Magic Quadrant for Corporate Telephony

12/16/2015 Magic Quadrant for Corporate Telephony
http://www.gartner.com/technology/reprints.do?id=12QERHVW&ct=151023&st=sg 1/10
Magic Quadrant for Corporate Telephony
7 October 2015 ID:G00271518
Analyst(s): Sorell Slaymaker, Steve Blood
VIEW SUMMARY
Corporate telephony is a mature technology that plays a critical role in enterprise communications. This
research helps IT managers in large enterprises select the best vendor for their onpremises telephony
requirements.
Market Definition/Description
This Magic Quadrant reviews corporate technology vendors that design, manufacture and distribute on
premises corporate telephony solutions for 1,000 or more users globally. The telephony solutions being
evaluated can be on centralized or distributed platforms that are dedicated and are for use by a single
company, whether provisioned as standalone solutions or as part of a unified communications (UC)
suite. Enterprises looking to upgrade legacy systems can use this research to decide whether to stay
with an incumbent vendor or consider alternative suppliers.
The corporate telephony market is evolving from a focus on innovation in proprietary hardware to use
of commodity hardware and standardsbased software. While most telephony solutions shipping today
are Internet Protocol (IP)enabled or IPPBX solutions, the associated endpoints are a mix of time
division multiplexing (TDM) and IP. In 2014, 39% of new desktop phone shipments were still TDM
based (see "Market Share Analysis: Enterprise Telephony Equipment, Worldwide, 2014"), down from
44% the year before. Gartner sees 85% of users utilizing desktop phones for all or part of their
telephony needs, with the remaining 15% relying on mobile and/or softphones for their telephony
requirements. Gartner forecasts the number of users requiring desktop phones declining as the voice
quality on mobile devices improves with voice over LTE (VoLTE) being rolled out, and as more users
rely on their smart devices for communication as communication is embedded into applications through
WebRTC (see "Prepare for WebRTC's Impact on Enterprise UCC").
Decision criteria for corporate telephony platforms should focus on highavailability, scalable solutions,
which support Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), desktop and softphone functionality, and the ability to
integrate with enterprise IT applications while delivering tollgrade voice quality. Enterprise telephony
and procurement managers should be aware that a small subset of telephony services can drive the
majority of the decision criteria for new IPPBXs. These requirements can include:
Very High Availability — 99.999% availability to provide dial tone with access to emergency
services when power and/or WAN connectivity is lost at the facility
Analog Support — Legacy phone, fax and modem devices, and elevator alarms, including phones
that work where Ethernet is not available
Emergency Services — The ability not only to provide E911, E999, E112, but also to observe,
record and notify enterprise security personnel when an emergency service call is made
Softphone — Support for softphones on tablets, mobile devices and desktops with functionality
equivalent to desktop phones, including that of an attendant console
Attendant Consoles — An operator or administrative assistant who has to answer and transfer
many calls quickly and efficiently, with the option of phone paging and onhold reminder tones
Auto Attendant — An automated system to answer and direct incoming calls
Quality of Experience Monitoring — The ability to monitor telephony quality, both real time
and historically
WebRTC Support — The ability to integrate with users calling from WebRTCbased endpoints
utilizing the Opus codec
Hybrid Cloud — A combination of an onpremises and cloudbased telephony solution that is
transparent to the end user and offers enterprise features such as an internal fourdigit dial plan
SBC Integration — Provides a session border controller (SBC) that is fully integrated with the
telephony suites administration and support tools for those enterprises utilizing SIP trunking
UC Integration — Strong integration into a full unified communications suite
Magic Quadrant
Figure 1. Magic Quadrant for Corporate Telephony
EVIDENCE
"Market Share Analysis: Enterprise Telephony
Equipment, Worldwide, 2014"
This research is based, in part, on:
Feedback from Gartner inquiries, which amounts to
approximately 1,000 enduser client discussions
per year
Vendor responses to detailed questionnaires
specific to this Magic Quadrant research
Vendor references
Periodic vendor briefings
Generally available information, news and data in
financial and industry publications
Attendance at vendor analyst conferences and
industry tradeshows
Discussions with Gartner peers in research
communities
Gartner management critique, peer review, and
vendor review and confirmation
EVALUATION CRITERIA DEFINITIONS
Ability to Execute
Product/Service: Core goods and services offered by
the vendor for the defined market. This includes
current product/service capabilities, quality, feature
sets, skills and so on, whether offered natively or
through OEM agreements/partnerships as defined in
the market definition and detailed in the subcriteria.
Overall Viability: Viability includes an assessment of
the overall organization's financial health, the financial
and practical success of the business unit, and the
likelihood that the individual business unit will continue
investing in the product, will continue offering the
product and will advance the state of the art within the
organization's portfolio of products.
Sales Execution/Pricing: The vendor's capabilities in
all presales activities and the structure that supports
them. This includes deal management, pricing and
negotiation, presales support, and the overall
effectiveness of the sales channel.
Market Responsiveness/Record: Ability to respond,
change direction, be flexible and achieve competitive
success as opportunities develop, competitors act,
customer needs evolve and market dynamics change.
This criterion also considers the vendor's history of
responsiveness.
Marketing Execution: The clarity, quality, creativity
and efficacy of programs designed to deliver the
organization's message to influence the market,
promote the brand and business, increase awareness
of the products, and establish a positive identification
with the product/brand and organization in the minds
of buyers. This "mind share" can be driven by a
combination of publicity, promotional initiatives,
thought leadership, word of mouth and sales activities.
Customer Experience: Relationships, products and
services/programs that enable clients to be successful
with the products evaluated. Specifically, this includes
the ways customers receive technical support or
account support. This can also include ancillary tools,
customer support programs (and the quality thereof),
availability of user groups, servicelevel agreements
and so on.
Operations: The ability of the organization to meet its
goals and commitments. Factors include the quality of
the organizational structure, including skills,
experiences, programs, systems and other vehicles

Source: Gartner (October 2015)
Vendor Strengths and Cautions
ALE
ALE, formerly AlcatelLucent Enterprise, is the sixthlargest corporate telephony vendor, with 5.6% of
the global market share in 2014. ALE is headquartered near Paris, with 85% ownership by China
Huaxin, a Chinese technology investment firm; AlcatelLucent retains a 15% stake in the new company.
ALE has been operating since 1 October 2014, when it was spun off from AlcatelLucent, and Huaxin
took a majority ownership stake. As an independent company, ALE is seeking to further differentiate
itself in the market, along with expanding its footprint outside of Europe to other regions including
China, where it previously had limited success.
The AlcatelLucent OmniPCX Enterprise Communication Server is the vendor's primary platform for
corporate telephony. It supports analog, digital and IP endpoints, and can scale to 15,000 IP
terminations per server and 100,000 endpoints per singlesystem image. The platform provides
centralized intelligence, network management and user applications delivered across single or
multiplesite deployments, with a virtualized deployment requiring less space and a lower total cost of
ownership (TCO). ALE markets the OmniPCX Enterprise platform as a standalone telephony system
and as part of its AlcatelLucent OpenTouch Suite for unified communications.
ALE is providing its legacy TDM base with incentives to upgrade to voice over IP (VoIP) to ease the
transformation process. This effort includes simplifying the licensing model, hardware and software
upgrades required when migrating to VoIP, and adding additional UC features.
Enterprises with an existing ALE telephony platform, and those in regions where ALE is a dominant
player such as EMEA, should consider ALE for their telephony requirements.
Strengths
Architecturally and commercially, the OmniPCX Enterprise is available as an onpremisesbased
perpetual license or in a scalable, hosted and cloudbased utility model from selected service
providers and channel partners.
ALE has seen success in customizing its offerings to targeting specific verticals, including
hospitality and healthcare.
The IP softphone runs across all common operating systems and is featurerich. ALE has seen
greater adoption of its softphone versus some of its traditional competitors, helped in part by its
freemium offering.
Cautions
ALE has a goal to double the business in the next five years. Significant investments in adding
staff and increasing marketing have yet to be made to enable ALE to realize this objective.
that enable the organization to operate effectively and
efficiently on an ongoing basis.
Completeness of Vision
Market Understanding: Ability of the vendor to
understand buyers' wants and needs and to translate
those into products and services. Vendors that show
the highest degree of vision listen to and understand
buyers' wants and needs, and can shape or enhance
those with their added vision.
Marketing Strategy: A clear, differentiated set of
messages consistently communicated throughout the
organization and externalized through the website,
advertising, customer programs and positioning
statements.
Sales Strategy: The strategy for selling products that
uses the appropriate network of direct and indirect
sales, marketing, service, and communication affiliates
that extend the scope and depth of market reach,
skills, expertise, technologies, services and the
customer base.
Offering (Product) Strategy: The vendor's approach
to product development and delivery that emphasizes
differentiation, functionality, methodology and feature
sets as they map to current and future requirements.
Business Model: The soundness and logic of the
vendor's underlying business proposition.
Vertical/Industry Strategy: The vendor's strategy
to direct resources, skills and offerings to meet the
specific needs of individual market segments, including
vertical markets.
Innovation: Direct, related, complementary and
synergistic layouts of resources, expertise or capital for
investment, consolidation, defensive or preemptive
purposes.
Geographic Strategy: The vendor's strategy to direct
resources, skills and offerings to meet the specific
needs of geographies outside the "home" or native
geography, either directly or through partners,
channels and subsidiaries as appropriate for that
geography and market.

ALE utilizes thirdparty SBCs for large, complex, SIP trunking implementations. These SBCs are
not integrated into the OmniVista 8770 network management system, making administration and
support more complex.
ALE has yet to establish a significant presence in North America.
Avaya
Avaya is the secondlargest corporate telephony vendor worldwide, with 11.9% market share in 2014.
While Avaya's overall revenue has been declining, sales in corporate telephony and contact centers
remain steady. Avaya is evolving its sales strategy to focus on communications solutions that provide
business value versus a product orientation that is focused primarily on cost.
The Avaya Aura Platform is Avaya's flagship telephony solution for large organizations. Its foundation is
Avaya Aura Communication Manager, which provides rich voice, video, mobility, messaging, contact
center and collaboration capabilities on a resilient, distributed network natively supporting SIP, H.323,
digital and analog endpoints. Avaya has an open, standardsbased platform that integrates with
multivendor solutions, primarily through SIP. Avaya Aura 7.0 supports up to 250,000 users. Avaya has
succeeded in virtualizing its communications platform as it evolves into a softwarebased company.
Consider Avaya Aura for large, heterogeneous voice environments that have significant contact center
and sophisticated telephony feature requirements, or for enterprises that have an existing significant
investment in Avaya.
Strengths
Telephony and contact centers remain cornerstones of Avaya's portfolio, as the company
maintains brand recognition in these areas while continuing to strengthen its overall UC portfolio.
In Avaya Aura 7.0, released at the end of August 2015, Avaya made significant scalability and
feature enhancements to its media server and SBC. The Avaya SBC is getting close to par with
some of the more established SBC vendors and is integrated with the Avaya Aura System
Manager.
The Avaya Engagement Development Platform continues to mature (aided by the acquisition of
Esna), enabling enterprises to have a simple, Webbased development tool to tightly integrate
their communications with business processes and contextual data.
Cautions
Avaya's Professional and Support Services have on occasion competed with its channel partners
over the years as its direct versus channel strategy has varied. While this does not apply to its
cloud offerings, the competition in other areas is motivating some of its partners to also adopt
competing vendors' solutions and not be 100% committed to Avaya.
While Avaya has made progress in unifying the user experience around Avaya Communicator by
consolidating its Flare and Avaya oneX clients, it must execute on its plans to finalize
consolidation of Avaya Aura and Scopia clients.
Avaya has been slow to adopt multitenant cloud and flexible licensing models — including
portability between onpremises and cloud and subscriptionbased licensing.
Cisco
Cisco is the industry leader in the corporate telephony global market, with 85 million IP phones
deployed and a 14.4% global market share in 2014. Its success is based on Cisco Unified
Communications Manager (Unified CM), which is Cisco's core telephony platform, scaling to 80,000
users in a megacluster.
Cisco's Business Edition 7000 (BE7000) is a bundled solution for enterprises with more than 1,000
users, and uses a modular approach to scale by stacking servers to increase system capacity without
limits. By leveraging virtualization, organizations can architect communications solutions for distributed
survivability across data centers, as well as cloud environments. Cisco is also aggressively driving the
WebRTC market through its nextgeneration communications solution called Spark. Cisco continues to
innovate in a mature market space with features such as sending a text when someone receives a voice
mail. Sales teams find this feature very powerful.
With its global distribution network and comprehensive product portfolios, Cisco is a strong contender in
enterprise voice communications infrastructure. Enterprises should consider Cisco if they want a safe
choice with a vendor that has solid telephony offerings and financials, and global distribution, or if they
are inclined toward using a single vendor for endtoend solutions that include network gear, servers,
video and collaboration requirements, and a strong migration plan to UC.
Strengths
Cisco leverages its dominance in the networking space to help sell its communications solutions
and also offer differentiation, such as advanced call admission control and the ability to prioritize
voice over video sessions and centrally manage bandwidth congestion.
The BE7000 is being successfully adopted in the market as more enterprises look for a simplified,
bundled solution that includes the hardware, software licenses, network management and
endpoints in a packaged solution.
Jabber, Cisco's softphone client, is very featurerich and is being widely adopted by enterprises
that desire to support telephony on a wide range of smart endpoints.
Cautions
Prime Collaboration, Cisco management platform, does not provide Jabber quality statistics.

Jabber is Cisco's strategic softphone client. This is a gap in Cisco's Jabber management strategy
and something that Cisco has been slow to address.
Cisco has been slow to push its base to adopt dynamic, adaptive and wideband codecs to improve
voice quality over besteffort networks including WLAN and the Internet.
Gartner clients report that choosing Cisco as solesource provider for IP telephony, UC, data
networking, Web conferencing and video can lead to reduced negotiating leverage.
Huawei
Huawei is the eighthlargest corporate telephony vendor, with 4.7% of the global market share and
strong doubledigit growth, especially in Asia/Pacific. Huawei has been successful providing complete
network and communications solutions for enterprises. Huawei continues to increase the breadth and
depth of its corporate communications products and services, including telephony.
Huawei's corporate telephony solution eSpace Unified Communications (UC) Solution, is based on its
U1900 Series of hardware and software communications platforms, and its USM solution for very large
enterprises. Its modular design makes it scalable, with references of between 50,000 and 400,000
users in China. In 2013, Huawei added a unified session manager and a unified management platform
for its eSpace enterprise networking products, taking it closer to its goal of a more tightly integrated
solution suite.
Consider Huawei telephony solutions in regions where its carrier and largeenterprise business
resources are significant enough to provide capable support, especially Asia/Pacific and emerging EMEA
markets.
Strengths
Huawei's single softphone client works across most common operating systems, and supports
highdefinition codecs that can deliver a quality audio connection, even when network packet loss
is at 20%.
Huawei had $46 billion in revenue in 2014, a yearoveryear revenue gain of about 20%. Its
solutions span the carrier, largeenterprise, small or midsize business (SMB), and consumer
markets across the globe, and it continues to see strong doubledigit growth in its telephony
portfolio, especially in Asia/Pacific.
Huawei's eSpace solution is highly scalable, runs on virtualized platforms and offers software APIs
for integration with business applications.
Cautions
Growth for Huawei in the U.S. and selected Western European enterprise telephony markets has
been difficult, despite growing the number of its global channel partners.
Enterprises implementing SIP trunking with Huawei should realize that the current SBC is not fully
integrated with the product's network management suite, though this is on the roadmap for 2016.
Huawei users report that documentation and training for eSpace is not complete.
Microsoft
Microsoft is the fifthlargest corporate telephony vendor, with 6.5% of the global market share and
strong annual growth of 27% in 2014. Microsoft continues its strong growth in 2015, and is being
chosen by more enterprises as a corporate telephony platform.
Microsoft rebranded its Lync platform to Skype for Business (SfB), and continues to develop it as a
corporate telephony solution. Organizations generally select it initially for presence, IM and
conferencing needs, then evaluate it as a telephony platform. Microsoft has a strategy of delivering
softwareonly solutions and creating an ecosystem of partners to provide capabilities such as desktop
phones, media gateways, SBCs, performance monitoring tools and paging systems.
Choosing the right Microsoft partners is critical to providing features and high availability required for
corporate telephony. The addition of communications competency certification in the Skype for Business
partner program is helping users validate partner competencies, specifically for telephony.
Skype for Business is a strategic UC choice for many organizations. Enterprises that do not have
sophisticated PBX requirements and want a communications system that is wellintegrated with the
Microsoft collaboration suite should consider SfB.
Strengths
Organizations with a Microsoft volume licensing agreement usually consider SfB financially
competitive compared with other telephony solutions for basic telephony needs. This is especially
true if the enterprise primarily adopts softphones and deploys few desktop phones.
Microsoft has strong brand awareness for UC. It deploys SfB for IM, voice, video and Web
conferencing. The company is building a strong global portfolio of SfB partners to help clients
execute on telephony and UC strategies.
Skype integration and consistent user experience enables Microsoft to offer multiple tiers of
service for those seeking enterprisegrade quality, to those looking for a besteffort service that
competes with other freemium services from Google, Zoom and Fuze.
Cautions
Microsoft is focusing on its cloud capabilities, which has lengthened its time in adding additional
telephony features so SfB can be a fullenterprise PBX replacement. Enterprises report limitations
associated with features such as music on hold, local intercom calling between managers and

personal assistants, and recording calls.
Gartner clients report challenges in providing high availability with Microsoft SfB for basic
telephony. Poor call quality, dropped calls and system outages plague some implementations that
did not utilize a qualified Microsoft SfB integrator.
Some of the new features offered in SfB, such as sharedline appearances, are not available on
legacy phones such as the Polycom CX series.
Mitel
Mitel is the fourthlargest corporate telephony vendor, with 7.9% of the global market in 2014. Mitel's
acquisition of Mavenir Systems, a cellular software company, positions the company well in the
corporate telephony market. Over 90% of Mitel sales are through channel partners in the global
telephony market.
For larger enterprises, MiVoice MXONE (from the Aastra and Ericsson heritage), is Mitel's standard
telephony platform, which scales to 500,000 users. MiVoice MXONE is targeted at customers that
require highavailability features, including stateful failover. Mitel enables users to access Mitel MiVoice,
and associated components can be deployed onpremises, hosted, in the cloud or in a hybrid
configuration.
Midmarket and large enterprises should consider Mitel if they desire a platform that is simple to install,
administer and use. Mitel is also targeting specific market verticals, including hospitality and healthcare.
Strengths
With the acquisition of Mavenir, Mitel is positioned to have a tight integration between enterprise
and mobile telephony for stronger fixedmobile substitution.
Mitel is a strong global player, especially in EMEA and North America, with over 2,500 channel
partners.
Mitel offers MiCloud for the delivery of cloudbased solutions that support telephony, UC and
videoconferencing, which can also complement onpremises MiVoice deployments. License
portability between onpremises, hybrid and cloud offers enterprises flexibility in their
deployments.
Cautions
Mitel has acquired a number of companies as part of its growth strategy and folded them into the
Mitel brand. However, its global brand awareness lags other vendors in the largeenterprise
segment.
Mitel has been slower than some of its competitors to adopt WebRTC and support Opus, which is a
dynamic, adaptive, wideband codec that works well over besteffort networks.
Mitel's multiple call management platforms can cause uncertainty for prospects unfamiliar with the
portfolio. Prospects should understand which of the options best meets their needs and select a
Mitel partner that matches that platform.
NEC
NEC is the thirdlargest corporate telephony supplier, with 10.3% share of the global market in 2014.
NEC has a large installed base of customers, especially in Asia/Pacific.
NEC's SV9500 Communications Server platform has high reliability standards and will scale to 192,000
users. NEC positions different solutions in different regional markets with the SV9000 family as a
softwarebased telephony platform that runs on virtualized servers. The SV9000 family builds further
on the rich feature functionality of the appliancebased Univerge SV8000 series and combines this with
the UC capabilities of the Univerge 3C series. The SV9500 is offered in three flexible delivery models:
software only, prepackaged virtual server and a purposebuilt appliance. The softwarebased approach
appeals to enterprises of all sizes, particularly in North America.
Consider NEC when scalability, high availability and multiple levels of redundancy with a good migration
path to UC are strategic requirements, or if there is an existing large investment in NEC. Users in
industry verticals such as hospitality, healthcare, education and government may also be attracted to
NEC's specific sectorial solutions.
Strengths
NEC provides its own cloud solution and offers license portability from premise to cloud. The fact
that NEC directly controls its cloud solution enables NEC customers to easily deploy a hybrid
model.
NEC is a large, diversified global supplier of information and communications technology, products
and solutions, including corporate telephony. It has significant financial strength, extensive
internal resources and established channel partners in North America, EMEA, Latin America and
Asia/Pacific.
The UT880 is a new Androidbased phone that can support many customized applications,
including NEC's strong biometric technology. One instance of utilizing these new phones is in high
end hospitality to enable room service applications running on the phone.
Cautions
NEC's marketing is not as robust as its competitors', and brand recognition for corporate
telephony is lagging, particularly in the North American market.
NEC supports a thirdparty SBC, which is not integrated into NEC's UC Management Platform

(Univerge MA400). Currently, administration and support for the SBC is managed by a thirdparty
system.
Some of NEC's channel partners in the North American and European markets, are not certified to
support the SV9000 family of products.
Unify
Unify, is the seventhlargest global corporate telephony vendor, with 5.2% of the market in 2014. Unify
completed its restructuring in June 2015 to reduce cost and drive the company toward a software
based business. Unify telephony shipments dropped 16.2% in 2014. The management team is focused
on transforming its gotomarket strategy and establishing momentum in North America through
channel partners.
OpenScape Voice is Unify's enterprise flagship platform, scaling to 100,000 users in a singlenode
configuration and 500,000 in a network. It supports private, hybrid or public cloud deployments, and
may be virtualized with VMware or any openvirtualization, formatcompliant hypervisor. Unify
maintains a strong presence in Europe and Latin America and is working to improve coverage in North
America. The Circuit application, which is a WebRTCbased technology designed for team collaboration,
includes a telephony connector that bridges the OpenScape voice solution with the Circuit cloud
offering, providing for both onpremises and hybrid deployments.
OpenScape Enterprise solutions support midsize to very large enterprise requirements, and they are a
good choice for customers that want to upgrade their existing installed base. Large organizations should
consider OpenScape Enterprise for its ability to be deployed globally as a single, highly resilient system
that customers can manage centrally from different locations.
Strengths
The Unify portfolio includes verticalspecific solutions. OpenScape Xpert is targeted at financial
services organizations and includes trading turrets. The solution enables customers to benefit from
the networking capabilities of OpenScape Enterprise.
OpenScape Enterprise is highly virtualized and supports private, hybrid and public cloud
deployments, giving enterprises flexibility in deployment options.
Unify is gaining interest for various U.S. government agencies by getting Joint Interoperability
Test Commend (JITC) certification.
Cautions
Unify's channel strategy and execution lags that of its competitors. This is having a direct impact
on its ability to improve its sales. Unify's goal of increasing North American market share remains
a work in progress.
While Unify was first to market with a WebRTCbased clientless communications solution, it has
not seen a large market adoption, in part due to its current gotomarket strategy and not
providing simultaneous video and screen sharing.
Unify's restructuring has likely put the vendor in a better position to become profitable, but
because it is privately held, its lack of financial disclosure makes it difficult for industry analysts
and customers to assess whether the company is making progress. Unify's transformation plan
remains subject to a high degree of execution risk and will be challenged by a difficult competitive
environment.
Vendors Added and Dropped
We review and adjust our inclusion criteria for Magic Quadrants and MarketScopes as markets change.
As a result of these adjustments, the mix of vendors in any Magic Quadrant or MarketScope may
change over time. A vendor's appearance in a Magic Quadrant or MarketScope one year and not the
next does not necessarily indicate that we have changed our opinion of that vendor. It may be a
reflection of a change in the market and, therefore, changed evaluation criteria, or of a change of focus
by that vendor.
Added
No vendors were added to this Magic Quadrant. However, AlcatelLucent Enterprise Division was
acquired by China Huaxin and rebranded as ALE.
Dropped
Toshiba and ShoreTel were dropped due to not meeting all the inclusion criteria listed below.
Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria
To be included in the "Magic Quadrant for Corporate Telephony," solution providers must meet the
following minimum criteria:
Demonstrate an IPbased corporate telephony application that provides enterprisewide call control
and management for enterprises with more than 1,000 voice users and success in selling to the
large enterprise.
Have a product offering that includes the management of legacy telephony environments,
including media gateways; the connection of IP with circuitswitchedbased networks; and
functions such as call admission control, survivability, codec management, echo cancellation, and
access to emergency services and agencies. The systems must also integrate with UC
functionality.
Have a significant market presence in telephony that can be demonstrated by significant market

share or differentiating innovation. Vendors must have a minimum revenue from enterprise
telephony equipment revenue of $200 million in 2014.
Offer systems in at least three global market regions, including North America, Europe, Central
America, South America and Asia.
Provide evidence of sales, revenue and operational investments that support market objectives —
this research focuses on the large and very large enterprise market (vendors focused primarily on
SMBs are not included).
Provide multiple references for enterprise onpremises portfolios/products with more than 1,000
users.
Evaluation Criteria
Ability to Execute
Gartner analysts evaluate technology providers on the quality and efficacy of the processes, systems,
methods or procedures that enable IT provider performance to be competitive, efficient and effective,
and to positively impact revenue, retention and reputation. Ultimately, technology providers are judged
on their ability and success in capitalizing on their vision.
Product or Service: Core products providing telephony capabilities, provided by vendors that compete
in and serve the largeenterprise market segment. This includes current product capabilities as defined
in the market definition, as well as the future direction in UC. The quality of support in timeliness and
accuracy are important to longterm success.
Overall Viability: Includes an assessment of the overall organization's financial health, as well as the
financial and practical success of the business unit, especially under current market conditions. Also
included is the potential of the business unit to continue to invest in the product, offer the product and
advance the state of the art in the company's broader portfolio of products.
Sales Execution/Pricing: The vendor and channel capabilities in all presales activities and the
operational structure that supports them. This includes deal management, value selling, pricing and
negotiation, presales support, and the overall effectiveness of the sales channel, direct and indirect.
Market Responsiveness/Record: The ability to respond to current market conditions and the
disruptive influences of UC. It assesses how a vendor might change direction or modify the portfolio to
achieve competitive success as opportunities develop, competitors act, customer needs evolve and
market dynamics change. This criterion also considers the vendor's history of market responsiveness as
tracked in our market share and sizing research.
Marketing Execution: The clarity, quality, creativity and efficacy of marketing programs designed to
deliver the organization's message to influence all markets, promote the brand and business, increase
product awareness, and establish a positive identification with the product, the vendor and the channel
in the minds of buyers. This mind share can be driven by a combination of publicity, promotions,
thought leadership, word of mouth and sales activities, as well as Gartner's inquiry process.
Customer Experience: Sales and support relationships, products, and programs that enable
customers to be successful with the products evaluated. This includes the availability of technical and
account support, and the number of channels through which this is available. Also included are
customer support programs (and the quality thereof), and the availability of user groups and service
level agreements. Gartner's feedback from clients through the inquiry process is included in our
analysis.
Operations: The ability of the organization to meet its goals and commitments, especially in the
current climate. Factors include the quality of the organizational structure, especially global operations,
skills, experiences, programs, systems and other vehicles that enable the vendor to operate effectively
and efficiently on an ongoing basis.
Table 1. Ability to Execute Evaluation
Criteria
Evaluation Criteria Weighting
Product or Service High
Overall Viability High
Sales Execution/Pricing Medium
Market Responsiveness/Record Medium
Marketing Execution High
Customer Experience High
Operations High
Completeness of Vision
Gartner analysts evaluate technology providers on their ability to convincingly articulate logical
statements about current and future market direction, innovation, customer needs, and competitive

forces and how well they map to the Gartner position. Ultimately, technology providers are rated on
their understanding of how market forces can be exploited to create opportunity for the provider.
Market Understanding: The telephony market is very mature. We evaluated vendors for their
understanding of how customer needs were changing, for users as well as the IT group responsible for
managing telephony. It was especially important to see how vendors proposed to complement, or
compete with, the collaboration solutions in UC.
Marketing Strategy: A clear, differentiated set of messages for telephony and enhanced
communications consistently delivered by executives and senior employees, and externalized through
websites, advertising, customer programs and positioning statements.
Sales Strategy: The strategy for selling telephony products that uses an appropriate and profitable
balance of direct and indirect sales, marketing, service and communication affiliates that extend the
scope and depth of market reach to selective markets. The understanding of the shift toward value
selling was especially important.
Offering (Product) Strategy: The vendor's approach to product development and delivery, with
roadmaps for consolidation, where necessary. Important factors here were the migration to software,
support for SIP and the ability to build scalable solutions consistent with the needs of target markets.
Business Model: The logic of the vendor's underlying business proposition for the communications
market.
Vertical/Industry Strategy: Some vendors articulate a specialization for vertical markets, by
leveraging intellectual capital, technology, or an alignment with a sister or parent company. The
vendor's strategy to direct resources, skills and offerings to meet the specific needs of individual market
segments, especially in the current climate, where the propensity to spend varies between segments.
Innovation: The IP telephony market has reached maturity and vendors need to demonstrate the
innovation to capture market share and grow in associated markets, with a combination of technology
and services in order to grow revenue beyond the market average.
Geographic Strategy: The telephony market has historically been fragmented, with most players
attaining income from their traditional home market. The requirements for many of Gartner's enduser
clients are global. A vendor should demonstrate how it directs resources, skills and product offerings to
meet the needs of international clients, directly or through channels, to market to the needs of
Gartner's clients.
Table 2. Completeness of Vision
Evaluation Criteria
Evaluation Criteria Weighting
Market Understanding High
Marketing Strategy High
Sales Strategy Medium
Offering (Product) Strategy High
Business Model Medium
Vertical/Industry Strategy Medium
Innovation Medium
Geographic Strategy High
Quadrant Descriptions
Leaders
Leaders are highviability vendors with broad portfolios, significant market shares, broad geographic
coverage, a clear vision of how telephony needs will evolve and a proven track record for delivering
telephony solutions. They are wellpositioned with their current product portfolio and likely to continue
delivering leading products. Leaders do not necessarily offer a bestofbreed solution for every
customer requirement. However, overall, their products are strong and often have some exceptional
capabilities. These vendors provide solutions that present relatively low risk for enterprise use.
Challengers
Challengers are vendors with strong market capabilities and good solutions for specific markets.
However, overall, their products lack the breadth and depth of those in the Leaders quadrant.
Challengers do not always communicate a clear vision of how the telephony market is evolving, and
they are often less innovative or advanced than Leaders. Vendors in this quadrant often have excellent
telephony functionality, but lack brand awareness in the market.
Visionaries
Visionaries demonstrate a clear understanding of the telephony market and provide key innovations
that point to the market's future. However, these vendors may be relatively new to the telephony
market, with the potential to grow while in the process of expanding their regional and global sales and

support capabilities.
Niche Players
The vendors in this quadrant offer telephony solutions that focus on a segment or segments of the
market, or a subset of telephony functionality. Customers aligned with the focus of a niche solution
provider may find its offerings to be a good match for their limited needs. Niche Players often offer
strong products for particular geographical or verticalmarket subsets, but may have some weaknesses
in one or more important areas.
Context
Companies are increasingly focusing their business strategies and acquisition decisions around unified
communications and collaboration (UCC) technology; it is supplanting the historical domain of corporate
telephony. This shift presents IT planners with new user needs and technological integration challenges,
especially as telephony applications become more mobile, and as knowledge workers increase their
reliance on conferencing, video, IM and collaboration tools to fulfill group tasks.
Organizations will continue to invest in IP telephony platforms after having mapped out telephony's role
in a clear UC strategy. As users' communication habits evolve, infrastructure and operations leaders
should consider new telephony and UC vendor relationships, as well as the use of managed services,
outsourcing, hosted and cloudbased solutions. Employment of IPPBXs will vary according to current
investments, maturity of an organization's network infrastructure, and incumbent vendor strategy.
Market Overview
Key trends in corporate telephony include:
An increasing number of IT decision makers are evaluating the potential value of cloud telephony
in an enterprise communications strategy. Growing vendor investment in cloud telephony
portfolios, moremature cloud offers, and increased acceptance of alternative acquisition models
are increasing market awareness and the opportunities for acceptance of cloud telephony offers.
Virtualized telephony has become increasingly popular among enterprises, with most vendors
investing to meet this need, while also addressing IT leaders' needs to improve the enterprise's
resiliency and disaster recovery capabilities, and to reduce server and operations costs.
More suppliers are bundling their communications licenses and capabilities, including voice,
presence, IM, conferencing and mobility functionalities. While offers may look attractive and are
often appropriate for some users, the added cost of software subscriptions means buyers likely will
be overpaying for features that a minority of users access.
Continued aggressive discounting (ranging from 50% to 65% for corporate telephony systems)
has been ongoing since 2009, especially for large global telephony deals. This trend reinforces the
need for buyers to use the RFP process and be strategic about vendor selection (see "Toolkit:
Sample RFP for Unified Communications").
With users becoming more mobile, organizations are interested in connecting incoming corporate
telephony calls at the desktop with mobile devices (see "Critical Capabilities for Corporate Telephony").
Enterprises are gaining buying power with mobile operators. They are able to negotiate onnet rates for
lowercost or flatrate calling between mobile users and their enterprise networks. As IT welcomes
mobile devices to the enterprise, organizations will demand solutions that integrate the mobile phone
more tightly into the corporate telephony solution and employees' preferred smartphones.
Key Capabilities for Supporting Evolving Enterprise Telephony
The enterprise voice market includes the provisioning of holistic voice communications for all wired and
wireless users. Typically, architectures support distributed onpremises solutions, as well as centralized,
virtualized and hosted platforms dedicated to a single organization.
Some technology providers may not meet all your organization's requirements as they refine their
strategies for profitability and sustainability. Evaluate a telephony vendor's ability to support one or
more of the following future directions and capabilities:
Supports realtime voice, video and conferencing capabilities across the enterprise network,
integrated with collaboration capabilities, such as IM, email and desktop sharing. Migrating
between different communications channels should be seamless for users and offer a lower TCO
for the IT group than managing separate communications channels.
Demonstrates the value of session management and control, and supports policies for the ways
that sessions are established between network endpoints across multiple technology platforms and
managed for quality and cost controls. This approach elevates the role of the corporate
communications platform to that of network and session manager. It is an alternative option to
creating a homogeneous voice platform integrated with multiple communications channels across
the business. Evaluate vendors with this approach for their ability to offer enhanced voice routing
capabilities.
Offers an open telephony platform that supports integrations and partnerships with conferencing
and collaboration applications from disparate vendors. Vendor solutions should focus on managing
voice across wired and wireless endpoints.
Enables system integration with and support for competitive UC products to complement and
supplement their telephony solutions. Over time, enterprises will need a global capability to
support knowledge worker groups in diverse geographies.
Provides a scalable hosted alternative that supports capabilities for service providers to offer
communicationsasaservice solutions.

Includes established network and system management tools that leverage the efficiencies and
opportunities for cost savings afforded by IP technology, such as managing voice and data
communications through a common Webbased UI; remote provisioning of new extension users;
and performing moves, adds and changes without relying on technicians.
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