capabilities—high-quality voice, video
conferencing, mobile messaging, and cloud contact center capabilities.
In April 2020, RingCentral announced RingCentral Video, which is a homegrown, high-quality
video conferencing solution included in RingCentral Office. RingCentral has hundreds of features
that have been added to RingCentral Video since it launched. Its video product continues to
evolve, and the company is focused on “intelligent” capabilities and integrations to enable pre-,
during-, and post-meeting collaboration experiences. RingCentral Video is an alternative to the
partner capabilities provided by Zoom.
The RingCentral Open Platform is also a strong contributor to its growth—it now has over 50,000
registered developers and supports over 5,000 integrations, including Microsoft Teams, Google
G Suite, NetSuite, and Salesforce. RingCentral is also fairly easy to deploy, which gives it an
advantage over others, though it also offers an expanded services portfolio for full
implementation support. Recent platform innovations include RingCentral’s high-volume SMS,
which delivers CPaaS style capabilities, along with RingCentral Embeddable, which enables
developers to quickly embed message, video, and phone into their web applications.
Strengths Challenges
• UC cloud capabilities • Managing its growing set of partner channels
• RingCentral brand
• Team messaging and collaboration functionality
• Unified client
• Ease of configuration and deployment
• Open platform
• UC&C marketplace
© 2021 Aragon Research Inc. and or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
Page 20Digital Workplace Service RESEARCH NOTE
Number: 2021-22
June 22, 2021
Vonage
Vonage revamped its management team with new executives, including CEO Rory Read, CFO
Steve Lasher, COO Jay Bellissimo, CMO Joy Corso, and EVP of Product & Engineering Savinay
Berry. Vonage Business Communications includes UCaaS, CCaaS, and CPaaS technology each
being built from the Vonage Communications Platform, which enables the company to
accelerate innovation across its portfolio. Vonage's integrated UCaaS and CCaaS offering
provides a 'single pane of glass' experience for customers by consolidating the user interface
for a fully-integrated experience for agents and back office employees. More integration was the
theme of 2021, and Vonage now integrates seamlessly with its new Vonage Business
Communications (VBC) for Microsoft Teams offering. The VBC for Teams offering includes
premium calling features delivered via direct routing, as well as SMS, MMS embedded directly
into the Teams app. VBC for Teams also offers CRM and contact center integration.
Vonage also offers Vonage Contact Center, which has integrations with Salesforce CRM,
ServiceNow and Microsoft Dynamics. Finally, the Vonage Communications Platform, built from
the Company’s APIs, offers enterprises more flexibility in blending its offerings with existing
business applications. Part of the way that Vonage offers integration across its UC&C platform
is via the Vonage App Center, which has pre-built integrations with applications such as Google
G Suite, Microsoft Office 365, Slack, and CRM applications from Oracle, Salesforce, and
Zendesk.
Vonage Meetings video conferencing has been seeing solid adoption, as has Vonage’s
integrated team collaboration solution that offers team messaging, file sharing, SMS, voice, and
video across any device. With its full UC&C platform and a growing international presence,
Vonage is well-positioned in the UC&C landscape.
Strengths Challenges
● UC&C platform ● Building awareness for its full portfolio
● UCaaS offering
● CCaaS offering
● Brand recognition
● API portfolio (voice, SMS, messages, video,
2FA)
● Integrations
● CPaaS API flexibility
© 2021 Aragon Research Inc. and or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
Page 21Digital Workplace Service RESEARCH NOTE
Number: 2021-22
June 22, 2021
Zoom
Zoom has grown significantly over the last several years, and besides video conferencing, Zoom
Phone has seen strong adoption on a global basis. Zoom has seen its revenues growing to over
$2.65 Billion. With Zoom Phone, which surpassed one million users in just seven quarters, and
surpassed 1.5M seats as of April 2021, Zoom has evolved into a complete unified
communications and collaboration provider. Zoom continues to leverage its growing app
marketplace (over 1,300 apps), which includes voice AI offerings such as Chorus, Gong, and
Otter.ai for analytics and live transcription (already native in Zoom).
Zoom has continued to innovate its flagship video meetings offering, and in 2020, it helped
hundreds of thousands of schools move to remote learning by removing any limitation on class
size and meeting (class) duration. In the elementary, high school, and college markets, Zoom
was able to adapt quickly during the pandemic and gained a strong position in the K-16 market.
Despite its rapid growth, Zoom was still able to release over 400 features across its platform.
Zoom also offers Zoom Chat for team collaboration. It is tightly integrated as part of the Zoom
Platform, and provides both persistent personal and channelized team messaging. Zoom also
made breakout rooms a must-have capability. Its pre-COVID availability of these features
allowed it to support enterprises during the pandemic. Zoom also made significant investments
in security and now offers end-to-end encryption. As Zoom continues to grow, more enterprises
will look to it for its full UCaaS offering.
Strengths Challenges
● Scalable HD video conferencing and webinars ● Balancing focus on meetings vs. full UC&C
● Webinars and live events platform
● Software-based video room systems
● Mobile app
● Webinars
● App marketplace
● UCaaS offering
● Innovation
© 2021 Aragon Research Inc. and or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
Page 22Digital Workplace Service RESEARCH NOTE
Number: 2021-22
June 22, 2021
Contenders
LogMeIn
LogMeIn, which completed its $4.3 billion sale to Francisco Partners and Evergreen Coast Capital
Corporation, offers a full UC&C platform powered by its flagship GoToMeeting video conferencing
offering. GoToMeeting also offers built-in transcription capabilities. LogMeIn also offers GoToRoom,
its room system that connects via GoToMeeting. It partners with Dolby, Logitech, and Poly for its room-
based meeting solutions.
LogMeIn’s GoToConnect is a compete UC&C platform with Jive’s cloud-based voice PBX, video
conferencing powered by GoToMeeting, messaging, and more. In March 2021, LogMeIn
announced a refresh to the GoToConnect web and mobile interfaces, making it easier for users
to access different sets of functions, including Find Me, Follow Me, Advance Call Flip, Shared
Extension, and Voicemail Transcriptions.
LogMeIn also offers a full contact center, with GoToConnect Support Center launched in 2020.
It was updated this year to include configurable permissions and customized pause reasons. It
also offers new outbound capabilities launched in June of 2021. This caters to sales teams and
includes an outbound dialer. LogMeIn is a complete UC&C provider due to its expanded footprint
with GoToConnect.
Strengths Challenges
• UCaaS offering • Focus on team collaboration
• Brand awareness
• Web and video conferencing install base
• Integrations
• Analytics
• Ease of use
© 2021 Aragon Research Inc. and or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
Page 23Digital Workplace Service RESEARCH NOTE
Number: 2021-22
June 22, 2021
Mitel
Mitel, based in Ottawa and led by CEO Mary McDowell, announced a new CFO, James Yersh, and
a new CRO, Scott Peterson. Mitel offers a complete UC&C portfolio that features its flagship MiCloud
Connect and MiCloud Flex for both its cloud and on-premise voice offerings, including contact
center and endpoints. Regarding endpoints, Mitel offers a series of phones, including its 6900 Series
of IP phones. MiCloud Connect and Mitel Flex work with MiTeam Meetings, its web and video
conferencing offering, and MiTeam, its team collaboration tool.
Mitel also offers a portfolio of contact center offerings, including MiCloud Connect Contact Center
MiContact Center Business, and MiVoice Connect Contact Center. In May 2020, Mitel enhanced its
partnership with Google Cloud, which added MiCloud Flex to Google Cloud. This will enable Mitel
partners to deliver customized private cloud deployments as well as contact center offerings.
Mitel also announced that MiCloud is now fully integrated with Microsoft Teams via MiCloud
Connect. Many enterprises want an alternative voice plan for Microsoft 365 E3, and now Mitel is
well-positioned to offer these capabilities.
Mitel leverages its growing partner network to offer a variety of solutions in education, government
healthcare, and hospitality. The combination of UC&C capabilities, as well as public, private, and
hybrid cloud deployment options makes Mitel a provider to watch.
Strengths Challenges
• Cloud and on-premise voice support • Overall focus on video
• Global cloud infrastructure
• Hybrid cloud API marketplace accessible to on-site
customers
• Endpoints
• Global partner ecosystem
© 2021 Aragon Research Inc. and or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
Page 24Digital Workplace Service RESEARCH NOTE
Number: 2021-22
June 22, 2021
NEC
NEC, a large multi-national provider of IT infrastructure and communications offerings made some
significant moves to shift to the cloud. In April 2020, NEC announced a joint partnership with
Intermedia, and established the NEC UNIVERGE BLUE CONNECT and NEC BLUE ENGAGE, both
powered by Intermedia. UNIVERGE BLUE CONNECT offers a full set of capabilities, including cloud
communications (UCaaS), messaging, and meetings. UNIVERGE BLUE ENGAGE offers a complete
cloud-based contact center.
For the firms that still need on-premise capabilities, NEC offers its UNIVERGE SV9100 BLUE and
SV9500 BLUE PBX. UNIVERGE BLUE ENGAGE will now leverage Intermedia for its video conferencing
service, which it calls Meet. This replaces the Vidyo-powered solution it previously offered.
In addition, NEC is now focused on a number of vertical industries, including education, government,
healthcare, retail, and SMB. Besides its UC&C platform, NEC continues to offer a full set of handsets
for large and small enterprises. More importantly, NEC has been investing in analytics, and its NeoFace
analytics offers two applications for facial recognition: NeoFace Welcome and NeoFace Watch.
Combined with UNIVERGE BLUE CONNECT, these offerings will help NEC expand its solution
portfolio in its vertical markets, especially government, healthcare and retail.
Strengths Challenges
• Cloud and on-premise voice support • Overall focus on video meetings
• Global cloud infrastructure
• Industry solutions focus
• Computer vision, including video analytics
• Endpoints
© 2021 Aragon Research Inc. and or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
Page 25Digital Workplace Service RESEARCH NOTE
Number: 2021-22
June 22, 2021
Nextiva
Nextiva, based in Scottsdale, Arizona, and led by CEO Thomas Gorny, has continued to grow
due to its focus on the SMB market for cloud-based telephony and complete communications
platforms that focus on customer engagement. Nextiva has grown organically to over $200
Million in revenue, in part due to its experienced management team.
All of Nextiva’s offerings are powered by the Nextiva NextOS platform. Its core offerings include
its UCaaS-based business phone service, including cloud PBX and SIP trunking, as well as chat
and CRM. Part of its full platform is Nextiva Cospace, which adds video conferencing and chat
to its portfolio, which is still primarily focused on voice telephony. Finally, Nextiva is offering its
cloud-based contact center offering with attractive pricing.
Nextiva NextOS has two key suites: the Business Communication Suite and the Nextiva
Customer Relationship Suite. This segmentation of offers will help buyers make a quicker
selection. The Nextiva App provides mobile phone service, instant messaging, presence, screen
sharing, document sharing, and one-on-one video meetings.
Strengths Challenges
• Cloud PBX • Balancing multiple app experiences
• Call center
• Mobile app
• Analytics
• Native CRM capabilities
• NextOS Business Communications Suite
© 2021 Aragon Research Inc. and or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
Page 26Digital Workplace Service RESEARCH NOTE
Number: 2021-22
June 22, 2021
Unify
Unify, which is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Atos, has rolled out its service Unify Office, which is
powered by its partnership with RingCentral. Unify offers Unify Office in coordination with Unify
OpenScape as on-premise offerings. One of the big focus areas for 2021 is vertical market solutions in
areas such as government and healthcare, where Unify has historically done well. The partnership will
complement existing Unify OpenScape offerings and the Atos CPaaS orchestration platform. It will be
a part of the growing Atos digital workplace portfolio.
In March 2021, Unify announced updates to its OpenScape platform that included WebRTC screen
sharing, SIP URI Dialing, and improvements to the Atos Unify OpenScape mobile apps. Through Unify,
Atos offers mission-critical communications capabilities that include a focus on government and
healthcare, which it provides an integrated platform to support. As with others, we expect Unify to
leverage the cloud voice capabilities of RingCentral for those enterprises that want cloud-based
offerings. This means that Unify now has a stronger portfolio to deliver cloud, on-premise, and hybrid
cloud options for communications and collaboration.
Strengths Challenges
● UC&C expertise with OpenScape ● Overall focus on video
● Partnerships
● Messaging capabilities
● Vertical industry solutions
● PaaS platform with Circuit
● Cloud deployment options
© 2021 Aragon Research Inc. and or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
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