Vendor Strengths and Cautions

ALE

Paris-based ALE, operating under the Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise brand, is 100% privately owned by China Huaxin, which recently purchased the 15% previously owned by Nokia. ALE's Alcatel-Lucent OpenTouch suite (OTS) is its flagship multimedia UC suite. It is available through ALE's partner network, the main strength of which is in Europe, although it includes global representation.

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OTS offers a fully unified and integrated UC solution that scales up to 5,000 users and 15,000 endpoints. Above those limits, its components can be deployed physically separately, but as a single logical system for up to 20,000 users. The Alcatel-Lucent OmniPCX Enterprise Communication Server scales for between 100 and 100,000 users in a single image, and can be deployed along with the OTS. Alcatel-Lucent OpenTouch Conversation is a client experience that operates across mobile and PC devices, consolidating both user experience and licensing. OTS can be deployed as an overlay on third-party telephony switches, providing a migration path for new customers.

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Alcatel-Lucent Rainbow, a cloud-based service incorporating workstream collaboration functionality, is at an early stage of maturity. It includes presence, voice and video conversation, file-sharing, search and tagging capabilities, as well as chatbot services, and it integrates with ALE's telephony portfolio. It also offers communications platform as a service (cPaaS) capabilities and APIs for extensibility.

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Existing ALE customers should evaluate OTS if they are looking for a complete software UC suite. Potential ALE customers should check that ALE offers sufficient service and support presence in their region.

Strengths

• ALE's OTS can operate on-premises, in the cloud or with hybrid functions. OpenTouch Enterprise Cloud enables organizations to subscribe to consumption licensing, as well as a traditional perpetual license paid for out of capital expenditure.

• ALE has a strong telephony market share in Europe from which to sustain continued investment in broader UC product and market development.

• The cloud-based Rainbow solution is now on general release. With its integration into the ALE voice portfolio, ALE has clarified important elements of its long-term roadmap and the expected evolution options for customers.

Cautions

• Although ALE is introducing promising solutions in the areas of unified communications as a service (UCaaS), hybrid and workstream collaboration, it must close the visibility gap with rivals that have already introduced similar functionality.

• ALE's sales are condensing into its stronghold of Western Europe, which limits its exposure to, and potential to support, other regions and multinational organizations based in Europe.

• It is almost three years since China Huaxin purchased the enterprise division of Alcatel-Lucent with the stated intention of doubling this business in five years through expansion into new markets. Since then, there has been very limited investment in ALE, which brings into question China Huaxin's long-term commitment to the enterprise UC business.

Avaya

Avaya is a privately held company with its headquarters in Santa Clara, California, U.S. It is owned by the private equity firms TPG and Silver Lake. In January 2017, Avaya filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization in the U.S. courts in an effort to reorganize its balance sheet and restructure debt. As a result of this process, it is likely that the company's ownership structure will change; the public notice of the ongoing bankruptcy proceedings is available online. 1

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Avaya's lead UC product for enterprises is the Avaya Aura Platform, which includes Communication Manager, Session Manager, System Manager and Presence Services, and a series of Avaya Aura applications for messaging and contact centers. Avaya Equinox is the company's converged experience for mobility, conferencing and collaboration needs. Avaya Breeze and the Avaya Breeze Client SDK are its core application development platforms. The Avaya Snapp Store facilitates a series of reusable communications and collaboration modules ("Snap-ins") for commercial use in its contact center and collaboration portfolio. Avaya IP Office Platform is aimed at small and midsize businesses (SMBs) with 100 to 3,000 endpoints and up to 150 locations.

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Zang Spaces is a recent addition to Avaya's UCaaS platform. It has workstream collaboration capabilities, including persistent team collaboration and meeting solutions integrated with voice, video and tasks.

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Consider the Avaya Aura Platform if you have significant investments in Avaya or legacy Nortel solutions that you wish to migrate to a next-generation UC solution, or if your enterprise has significant contact center requirements, or if you are looking for an open system to integrate with business processes and applications. Risk-averse organizations may not want to consider evaluating Avaya's solutions until it shows significant progress in reorganizing its capital structure and exiting Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. 2

Strengths

• Avaya has strong brand recognition for its telephony and contact center businesses, which remain central to its portfolio. It can support requirements spanning midsize to large and multinational enterprises.

• As a wholly owned subsidiary of Avaya, Zang has been able to rapidly develop a range of cloud communications services with the aid of a developer portal. As a result, it has added key communications applications that integrate with Zang Spaces and Avaya Breeze environments.

• The introduction of consumption licensing, along with Avaya's cloud and managed service offerings, is making it easier for organizations to outsource their Avaya infrastructure and application services through Avaya and its partners.

Cautions

• At the time of writing, Avaya is under Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection as it seeks to restructure its debt. If this process lasts for a year or more, it will make Avaya's task of business recovery more difficult.

• Discussions with users of Gartner's client inquiry service, together with evidence from Gartner Peer Insights, indicate that Avaya is struggling with after-sales support across its portfolio. This is likely to hamper the introduction of new services such as Equinox.

• Although Avaya now offers public cloud solutions in the UC space, with Zang and Zang Office, its primary focus is on meeting customers' needs for private cloud solutions. This could limit its ability to meet the broader market's needs for public UCaaS.

Cisco

Cisco is a public company based in San Jose, California, U.S. It offers a broad range of UC solutions that span on-premises, hybrid and cloud deployment options. The on-premises solution is based on the well-established Cisco Unified Communications Manager (UCM), which brings together voice, video, telepresence, messaging, presence and several forms of conferencing, including Cisco TelePresence and Cisco Meeting Server (formerly Acano Server) video solutions. Cisco offers UCM for large enterprises with up to 80,000 users. UCM Session Management Edition helps organizations centralize and simplify the management of large, distributed deployments. Cisco also has packaged offers for easier configuration by large enterprises (Cisco Business Edition 7000), midsize enterprises (Cisco Business Edition 6000) and SMBs (Cisco Business Edition 4000).

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Cisco also offers UCM as part of a cloud-based service — Cisco Hosted Collaboration Solution (HCS) — hosted and offered by its partners. Cisco's cloud-based services are complemented by its WebEx portfolio.

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Cisco Spark is a cloud UCaaS service that offers business messaging, calling and persistent meeting spaces that support workstream collaboration use cases. Cisco Spark Board is a new interactive virtual whiteboard and video endpoint for collaboration within a conference room and virtually across any device using the Cisco Spark client. There are also new room endpoints — the Cisco Spark Room Kit series expands meeting room options for small and midsize meeting spaces.

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Cisco's UC solution, available from resellers globally, is an attractive proposition for midsize, large and multinational corporations requiring strong voice, video or conferencing capabilities.

Strengths

• Cisco has introduced new video collaboration endpoints and Cisco Meeting Server to create an on-premises video collaboration solution that offers connectivity between standards-based video endpoints, as well as Cisco Jabber and Microsoft Skype for Business clients.

• Cisco's hybrid solutions enable customers with on-premises solutions to integrate with Cisco Spark Cloud for messaging, calling, meeting and persistent team spaces. Hybrid deployments smooth the migration path, both technically and financially, if customers later decide to shift to fully cloud-based consumption.

• Cisco has a strong financial foundation. Revenue growth in its collaboration business has been good, and the company merits a Positive rating, according to Gartner's financial statement scorecard methodology, due to its strong profit margins, ability to generate cash and balance sheet.

Cautions

• Cisco has overlapping functionality in its UC portfolio, especially for customers evaluating both on-premises solutions and the newer Cisco Spark solution set. Although this provides flexible options for deployment, it makes understanding Cisco's UC solutions challenging for planners who have to determine the best long-term strategy in terms of the user experience and pricing.

• Cisco has three distinct licensing options for customers acquiring new solutions or renewing support agreements: traditional perpetual software licenses, Enterprise Licensing Agreements and the Spark Flex Plan. Enterprise procurement departments face a challenge to understand which licensing option is best for their Cisco deployments.

• Cisco's UC solutions, including hardware, software licenses and maintenance costs, are typically priced higher than those of its competitors in this Magic Quadrant for large enterprise installations.

Huawei

Huawei is a privately owned company based in Shenzhen, China. It offers a comprehensive portfolio of communications products and services.

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The Huawei eSpace Unified Communications solution comprises a broad range of applications. It supports telephony, presence, messaging, conference room endpoint, video collaboration and contact center functions. Huawei's UC architecture is based on a virtualized software platform called the Unified Session Manager, which enables the eSpace solution to run on Huawei servers, standard servers and virtualized platforms. Huawei continues to expand the software APIs within its ecosystem Software Development Kit (eSDK) platform to enable integration with productivity suites, business intelligence applications and collaboration tools.

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In the past year, Huawei has introduced both private and public cloud deployment options, which share the on-premises Unified Session Manager software platform. Hybrid deployments are supported as well. Additionally, a soft multipoint control unit (MCU) architecture has been added to serve enterprises looking for a more flexibly scalable and cost-effective solution for video collaboration across conference rooms, desktops and mobile devices.

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Consider Huawei if you are looking for a comprehensive networking solution that includes UCC functionality. Huawei operates in many regions, and although its UC support in North America and Japan is limited, its capabilities in Europe continue to grow (albeit modestly).

Strengths

• Huawei's UC solutions span the carrier, large-enterprise and SMB segments. The company's ability to reach across market segments using a common virtualized software platform enables it to provide scalable and cost-effective UC offerings.

• Huawei has a full portfolio of UC products, including cloud and hybrid deployment models, which offers enterprises more choice when acquiring UC solutions.

• Huawei's UC solution suite is often bundled with a broader set of IT services and infrastructure. This enables customers to manage fewer technology vendors.

Cautions

• Although Huawei has shown incremental innovation and organic growth, it still has limited visibility in an already mature market, judging from our discussions with Gartner end-user clients.

• With the vast majority of Huawei's business deriving from Asia/Pacific and emerging markets, enterprises in other regions should check that experienced service support resources are available locally.

• Huawei faces political, trade-related and intellectual-property-related trust issues in the U.S. market. This limits its ability to provide collaboration solutions to global organizations.

Microsoft

Microsoft is a publicly listed, global company based in Redmond, Washington, U.S. It offers a broad range of UC solutions under the umbrella brand of Skype for Business (SfB). The on-premises UC solution is Skype for Business Server (SfBS). The cloud UC solution is Skype for Business Online (SfBO), which is licensed as part of the Office 365 portfolio. The SfBS deployment, with significantly more telephony capabilities than the SfBO configuration, has proven itself an IP PBX replacement for many organizations, so it is critical that planners distinguish between these two offerings when considering replacing legacy telephony systems. Microsoft also has some additional UC configurations, most notably Skype for Business hybrid with "split domain" capabilities.

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Microsoft continues to enhance the SfB portfolio, especially by forging partnerships with companies such as Polycom, Logitech and Creston for its meeting solutions portfolio, and with multiple companies for customer service. However, most of Microsoft's SfB development and marketing improvements focus on the Office 365 portfolio, and with it SfBO. Microsoft has added France and Spain to the countries served by SfB PSTN Calling; PSTN dial-in conferencing capabilities for more than 90 countries; and auto-attendants and call queuing for front-office requirements.

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Within the Microsoft portfolio, SfBS remains the most suitable platform for a broad range of enterprises. Organizations with advanced telephony and video requirements should check that the necessary functions are supported and (as for any VoIP deployment) undertake a thorough network-readiness assessment.

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Most organizations committed to Microsoft for Office 365 should evaluate SfBS as a UC solution today, and plan to migrate to SfBO in the next few years. Working with a Microsoft Skype partner will help to ensure that the deployment is as successful as possible and that the roadmap is executed to the satisfaction of users.

Strengths

• Microsoft bundles SfB as part of Office 365, which includes a broad range of well-established business, collaboration and cloud office products. This enables Microsoft to capitalize on its dominance in enterprise IT and office productivity solutions.

• Microsoft has strengthened its roadmap for migration to Office 365 by introducing the SfB Cloud Connector Edition to ease hybrid SfB deployments. It has also partnered with Polycom to access the latter's RealConnect solution and thereby strengthen the SfB experience across multiple device and infrastructure environments.

• Microsoft's financial position is strong. It merits a Positive rating, according to Gartner's financial statement scorecard methodology, due to its strong profit margins, ability to generate cash and balance sheet.

Cautions

• Some enterprises report dissatisfaction with the quality and capabilities of SfB's audioconferencing and videoconferencing functionalities. They maintain separate conferencing services for business-critical use cases, where they think this is necessary.

• Microsoft has a strong focus on moving customers to the cloud with Office 365 and SfBO. In addition, SfBO's telephony functionality is still maturing, is new to the market and has a limited number of reference customers. Organizations should take a "try before they buy" approach to ensure everything works as required by users in all locations.

• Deploying Skype requires you to select multiple technology partners for a complete UC solution. Microsoft has more than 900 partners in its SfB certification program, which means that, although Microsoft is improving its partner program, determining which partners to select remains a challenge for most IT organizations.

Mitel

Mitel is a global, publicly traded company based in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Mitel's MiCollab is the UC suite that aligns with its MiVoice telephony platforms and serves as the access point for its MiTeam workstream collaboration solution. MiCollab supports meeting solutions (audio, video and web conferencing), IM, presence, UM and calendar integration. MiTeam features collaboration for group meetings, including persistent collaboration, chats, document sharing and storage, project management features, and search and analytics capabilities. The MiVoice portfolio includes two primary call management platforms, MiVoice MX-One, which is primarily aimed at large enterprises, and MiVoice Business, which is aimed at midsize enterprises.

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Mitel has a longstanding presence in the field of virtualization and offers flexible delivery approaches for UC, with a significant installed base of solutions deployed on virtual systems. Its UC solutions can be consumed via flexible deployment models (premises-based, cloud-based or hybrid). The same software code is used across the MiVoice and MiCollab solutions. Functionality is consistent across deployment modes, which enables customers to use the same interfaces and applications in the context of multiple provisioning models.

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Consider Mitel MiCollab UC and MiVoice call management solutions for price-sensitive implementations. Mitel has reliable telephony and messaging delivery capabilities, which are offered in flexible provisioning modes. Check that integration and channel partner expertise is available for collaboration-centric or significant third-party UC integration work.

Strengths

• Mitel offers solutions at competitive prices. Reference customers frequently identified cost savings and the total cost of ownership as factors that influenced their decision to acquire Mitel UC.

• Mitel's UC portfolio supports flexible provisioning models and architectures, enabling customers to acquire UC elements in their desired deployment modes.

• Mitel has had success selling to specific vertical segments, including hospitality, healthcare, state and local government, and education. To support this focus, Mitel has increased the amount of API development associated with CloudLink, an ecosystem to support rich vertical integrations with Mitel's UC portfolio.

Cautions

• Mitel has made significant vendor acquisitions and therefore has a mix of solutions and a mix of partners that are familiar (and unfamiliar) with various UC products and services. Confirm that its partners' expertise suits your specific project before implementation.

• Although most Mitel customers use its telephony, UM and audioconferencing capabilities, limited adoption of Mitel's broader UC functions might constrain rollout of updates to the MiTeam workstream collaboration solution.

• Under the MiVoice brand, Mitel supports two telephony platforms that use common MiCollab UC functions. Splitting research and development between platforms might dilute overall platform investment.

NEC

NEC, which is based in Tokyo, Japan, is a global provider of IT and communications services and products. Its focus on "empowering the smart enterprise" gives it an opportunity to build industry-oriented solutions that draw on its entire portfolio of products and services, including NEC Enterprise's UC applications and services.

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NEC's offers two UC solutions: Univerge 3C (U3C) and Univerge SV9500. U3C is the lead offer for a fully integrated UC suite. U3C is based on a web-oriented and service-oriented architecture (SOA) and open standards, with enterprise scalability, security and centralized administration. The suite's functionality encompasses telephony, video and all forms of meeting solutions, presence, IM and messaging. It includes multiple client options, such as hardphones, softphones and Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) phones, as well as a full set of mobile capabilities for a broad range of mobile devices. The Univerge SV9500 has very similar UC capabilities, with strengths in hybrid time division multiplexing/Internet Protocol (TDM/IP).

Univerge Blue is NEC's UCaaS platform. It is based on the U3C solution and hosted by NEC. It is offered through partners in North America. There are no plans to offer this platform internationally. Univerge Blue adds the ability to offer subscription-based licenses to an on-premises deployment, which gives organizations a broader range of licensing options. There is currently no workstream collaboration product. NEC's UC Connector supports telephony integration with Microsoft SfB and Office products.

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Consider NEC's U3C solution if you want a complete software UC suite based on SOA that can be extended. Enterprises with existing NEC telephony platforms may consider U3C as a migration path.

Strengths

• NEC is a financially strong, global company with established UC sales operations, and support channels in multiple regions.

• NEC's "empowering the smart enterprise" initiative represents an opportunity for the NEC Enterprise division to position its entire communications and networking portfolio as part of a broader, global initiative by NEC.

• NEC has a strong network of channel partners and a good distribution of sales across multiple geographic markets. It has notable strengths in Japan and the U.S.

Cautions

• NEC takes various approaches to market, and its products and services are available inconsistently in different regions. This makes it difficult for multiregion or global organizations to consolidate their UC strategy with NEC.

• NEC's inability to provide reference customers for this Magic Quadrant raises doubts about customers' commitment to its Univerge portfolio.

• NEC's UCaaS proposition is limited to North America. In addition, NEC's lack of products for workstream collaboration initiatives does not prepare it well for the next generation of enterprise collaboration.

ShoreTel

ShoreTel is a publicly traded company based in California, U.S. It competes in this market with the ShoreTel Connect solution, which has a single code base and a consistent user interface across its three versions. It is available as a premises-based solution (Connect Onsite), a cloud-based solution (Connect Cloud) and a hybrid solution (Connect Hybrid).

ShoreTel Connect has the UC functionality that most organizations desire, but does not offer multipoint video natively (ShoreTel relies on its partnership with StarLeaf for MCUs). Connect Onsite provides telephony, peer-to-peer video, web and audio conferencing and collaboration, and IM.

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In 2017, ShoreTel released its team collaboration solution, ShoreTel Teamwork. It is currently available only for Connect Cloud users, but ShoreTel plans to release it for Connect Onsite users toward the end of 2017.

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ShoreTel continues to focus on enhancing its integration capabilities. In the meeting solutions segment, it has expanded its integrations with Microsoft SfB and Google G Suite to make it easier to schedule and set up meetings. ShoreTel has released Connect Telephony for Microsoft and Connect for Chrome browser to enable native integrations into common workflows. In 2Q17, ShoreTel announced a significant go-to-market shift: Channel partners currently working directly with ShoreTel for Connect Onsite will gradually start to procure this solution through ScanSource, another partner.

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ShoreTel is suited to multisite organizations headquartered in North America. ShoreTel has delivery capabilities via partners in EMEA and parts of Asia/Pacific, but over 90% of its business continues to be generated in the U.S.

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Consider ShoreTel Connect if your company is a multisite organization with headquarters in the U.S. that desires tight integration with Microsoft or Google, or if your organization is looking for provisioning flexibility.

Strengths

• ShoreTel's Connect Onsite solution provides the UC features and functions most organizations desire in a reliable and intuitive solution.

• The common user interfaces and software streams between the Connect Onsite, Connect Cloud and Connect Hybrid versions enable flexible provisioning.

• ShoreTel's integration with common office suites and applications enables users relying on core office applications to use its UC functionality.

Cautions

• ShoreTel has a limited geographic footprint outside the U.S. ShoreTel's expertise is not widely available in most of the world's regions.

• In 2Q17, ShoreTel announced an expansion of its relationship with ScanSource, whereby channel partners, the majority of whom already work with ScanSource, will procure their solutions and support through ScanSource. Although this move could improve response times for acquiring solution parts and addressing technical support issues, it could also slow next-level service support for issues that might be better addressed by ShoreTel directly.

• Although ShoreTel's UC features will satisfy most midsize businesses, its video capabilities are not as feature-rich as those of some of its competitors.

Unify

Unify is a wholly owned subsidiary of Atos, a global system integration and outsourcing business based in Bezons, France. However, Unify, which is based in Munich, Germany, operates under its own name and retains its UC product portfolio.

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The Unify OpenScape portfolio offers a full and integrated suite of UC functionality. OpenScape is offered in three configurations: OpenScape Enterprise is a distributed architecture for large organizations; OpenScape Enterprise Express is an all-in-one UC solution aimed at organizations with up to 5,000 users; OpenScape Business is an all-in-one package aimed at small businesses. OpenScape Fusion integration enables the OpenScape client to be embedded in other application environments, including those of Microsoft, IBM, Google (G Suite) and social media tools.

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Unify Circuit is a team collaboration offering, specifically a SaaS-based workstream collaboration solution. It supports rich textual messaging, audioconferencing and videoconferencing, file and screen sharing, and other collaborative functions. Unify plans to integrate Circuit more deeply into the OpenScape portfolio and third-party communications solutions.

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OpenScape is available on-premises, in the cloud (via partners) and as a hybrid solution. Circuit is a cloud-based offering.

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Evaluate the OpenScape UC suite if your company is looking for a standards-based, comprehensive and cost-effective UC software suite that can be extended via integration with third-party solutions. Enterprises with HiPath 4000 can also consider OpenScape as a migration path.

Strengths

• The OpenScape family of UC solutions is mature and offers a full range of UC functions. It is available in a variety of configurations for different market segments, and can operate with various existing telephony deployments.

• Unify's collaboration solutions are a core component of the Atos Digital Workplace proposition, which enables Unify to benefit from Atos' broader marketing of its digital workplace services.

• The merger of Unify's services with Atos' Infrastructure & Data Management business unit leaves Unify's Software and Platforms business to focus more clearly on product development and product management opportunities, to satisfy all its customers.

Cautions

• Unify lacks strong reference customers for the OpenScape Enterprise platform. It also faces a challenge to improve its customer experience, judging from our discussions with users of Gartner's client inquiry service and Gartner Peer Insights.

• Although Unify continues to put significant resources into Circuit, as its next-generation UCaaS solution, the company has been slow to capitalize on the growth of the workstream collaboration market.

• Unify has yet to offer a UCaaS platform, which limits organizations' ability to migrate from on-premises to cloud and hybrid solutions with Unify's technology.