West, 8x8, Microsoft Named Leading Global UCaaS Players

There’s never been a better time to make the leap into UCaaS as the global market is set to expand at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of more than 29 percent, reaching $79.3 billion by the end of 2024.

That’s according to a new report by Transparency Market Research. The market was worth just $8.2 billion in 2015.

The five leading global UCaaS companies are West, 8×8, Microsoft, Fuze and Cisco, the report says. Almost as noteworthy is the absence of many companies that we highlighted last year in our CP list of 20 top UCaaS providers. Other key UCaaS firms the TMR report identifies are IBM, Avaya, Hewlett-Packard Development (HPE), Alcatel-Lucent SA and Unify.

TMR says the top five players are especially focused on combining business applications and processes. This is expected to increase the popularity of UCaaS globally. Demand is likely to surge in the coming years due to rising investment in industries such as: consumer goods; banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI); transportation and logistics; retail; and telecom.

Breaking it down by deployment models, hosted UCaaS is expected to lead the way through 2024 due to increased adoption of IP telephony access around the world; moreover, the low overall total cost of ownership and key upgrades in cloud communication are contributing to growth.

North America is expected to be the strongest continent for UCaaS sales through 2024. Growth is due in particular to the emergence of tech-savvy employees and improved infrastructure.

The popularity of BYOD and the different advantages provided by UCaaS are contributing to market growth around the world. There’s still a big opportunity for partners to sell SMBs on the technology; the report says a lack of awareness among small and medium business owners is about the only thing that could threaten to hamper the adoption rate.