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Magic Quadrant for Corporate Telephony
17 September 2012 ID:G00230940
Analyst(s): Jay Lassman, Geoff Johnson, Steve Blood
VIEW SUMMARY
Telephony vendors struggle to grow market share and maintain profitability in a mature market.IT leaders must satisfy new requirements for voice and unified communications while stayingwithin budget. Our criteria can help in the selection of the best vendor to meet short- and long-term objectives.
Market Definition/Description
This Magic Quadrant reviews technology vendors that design, manufacture and distribute a
combination of hardware and/or software solutions for corporate telephony. These architectures
focus on either centralized or distributed premises-based platforms that are dedicated for use by
a single company, whether provisioned as stand-alone or as part of a unified communications
(UC) suite. Furthermore, while the corporate telephony market is evolving from a model focused
on producing innovations in proprietary hardware to one that uses standards-based hardware
and software, vendors' strategies continue to focus on protecting their market share by
maintaining the differentiation of their respective product portfolios to lock out competitors. This
reality underscores the need for aligning a voice platform with an overall UC strategy. Decision
criteria for corporate telephony should focus on scalable solutions that support Session Internet
Protocol (SIP), desired levels of resiliency, desktop and mobile functionality, and the ability to
integrate with enterprise IT applications while delivering the performance and voice quality
demanded by users.
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Magic Quadrant
Figure 1. Magic Quadrant for Corporate Telephony
Source: Gartner (September 2012)
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Vendor Strengths and Cautions
Aastra Technologies
Aastra's MX-One is the company's global corporate telephony product. It can be configured as a
centralized high-capacity server, a distributed single system over a large geographical area or a
combination of both. MX-One supports a VMware virtualized environment with applications as
virtual machines residing on a single host. The platform scales up to 15,000 SIP endpoints and 15
gateways per server. Aastra also serves the U.S. market with Clearspan, an enterprise version of
the BroadSoft platform that many service providers use in their central offices. Additionally,
Aastra's acquisition of Comdasys gives it direct control of its mobility strategy and demonstrates
its intent to continue to add value to its product portfolio. Like other vendors, Aastra has also
been challenged with the market downturn in Europe, but it has suffered less than many of its
competitors due to prudent financial management. Aastra has a strong footprint in Europe and
South America, and emerging businesses in North America and Asia. Its product portfolio for
EVIDENCE
This research is based, in part, on:
Feedback derived from Gartner inquiries,
which amounts to more than 900 end-user
client discussions per year
More than 100 face-to-face meetings with
clients
Vendor responses to detailed questionnaires
specific to this Magic Quadrant research
Interviews with vendor references
Periodic vendor briefings during a 12-month
interval
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 that compete in/serve the
defined market. This includes current
product/service capabilities, quality, feature sets,
skills, etc., whether offered natively or through
OEM agreements/partnerships as defined in the
market definition and detailed in the subcriteria.
Overall Viability (Business Unit, Financial,
Strategy, Organization): Viability includes an
assessment of the overall organization's financial
health, the financial and practical success of the
business unit, and the likelihood of the individual
business unit to continue investing in the product,
to continue offering the product and to 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, pre-sales support and
the overall effectiveness of the sales channel.
Market Responsiveness and Track 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 in order 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, 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, service-level agreements, etc.
Operations: The ability of the organization to
meet its goals and commitments. Factors include
telephony is stronger than its developments in UC.
The MX-One is a proven telephony system with very good high-availability options, system
management tools, a migration path to UC and support for mobile applications. Aastra customers
using the MD110, the forerunner of the MX-One, as well as other private-sector and public-sector
organizations, should consider Aastra based on the availability of certified MX-One sales and
support capabilities.
Strengths
Aastra has a strong history in delivering competitive telephony products, with a reputation
for providing investment protection and a total cost of ownership (TCO) that is one of the
lowest for corporate telephony.
Aastra's acquisition of Comdasys strengthens the critically important mobility component for
the MX-One.
Aastra is a well-run business with a strong focus on profitability and expense management.
Most recently, the vendor's activities in this category resulted in an upgrade to Positive using
Gartner's financial performance model.
Cautions
Aastra's investment in R&D (around 10% of sales) is much lower than many of its
competitors, both as a percentage of sales and in actual dollars. This investment level limits
the extent to which it can innovate, especially in the UC market. The lagging development of
its UC portfolio may limit its appeal as a supplier of telephony.
As a Canadian-based business with the majority of its business in Europe, Aastra's financial
performance is doubly impacted by the challenging market conditions and the weakening of
the euro to the Canadian dollar.
Although Aastra has an established business in North America for the MX-One and
Clearspan, resources for distribution and support are limited.
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Alcatel-Lucent
The Alcatel-Lucent OmniPCX Enterprise is the vendor's leading platform for corporate telephony. It
supports analog, digital and Internet Protocol (IP) endpoints, and can scale to 15,000 IP users
per server. The platform provides centralized intelligence, network management and user
applications delivered across single or multiple site deployments. Premises-based and hosted
versions are supported. Alcatel-Lucent markets the OmniPCX Enterprise platform as a stand-alone
telephony system and as part of its OpenTouch UC suite. For businesses with up to 1,500
employees, the full OpenTouch UC suite is a single-server solution. Alcatel-Lucent also offers the
OmniPCX Office for businesses with up to 200 users.
In 2011, Alcatel-Lucent announced it was exploring the sale of its Enterprise Business Group,
which included its OmniPCX telephony, OpenTouch UC and Genesys contact center product
portfolios, as well as its enterprise networking business. On 1 February 2012, Alcatel-Lucent
confirmed the sale of Genesys to private-equity firm Permira and indicated that it will keep the
remaining enterprise business. Customers and prospects should monitor Alcatel-Lucent for any
signs of changes in the Enterprise Business Group's approach to innovation, product strategy
and/or customer support. Alcatel-Lucent, as a whole, has expressed dissatisfaction with its
overall 2Q12 financial results and has announced a program to reduce costs by €1.25 billion by
the end of 2013, including a reduction in head count and a restructuring of or exiting from
unprofitable markets. At the same time, the Enterprise Business Group posted an adjusted
operating profit of 1.6% of revenue in 2Q12.
The OmniPCX product line is a proven telephony system with a UC road map and strong support
for wireless and mobile applications. Organizations should consider the vendor based on the
availability of Alcatel-Lucent certified sales and support capabilities in their respective regions.
Likewise, current Alcatel-Lucent customers should carefully confirm availability of support before
making continued investments with the vendor.
Strengths
With OpenTouch, Alcatel-Lucent demonstrates a strong product development strategy and
direction to migrate OmniPCX customers to UC.
A cloud version provides OmniPCX Enterprise users with the option to benefit from a
subscription-based pricing model for sites where it would be hard to justify the capital cost
for a telephony infrastructure.
Alcatel-Lucent has an established presence and a significant partner network in place across
its home region of Western Europe.
The Alcatel-Lucent data networking portfolio enables the company to offer a strong end-to-
end value proposition for voice and data solutions that could also yield incremental pricing
discounts.
Cautions
The decision to sell the lucrative Genesys contact center business could create doubt over
Alcatel-Lucent's commitment to the adjacent enterprise telephony market. The vendor must
again earn the enterprise market's confidence.
Although the OpenTouch architecture is the core direction for UC, the product is not yet a
fully market-proven solution, with channel partners and support expertise in short supply.
Although Alcatel-Lucent is making progress adding new customers and growing its business
in North America, there are a limited number of OmniPCX certified dealers in that region.
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Avaya
the quality of the organizational structure
including skills, experiences, programs, systems
and other vehicles 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 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 product
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 set 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 verticals.
Innovation: Direct, related, complementary and
synergistic layouts of resources, expertise or
capital for investment, consolidation, defensive or
pre-emptive 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.
During the past year, Avaya has continued to evolve and expand its solution portfolio. Through
the acquisition of Radvision, Persony and Sipera Systems, it gained technologies for video and
Web-conferencing capabilities, and a session border controller for security. In addition, Avaya has
made progress on critical tasks following its 2009 acquisition of Nortel Enterprise Solutions (NES)
— it has completed the normalization and stabilization of its products; and the management team
is executing on its consolidated marketing strategy. However, Avaya has not yet set an offer date
for a proposed initial public offering (IPO) of $1 billion of its common stock, which is intended to
help debt repayment of about $1.4 billion due in 2014.
Avaya Aura is a highly scalable telephony platform with local and enterprisewide failover options
that extend to SIP and time division multiplexing (TDM) trunks, or a combination of both. The Aura
platform also supports a migration plan to UC, and real-time processing of SIP sessions for
emerging multimedia business applications. Avaya has also focused on the scaling of IP Office
Server Edition for midsize enterprises, the addition of the AvayaLive Connect cloud offering, and
the advancement of its Avaya Connect and DevConnect channel partner options. Avaya has made
a lot of progress simplifying software and hardware upgrades for Communication Server (CS)
1000 customers, which also enables continued use of NES telephones. Organizations can also
draw on Avaya's full range of networking, contact center, security, video, UC and collaboration
products. Avaya has complete product portfolios for telephony, contact center and UC, as well as
the ability to meet the requirements of globally situated enterprises. In addition, IP Office is a
good fit for small or midsize businesses (SMBs).
Consider Avaya Aura if you need to bring together heterogeneous environments; require a
contact center as part of UC; need video, mobility and business application integration; or have
significant investments in Avaya that you wish to migrate toward a next-generation UC solution.
Strengths
Avaya expertise deploying Aura Session Manager enables selective location-independent
deployment of telephony and UC applications and services throughout the organization.
Aura Session Manager supports the routing of sessions and sharing of applications between
Avaya and non-Avaya IP-PBX systems.
Avaya's Agile Communication Environment (ACE) platform enables the vendor to deliver SIP-
based communications-enabled business processes (CEBPs), as well as solutions that
interoperate with UC and business applications from disparate vendors. The ACE platform
also reinforces Avaya Aura's ability to enable back-end processing of SIP sessions required
by high-performance, real-time communications applications.
Avaya's pricing is usually competitive relative to its peer group. Users of older Avaya Aura
and CS 1000 releases will benefit from generous license upgrade credits.
Avaya Aura System Manager provides a single management interface for administrators to
manage the Avaya Aura core, Communication Manager, CS 1000 and related applications,
including messaging, conferencing, contact center, data networking and branch gateways.
Cautions
Some Gartner clients report uneven availability of quality Avaya technical support personnel,
which has resulted in longer-than-desirable response times. Similarly, it takes an undue
amount of time for Avaya to generate maintenance contract pricing and render accurate bills
to customers. Avaya is addressing this with a new automated quoting process and new
lookup tools, which reduce quote time; a combined invoice for hardware and software that
simplifies billing is now in place.
Avaya has been slower than some of its competitors to introduce a virtualized and
consolidated Aura option for organizations that prefer running a core telephony platform in a
VMware environment. While Avaya plans for the first release to be available by the end of
2012, prospects should confirm that Avaya support personnel and channel partners have the
required certifications.
Avaya continues to receive a Caution rating, according to the Gartner financial rating
methodology. Despite slow and steady improvements since the acquisition of the NES
assets, Avaya reported a year-over-year revenue decline of about 9% in its FY12 second
quarter ending 31 March and third quarter ending 30 June. Avaya reports that the decrease
in revenue was, in part, driven by limited quality issues in its infrastructure solution product
portfolio, which have now been addressed. Given its high debt level, Avaya's financial
performance should be monitored.
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Cisco
Cisco Unified Communications Manager (Cisco Unified CM) is the core platform for the vendor's
collaboration services, providing not only voice, but also integrated video, mobility, session
management, security, presence and messaging, allowing enterprises to use what they have as
they add services and move to UC. The platform is highly scalable and has an established
worldwide presence. For more than the past three years, Cisco has consistently been No. 1
among corporate telephony vendors for total shipments of telephony user licenses. The vendor
benefits from its leadership position in data networking, and is expanding its relationships with IT
professionals by offering UC solutions that include data center virtualization and cloud-based
deployment options. Cisco offers significant portions of its software on VMware, which can
operate under Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) servers and other qualified servers.
With its global distribution network and comprehensive product portfolios, Cisco is a strong
contender for virtually any organization's voice communications infrastructure, especially those
inclined toward using Cisco for end-to-end solutions that include network gear, voice, UC, video
and collaboration requirements, as well as requirements for UC client support on Apple and
Android products.
Strengths
Cisco's virtualized version of Cisco Unified CM runs in a VMware environment and can reduce
the need for dedicated servers. The server options include Cisco UCS as well as HP and IBM
servers that comply with Cisco's published requirements. Cisco's virtualized data center
environment leverages many of the customer's data center infrastructure components, such
as data center management tools, storage and facilities, as well as supporting
georedundancy and high-availability requirements.
Virtualized instances of Cisco unified messaging (UM) and contact center applications can
also operate in a VMware environment.
Cisco has many certified dealers, system integrators, service providers and network
outsourcers able to satisfy global and regional requirements for organizations of almost any
size.
Cautions
Cisco's bundled pricing model is value-based and may increase TCO. To optimize costs,
prospective buyers should compare the pricing for Cisco's bundled and unbundled solutions
and licenses in the context of their own UC road map to determine which licensing approach
represents the best financial alternative.
Many Gartner clients report that choosing Cisco as their sole-source provider for IP
telephony, the data network, Web conferencing, video, etc., can lead to reduced negotiating
leverage and higher costs (see "Applying the Vendor Influence Curve to Unified
Communications" [Note: This document has been archived; some of its content may not
reflect current conditions.]).
Unlike Cisco's corporate telephony competitors, which are receptive to clients' use of virtually
any brand of networking equipment, Cisco representatives and its dealers often discourage
using a non-Cisco network infrastructure by suggesting that performance of Unified CM will
not be optimal. However, Cisco telephony does run equally well on other vendors' networks
(see "Debunking the Myth of the Single-Vendor Network" [Note: This document has been
archived; some of its content may not reflect current conditions.]).
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Digium
Digium continues to make progress in penetrating global enterprise telephony markets with its
Asterisk telephony solution and its Switchvox telephony-oriented UC solutions, which are based
entirely on open-source software. Digium's road map plans for Asterisk 12, Asterisk Scalable
Communications Framework (SCF) and Switchvox are designed to support increasingly larger
enterprises and greater UC functionality.
Switchvox is a prepackaged solution that is configured and managed through an intuitive user
interface. The system is an all-in-one design that requires fewer internal resources to support it
than Asterisk; the latter is a build-it-yourself system that will need dedicated resources, but the
open-source software is free. Digium's Asterisk 10 and Switchvox 5.5 products are suitable for
small businesses or small offices of large organizations that want a low-cost, SIP-based,
distributed telephony architecture.
SMBs should consider Digium if they understand the benefits and modest risks of using open-
source software for a telephony solution and a migration path to UC.
Strengths
Asterisk offers free open-source telephony software, in conjunction with a per-user-based
subscription licensing model that provides ecosystem support.
Asterisk provides customers with the capability to customize their IP telephony system to
meet their needs, and to add UC capabilities at their own pace.
Digium's business model and development road map for Asterisk have been embraced by
SMBs that accept and manage the use of open source and its whole-of-life-cycle internal
support requirements. The vendor's customers typically understand the support required for
installation, configuration, operations, integration and life cycle planning, but accept it as a
trade-off for perceived better control and TCO of their communications environment.
Asterisk products are intended for deployment on commodity hardware, such as IBM, HP, Dell
servers, Ethernet switches and SIP phones. Its virtualization uses Linux, VMware ESX, Xen,
Debian or other open-source solutions; the platform also runs on Amazon's Elastic Compute
Cloud.
Cautions
Large, multisite organizations might not find an open-source platform suitable for telephony
requirements due to the internal ecosystem required for support. However, some are using
Asterisk for large-scale, inexpensive voice mail deployments.
While Digium has a very enthusiastic development community, users recognize the business
risks of using Digium's open-source solutions, given that the privately held company is
relatively small, compared with its corporate telephony competitors. However, customers
have source code that is maintained by a large community of users that could continue the
project with or without Digium.
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Huawei
Huawei has been added to this Magic Quadrant because it is in the process of launching a global
enterprise networking business unit. Headquartered in China, Huawei offers a broad portfolio of
communications products and services, and addresses the market through its new enterprise
networking division. The telephony and UC application, branded eSpace, is based on the SoftCo
family of hardware and software platforms. The solution offers telephony (IP-PBX) functionality,
conferencing, PC client and UM, as well as contact center functionality and integration options
with Microsoft, IBM and others. In 2012, Huawei added collaboration functions to the eSpace
solution.
Consider Huawei for a telephony solution in regions where its carrier and large enterprise
business resources are significant enough to provide capable support — primarily in China and
some countries in the Asia/Pacific region, Middle East, Eastern Europe, Africa and South America.
Strengths
Huawei had $32.3 billion of revenue in 2011. Its new enterprise networking business group
(which covers telephony and unified communications and collaboration [UCC] products and
solutions) stated 2011 revenue of $3.8 billion. The global contract sales revenue of Huawei
Enterprise Business Group increased strongly in 2011, compared with 2010, following heavy
investment in the expansion of its global distribution plans and R&D directed at enterprise
solutions.
With solutions for large enterprise and SMB markets across the globe, the vendor has a
large base of clients, and can leverage its strengths in the network and server business.
Huawei's enterprise communications architecture can scale to very large enterprise
deployments. Furthermore, the vendor is developing large-scale telephony, UC multimedia
converged solutions and virtual contact center clouds for communications service providers
(CSPs) to sell as multitenant solutions to their traditional enterprise customers.
Cautions
Huawei faces political, trade and intellectual property trust issues in some regions. To
succeed in the corporate telephony market, as well as other technology-focused markets,
the vendor needs to overcome these barriers by increasing the confidence of decision
makers.
Huawei's enterprise business has a strong base in China, which is one of the fastest-
growing markets in the world. It also has an increasing presence in other emerging
economies, such as Brazil, Russia, India and China, as well as the Middle East and Africa.
However, Huawei is finding it difficult to enter the North American and Western European
enterprise telephony markets, not only due to global economic uncertainty, but also due to
the difficulty in finding channel partners willing to invest in a telephony market that is barely
growing.
Enterprises need to scrutinize the ability of Huawei to build a support model that includes
not only technically qualified personnel and network operations centers, but also a logistics
capability for managing and delivering spare parts for critical and noncritical components.
Similarly, the vendor needs to demonstrate that it has an ecosystem that supports hardware
and software updates and upgrades.
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Microsoft
Microsoft Lync 2010 supports enterprise telephony as part of a full UC suite. While Microsoft is not
listed as one of Gartner's top vendors in telephony, it is a Leader in the UC market (see "Magic
Quadrant for Unified Communications"). The inclusion of IP phones from a variety of third-party
providers enables Lync to address a broad range of telephony users. The availability of worldwide
emergency dialing that meets regional regulatory requirements and branch survivability solutions
enables organizations to better plan their networks for the deployment of Lync. While feedback
from early adopters has been positive, many users continue to indicate they are not yet ready to
replace their PBX systems. Many are limiting use of Lync for telephony for non-mission-critical
applications until they are satisfied Lync's real-time telephony functionality, performance and
resiliency are proven. In addition, some are using Lync for nontelephony functions, while
continuing to rely on an external voice platform.
Lync is an appropriate choice for organizations committed to adding Microsoft UC to knowledge
workers' desktops, complete with telephony. Given that we believe Microsoft is positioned to
deliver enhanced capabilities for Lync Server and Lync Online during 2013, a phased migration
would provide the lowest risk and the opportunity for organizations to acquire new technical
competencies, including desktop, networking and telecom support. However, organizations
considering Microsoft for UC should complete a full analysis of user requirements before displacing
the IP-PBX altogether.
Strengths
Microsoft has strong brand awareness for UC with midsize and large organizations. It has
used its volume license agreement very effectively to seed the opportunities to deploy Lync
for instant messaging, voice, video and Web conferencing.
Microsoft is a financially viable company. It also has huge mind share and the marketing and
sales resources to influence telephony buyers. Furthermore, the vendor has made a
significant R&D funding commitment to continuously develop its UC portfolio.
Microsoft's collaboration-centric approach and deep integration with the Office portfolios give
it credibility as a solution to top-level business process issues. Consequently, it has strong
sponsorship at the senior level in many organizations.
Microsoft's vision for an integrated and UC user interface has been transformational; it has
created new market opportunities and has enabled planners to develop their overall IT
strategies to better leverage voice communications while improving business processes.
Cautions
Organizations that do not have a volume licensing agreement with Microsoft will pay a higher
incremental cost for the right to use Microsoft Lync than organizations that do have a volume
licensing agreement.
Although the development of Lync Mobile is promising, with the release of mobile clients,
Microsoft is still behind its UC competitors in terms of product development for mobile
devices, especially voice over IP (VoIP) and videoconferencing from smartphones and
tablets.
Gartner clients report that Microsoft Lync functions best in environments with Windows-
based PCs and Exchange Server for Outlook email. Organizations using disparate operating
systems and email applications should ask Microsoft about its plans to support non-Microsoft
environments in the future.
Microsoft Lync telephony feature availability is dependent on which third party is supplying
the desk phones. Clients report limitations associated with features such as music on hold,
multiple appearances of the same directory number on the same phone, and local intercom
calling between managers and their staff, which typically includes administrators and
executive assistants. Organizations planning a Lync implementation should investigate which
IP phone providers can best support their respective requirements to avoid losing features,
especially those frequently used by managers and executives.
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Mitel
Although an established corporate telephony vendor, Mitel's recent decision to refocus
investments in the midsize enterprise market is yielding financial performance improvements. To
support its goals for midmarket telephony, and to eliminate being in competition with its dealers,
Mitel has been shifting to indirect sales via channel partners and maintaining its long-term
presence in the global telephony market. Mitel was an early adopter of VMware and virtualized
communications solutions. It has extended its collaboration in virtualization with VMware and
delivery of IP telephony and UC as a virtual appliance to simplify installations. The Mitel
Communications Director (MCD) enterprise licensing package, which is targeted at customers that
require resiliency and high-availability features with failover, includes redundancy. In keeping with
its established product architecture for deploying advanced applications, users access Mitel UC
functionality through the Mitel Applications Suite (MAS), which supports a UC client for desktops
and mobile devices. MCD and its associated components can be deployed either premises-based,
hosted, cloud or in combination, as well as in a VMware virtualized environment.
Consider Mitel if you are looking for the ability to run industry standard servers, such as HP, Dell
and IBM, or, in a virtualized environment, with the option to interoperate with Microsoft Lync or to
use Mitel's UC client.
Strengths
Mitel's support for a virtualized environment can streamline communications infrastructure
costs, simplify the implementation and reduce ongoing operating costs.
The vendor's increased focus on implementations with up to 2,500 users has been improving
its ability to be more responsive to market requirements and is providing cost-effective
bundled pricing that is significantly lower than its a la carte model.
Mitel's financial performance has improved during the past two years. According to Gartner's
financial model, Mitel has a Positive financial rating, which improves the vendor's overall
viability in the market.
Mitel has had success with its managed services offering in the U.S. market; it is offered
through direct and indirect channels, and achieves high customer satisfaction ratings. It
includes Mitel's TotalSolutions managed service offering with NetSolutions network services.
The turnkey program provides fixed costs, full service and warranty, and includes software
upgrades.
Cautions
Although Mitel has developed a strong product, it is taking time to develop brand awareness
against stronger competition in the large business segment. As a result, it continues to
struggle to establish needed market momentum.
Although improving, many Mitel dealers have not yet developed experience installing and
supporting Mitel solutions in a virtualized environment. Evaluate the skills and experience of
the channel partner, in addition to the potential costs and benefits of the technology.
Prospects should confirm that Mitel channel partner references match their UC and
geographical requirements, and verify that support personnel have been trained and
certified on current product releases.
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NEC
NEC is a strong global player with two main alternatives for the corporate telephony market. Its
Univerge SV8500 IP communications server supports 4,000 endpoints in a single server and up to
192,000 endpoints in a single system with multiple servers. The platform is targeted at NEC users
who prefer a migration to IP and UC, while leveraging their investments in the NEC Univerge
product family. Univerge 3C is a softswitch intended mainly for new telephony and UC
installations, but can also bring its broad range of capabilities to Univerge SV8500 users. One
Univerge 3C system with multiple servers supports up to 30,000 endpoints.
NEC users and prospects should consider NEC for solutions requiring scalability, high availability
and multiple levels of redundancy, with a good migration path to UC.
Strengths
NEC is a large, diversified, global supplier of corporate telephony with financial strength,
extensive internal resources, and channel partners in North America, EMEA, Central and Latin
America, and the Asia/Pacific region, including large distributors, CSPs and dealers.
The vendor has sustained its strengths in selected vertical markets, such as hospitality,
healthcare, government and education. It provides appropriate customized and scalable
telephony solutions based on Univerge SV Series or Univerge 3C software.
NEC uses multiple servers and virtualization for Univerge 3C software solutions deployed in
various network locations for dynamic load balancing. A range of media gateways provides
remote survivability. NEC's SIP implementations are certified with major CSPs, which facilitate
normalizing and terminating SIP transport provisioned by dissimilar CSPs.
Cautions
Although most of NEC's Univerge 3C deployments and experiences have been in North
America and Europe, the vendor is in the process of expanding its market penetration
globally.
Enterprise telephony buyers should contact NEC to ensure that they choose NEC's on-
premises, hosted, distributed, centralized or cloud telephony options appropriately, and that
their channel supplier can support that solution and its emerging alternatives effectively.
NEC's extensive product lines are targeted at SMBs as well as large enterprises, so not all
dealers have experience designing, installing and supporting large deployments. Prospective
buyers should contact NEC to confirm that there are appropriate NEC channel partners.
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ShoreTel
Although ShoreTel's technology has been particularly well-suited for SMBs with distributed
communications requirements, the vendor continues to make progress among enterprises with
more than 1,000 users who are centralized or have many branch offices and retail sites. ShoreTel
scales from 10 to 20,000 users on a single platform. The acquisition of M5 Networks in March 2012
gives ShoreTel an opportunity to offer a portfolio of cloud-based voice services and other
applications, while growing its U.S. presence. The ShoreTel architecture is particularly well-known
for its simplicity of installation and administration. Survivability is provided via ShoreTel's N+1
switch failover capability; a switch can fail over to another switch anywhere in the network.
ShoreTel also supports a full set of mobile options. ShoreTel 13 adds video connectivity, with
room-based systems supported by video providers such as Polycom and the LifeSize division of
Logitech.
Consider ShoreTel if your company is distributed and is looking for telephony and mobility
capabilities that are easy to install, have very intuitive management and user interfaces, and
have UC functions that can integrate with Microsoft Lync or utilize ShoreTel's own UC client.
Strengths
ShoreTel's focus on customer satisfaction throughout the implementation cycle and beyond
translates to consistently high satisfaction ratings from its channel partners and customers.
Enterprises can expand ShoreTel system capacity for software, trunks and users by adding
switch modules that can be administered from a centralized interface, regardless of where
the platforms are physically located.
In a market that has been essentially flat, ShoreTel's year-over-year growth has been
steady, with revenue growing 29% from 2010 to 2011. The public company continues to be
cash-flow positive, and the number of ShoreTel employees grew by about 50% during the
same period, excluding those who joined as a result of the M5 Networks acquisition. User
licenses were also up sharply, as were the number of new customers.
Cautions
ShoreTel 13 includes support for VMware; however, the solution currently requires use of
ShoreTel appliances at remote sites to provide native failover capabilities.
ShoreTel products are primarily sold through dealers, and some may not have experience
with users' requirements that include VMware expertise.
The vendor sells mainly through partners in North America. However, it is achieving revenue
and channel growth in global regions, such as Canada, Mexico, Australia and European
countries. Gartner recommends that channel coverage should be evaluated for deployments
extending to sites outside of North America.
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Siemens Enterprise Communications
Siemens Enterprise Communications is 51% owned by private-equity firm the Gores Group and
49% by Siemens after a 2008 joint venture. It sells enterprise telephony and UC solutions, as
well as related managed and professional services. The vendor's flagship telephony platform is
OpenScape Voice platform, which has been achieving sales growth in European and South
American countries, and continues to gain momentum in North America. The platform is designed
as a software application that is optimized for a data center environment, and is deployed on any
commercially available server. The architecture is inherently multitenant, enabling OpenScape
Voice to support private, hybrid or public cloud deployments, and supports session management.
The OpenScape UC Suite can be virtualized on VMware or any open virtualization, format-
compliant hypervisor. A single OpenScape Voice node can be scaled seamlessly up to 100,000
users and 500,000 voice and UC users in a single system configuration.
OpenScape Voice solutions will appeal to midsize to very large organizations, as well as to
Siemens Enterprise Communications customers that want to upgrade older HiPath 4000 and
Hicom 300 installations. Very large organizations should also consider the OpenScape Voice
platform for its ability to be deployed globally as a single, highly resilient system that customers
can centrally manage from a choice of geographically different locations. The OpenScape UC Suite
offers investment protection as OpenScape Voice customers transition to UC.
Strengths
For new systems, Siemens Enterprise Communications offers competitive pricing for the
purchase of "right to use" and subscription-based licenses.
The vendor can support international companies that choose to overlay and/or standardize
on its technologies for telephony and UC.
The multitenant capabilities of OpenScape Voice will be useful to organizations looking to
adopt software as service (SaaS) models for telephony, where offered by service providers.
Siemens is offering to support HiPath 4000 for the foreseeable future, and provides financial
incentives that enable organizations to plan phased migrations to OpenScape, especially
during times of uncertainty regarding the economic climate.
Cautions
65% of the vendor's business is with European organizations where the economy continues
to be very challenging. However, because Siemens Enterprise Communications is privately
held, it's hard to assess its financial viability. An executive briefing from senior management
might be requested to provide additional visibility into the vendor's financial results.
Although sales have been improving in North America, the vendor needs to further expand
its distribution network and technical support, not only to win new business, but also to
curtail erosion of its installed base. Furthermore, growth in North America may not
compensate if there is any shortfall in other regions.
While the number of migration proposals for HiPath installed-base customers is growing, and
support contract renewals are also increasing for current HiPath customers, Siemens
Enterprise Communications needs to do a much better job of winning new business for its
new OpenScape solutions.
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Toshiba
The IP-capable Toshiba Strata CIX Series telephony platform supports up to 1,000 users. The
newer Toshiba IPedge system also has a capacity of up to 1,000 users. IPedge is a pure IP
solution built on a Linux-based platform featuring telephony, voice mail, UM, IM/presence and SIP
trunking capabilities in single-server architecture. Although the Strata CIX and IPedge solutions
are positioned to customers in the same size segments, the CIX solution supports digital and IP
devices, while IPedge is a pure IP-based solution. The solutions can be networked together as
necessary. Toshiba also offers a VIPedge cloud-based VoIP service, which is being sold by the
same dealers in Toshiba's distribution network.
The vendor's products will appeal to midsize and large organizations with centralized
requirements or the need to support remote sites in vertical markets (such as retail, automotive,
banking, financial services and government) with a plan to move gradually to UC.
Strengths
All Toshiba Strata CIX Series systems use the same applications, endpoints, cabinets and
interfaces, with the capability to support a wide range of wired and wireless devices, as well
as softphones.
The IPedge provides optional survivability for IP telephones, softphones, UC clients and
messaging applications, with the ability to reregister to a secondary (backup) system if the
primary system fails. Both outgoing and incoming calls automatically follow the IP telephones
to their new location on the secondary system through an AudioCodes gateway. The Strata
CIX provides the same survivability for IP telephones and softphones.
Toshiba offers a unique, centrally managed national accounts program. This sales approach
will appeal to organizations with locations that cross regional boundaries. The plan offers
uniform pricing of products and services for applications that require deployment across
multiple sites.
In the U.S., Canada, the U.K., parts of the Asia/Pacific region and Japan, Toshiba continues
to provide reliable system performance, cost-effective price points, and migration capabilities
to IP technology and UC. The vendor is known for producing reliable and affordable voice-
oriented offerings.
Cautions
Although parent company Toshiba is a large diversified manufacturer and marketer of
electronics and electrical products, the communications business does not have any
presence in the large enterprise market in EMEA, nor does it have a global strategy that
focuses on IP telephony requirements outside the U.S., Canada, the U.K., parts of the
Asia/Pacific region and Japan.
The maximum capacity for the Strata CIX Series and IPedge is 1,000 users on a single
system. For additional capacity and distributed configurations, enterprises can network
multiple systems. Toshiba can supply an optional AudioCodes gateway for the automatic
rerouting of incoming calls to an alternative Strata CIX or IPedge system in the event of a
failure.
Organizations could find it challenging to integrate platforms such as Microsoft OCS and Lync
with Toshiba's Strata CIX and IPedge, because the solutions require the integration of
various servers to achieve full UC functionality.
The IPedge solution has received limited traction to date. Most Toshiba dealers do not have
experience with IPedge implementations or support. Before moving forward with an IPedge
contract, prospects should gain assurance that their specific partner has the expertise to
install IPedge or that the dealer has effective relationships in place with Toshiba to address
potential implementation issues.
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Vendors Added or 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 appearing 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. This may be a reflection of a change in the market and, therefore, changed evaluation
criteria, or a change of focus by a vendor.
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Added
Huawei was added to the Magic Quadrant this year.
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Dropped
There were no vendors dropped from the Magic Quadrant this year.
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Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria
To be included in the corporate telephony Magic Quadrant, solution providers must meet the
following minimum criteria:
Demonstrate an IP-based corporate telephony application that provides enterprisewide call
routing and management for enterprises with more than 800 voice users, including
switchboard operations across multiple wired and wireless networks.
Have a product offering that includes the management of legacy telephony environments,
including media gateways; the connection of IP with circuit-switched-based 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 communications of $150 million.
Offer systems in multiple global market regions, including North America, Europe, Central
America and Latin 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 on-premises portfolios/products.
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Evaluation Criteria
Ability to Execute
This research provides guidance for planners who are responsible for updating or replacing a
telephony system. Gartner analysts evaluate corporate telephony solution vendors based on the
breadth, quality and overall maturity of their applications, processes, tools and procedures that
enhance individual, group and enterprise communications. Ultimately, these vendors are judged
on their ability and success in capitalizing on their vision:
Product/Service: Core products providing telephony capabilities, offered by vendors that
compete in and serve the enterprise market segment. This category includes the vendors'
current product capabilities, as defined in the market definition, as well as the respective
road maps vendors offer that enable organizations to migrate to UC.
Overall Viability (Business Unit, Financial, Strategy and Organization): Includes an
assessment of the organization's overall 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 category includes deal management,
value selling, pricing and negotiation, presales support, and the overall effectiveness of the
sales channel, direct and indirect.
Market Responsiveness and Track Record: The ability to respond to current market
conditions and the disruptive influences of UC. This evaluation assesses how a vendor might
change direction or modify its portfolio to achieve competitive success, as opportunities
develop, competitors act, customer needs evolve and market dynamics change. This criterion
also considers the vendors' 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 have a positive experience and achieve their respective goals for a corporate
telephony implementation. This assessment 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
SLAs. 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
vendors to operate effectively and efficiently on an ongoing basis.
Table 1. Ability to Execute Evaluation Criteria
Evaluation Criteria Weighting
Product/Service High
Overall Viability (Business Unit, Financial, Strategy, Organization) High
Sales Execution/Pricing Standard
Market Responsiveness and Track Record Standard
Marketing Execution High
Customer Experience High
Operations High
Source: Gartner (September 2012)
Completeness of Vision
Gartner analysts evaluate telephony solution providers based on their ability to convincingly
articulate logical statements about current and future market directions, innovations, customer
needs, and competitive forces, and how well these map to Gartner's overall understanding of the
marketplace. Ultimately, these providers are rated on their understanding of how market forces
can be exploited to create opportunities for providers and their clients:
Market Understanding: We evaluated vendors for their understanding of how customer
needs are changing (both for users and the IT group responsible for managing telephony). It
was especially important to see how vendors proposed to complement, or compete with, UC
collaboration solutions.
Marketing Strategy: A clear, differentiated set of messages for telephony and enhanced
communication consistently delivered by executives and senior employees, and promoted
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 communications
affiliates that extend the scope and depth of market reach to selective markets.
Product Strategy: The vendor's approach to telephony product development and delivery,
with road maps for consolidation where necessary. Important factors include the migration
to software, support for SIP and the ability to build scalable solutions that are consistent
with the needs of target markets.
Business Model: The logic of the vendor's underlying business proposition for the direction
of 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.
Also evaluated is the telephony solution provider'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 among segments.
Innovation: The IP telephony market has reached maturity. Vendors need to demonstrate
the necessary innovation to capture market share and grow in associated markets, with a
combination of technology and services to grow revenue beyond the market average.
Geographic Strategy: The telephony market has historically been fragmented, with most
players receiving income from their traditional home market. The requirements of many of
Gartner's end-user 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 clients.
Table 2. Completeness of VisionEvaluation Criteria
Evaluation Criteria Weighting
Market Understanding High
Marketing Strategy High
Sales Strategy Standard
Offering (Product) Strategy High
Business Model Standard
Vertical/Industry Strategy Standard
Innovation Standard
Geographic Strategy High
Source: Gartner (September 2012)
Quadrant Descriptions
Leaders
Leaders are high-viability vendors with broad portfolios, significant market shares, broad
geographic coverage, a clear vision of how telephony needs will evolve and a proven track record
of delivering telephony solutions. They are well-positioned with their current product portfolio and
likely to continue delivering leading products. Leaders do not necessarily offer a best-of-breed
solution for every customer requirement. However, overall, their products are strong and often
have some exceptional capabilities. Additionally, these vendors provide solutions that present
relatively low risk.
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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.
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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 very good potential to grow while in the process of expanding their
regional and global sales and support capabilities.
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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 vertical market subsets, but may have
some weaknesses in one or more important areas.
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Context
Companies are increasingly focusing their business strategies and acquisition decisions around
UCC technology; it is supplanting the historical domain of corporate telephony (see "Key Issues
for Voice Applications, 2011" and "Key Issues for Unified Communications, 2011"). 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 cloud-based solutions. Employment of IP-PBXs
will vary according to current investments, maturity of an organization's network infrastructure
and incumbent vendor strategy.
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Market Overview
The telephony market recovery that started toward the end of 2010 has slowed in 2012.
Following a 17% decline from 2008 to 2009 that mirrored the global economic downturn,
shipments rebounded by 10% in 2010. However, Gartner projects that the compound annual
growth rate (CAGR) for telephony shipments will be 2.2% from 2011 through 2016.
Some of the key trends in corporate telephony are:
Microsoft continues to enhance the corporate telephony component of Lync with new
features and improved resiliency. However, although adoption has been increasing,
organizations are still opting to keep corporate telephony on an established, more proven
core platform. In addition, Cisco Unified Communication Manager, already a strong telephony
platform, now offers a fully integrated UC suite with scalable support for IM/presence, video
and telephony conferencing.
As uncertain economic conditions persist globally, European-based vendors (such as Aastra,
Alcatel-Lucent, ShoreTel and Siemens Enterprise Communications) have been seizing
opportunities to win business with competitively priced platforms that offer improved system
management capabilities and realistic road maps for gradually migrating to UC.
An increasing number of companies are using session management capabilities to support
policies for routing sessions between networks and endpoints. This approach provides
managers with alternatives for creating a homogeneous voice platform that can interoperate
with disparate communications platforms across the business, and can facilitate the
migration to UC while enabling investment protection.
As the topic of virtualized telephony environments becomes increasingly popular among
enterprises, most vendors are investing to meet this need (see "Communication Server
Virtualization"), while also addressing IT leaders needs to improve the enterprise's resiliency
and disaster recovery capabilities and to reduce server and operations costs.
Vendors are increasing the bundling of communications capabilities to include not only voice,
but also capabilities such as presence, IM, conferencing and mobility. Organizations must
have a UC strategy in advance of buying into communications bundles. While offers may look
attractive and are often appropriate for some users, the added cost of a software
subscription means buyers will likely be overpaying for features that are used by a minority
of users.
The Telephony Market Today
During 2011 and the beginning of 2012, Gartner witnessed two major trends:
Continued aggressive discounting (ranging from 50% to 65% for corporate telephony
systems) that began in 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 "How to Develop a Comprehensive RFP for Unified Communications" [Note:
This document has been archived; some of its content may not reflect current conditions.]
and "Four Best Practices for UC RFP Review").
The bundling of individual telephony/UC functions into a single license. Bundling combines
valuable components around core telephony, such as presence services, UM, mobility and
softphone clients, into an aggregated license that will cost less than the total for individual
licenses (see "Best Practice: Having a 'Big Picture' View of IP Telephony Will Give the Buyer
More Control" [Note: This document has been archived; some of its content may not reflect
current conditions.]).
With users becoming more mobile, organizations are interested in twinning 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 on-net rates for lower-cost or flat-rate 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.
The Future of Telephony Vendors
The enterprise voice market includes the provisioning of holistic voice communications for all wired
and wireless users. Typically, architectures support distributed on-premises solutions, as well as
centralized, virtualized and hosted platforms dedicated for use by 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 real-time 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 routing capabilities, extending contact center technologies as a
value-added component of communication beyond the customer service center.
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 across diverse geographies.
Provides a scalable hosted alternative that supports capabilities for service providers to offer
communications-as-a-service 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 Web-based user interface; remote provisioning of
new extension users; and performing moves, adds and changes without the need to deploy
technicians.
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