Unified Communications as a Service
UCaaS providers primarily offer telephony, meetings, messaging and contact center, and are trying to differentiate with AI capabilities that are mostly focused on customer-facing and collaboration features. This research helps heads of I&O select providers that align with their organizations’ needs.
Market Definition
Gartner defines unified communications as a service (UCaaS) as a multitenant, subscription-based service that is cloud-delivered. It provides business telephony features; public switched telephone network (PSTN) connectivity that enables inbound and/or outbound external calling; and collaboration features, such as messaging and meetings. UCaaS services can be consumed by end users with traditional handsets, desktop clients, web clients, meeting room systems and mobile apps.
UCaaS is used by organizations to securely communicate and collaborate — both internally and externally. It includes telephony, messaging and meetings. UCaaS providers may offer variations of each of the three core modes of communication and also offer a range of cloud contact center functionalities, either self-developed or through integration/partnerships with cloud contact center specialists.
Gartner’s definition of meetings for the UCaaS market mostly focuses on the capabilities for internal collaboration, work from home and external presentation meeting use cases. Other specialized use cases — such as webinar, remote support, distance learning and training —are often available from UCaaS offerings, but are not mandatory for inclusion in this research. These use cases are part of a separate market defined by Gartner (the meeting solutions market).
UCaaS is frequently sought by organizations as a replacement option that will enable them to outsource most of the maintenance, upgrade, support and management of premises-based UC to the UCaaS provider. With most providers, UCaaS is a co-managed service; however, the buyer’s share of the management is limited to simpler administrative tasks, such as move, add, change and delete (MACD).
Support for remote and hybrid workers, an important capability that buyers seek, is standard in UCaaS offerings today.
UCaaS vendors are expanding their offerings in two adjacent spaces. The first is basic, and involves mostly internal-facing, voice-only call center solutions that are usually bundled with the UCaaS offering at little/no additional cost. The second market involves artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled use cases for telephony, messaging and meetings. Gartner sees these two pursuits as attempts by vendors to differentiate their offerings in a highly commoditized market. Gartner observed a degree of GenAI normalization for meeting capabilities and, to a lesser extent, in telephony.
Report 2025
Here is a summary of the vendors featured in the Gartner magic quadrant 2025 report.
For the full analysis and detailed insights, you can read the report
here
and view the magic quadrant graphic
here.
| Market Status | Market Vendor |
|---|---|
Leader |
Microsoft |
Leader |
Cisco |
Leader |
Zoom |
Leader |
RingCentral |
Visionary |
8x8 |
Visionary |
GoTo |
Visionary |
Dialpad |
Niche Player |
|
Niche Player |
Vonage |
Niche Player |
Wildx |
Niche Player |
Sangoma |
Report 2024
Here is a summary of the vendors featured in the Gartner magic quadrant 2024 report.
For the full analysis and detailed insights, you can read the report
here
and view the magic quadrant graphic
here.
| Market Status | Market Vendor |
|---|---|
Leader |
Microsoft |
Leader |
Cisco |
Leader |
RingCentral |
Leader |
Zoom |
Leader |
8x8 |
Niche Player |
GoTo |
Niche Player |
Vonage |
Niche Player |
Dialpad |
Niche Player |
Sangoma |
Niche Player |
Wildx |
Challenger |