You have seen the lists of UCaaS, CCaaS, SD-WAN, CPaaS, and so many other lists. You have seen analyst reports for the market leaders and market TAM. Most of it is wild opinion and bullshit.
Next time you see a press release for a market size and leader report not how the list often includes companies that no longer exist like Jive or Shoretel.
I saw one list for UCaaS that mentioned MITEL. Mitel exited the UCaaS game. They may sell unified communications but not in the cloud. They can’t now. All they can do is act as a sales agent for RingCentral.
CF had a list of UCaaS providers also. Nothing like click click clicking through 20 slides to see the list.
I need to ask Jon Arnold how AWS is a major UCaaS player. Is it because of Chime? I get AWS is a CPaaS and CCaaS provider, but I have never been invited to a Chime call. I don’t even think Nextiva bundles Chime any more. So how?
Another analyst, Raul Castanon from 451, put Alianza on the UCaaS list. Alianza is a white label softswitch, chasing to replace Broadsoft. So if they get on this list, I can see how BCM One/Skyswitch and 2600Hz got on the list. Why was Reinvent Telecom not listed? How did Jon forget about Ribbon?
This list should have been better defined – are we talking platforms, white-label, retail, UCaaS or UC&C or something else? Truthfully, if the trade press and the analysts can’t define UCaaS for publication, how the hell would a buyer ever know what they are looking for?
How does Slack make a UCaaS list?
I know how lists and awards are done, but put some structure around it.
Do you realize Omdia/IHS/who-ever-else-makes-a-list has had the same 10 players since 2015? and 2017? Zoom, Cisco Webex and Microsoft Teams replaced some names on the original 2015-2018 lists, because those companies had M&A transactions.
- West became Intrado, which then sold off UCaaS parts to Ooma and Fusion, so they aren’t in the game anymore.
- Star2Star became Sangoma.
- Windstream tanked itself into bankruptcy and didn’t really recover. Their Broadview platform couldn’t keep up, so reps just sold Mitel units.
- thinkingphones became fuze now 8×8.
- Avaya resells RNG for UCaaS as ASO.
- Shoretel is Mitel – and is a sales agent for RNG for UCaaS.
- Jive is GoTo.
There are over 2000 service providers offering UCaaS in North America. Here are some UCaaS providers that don’t get much press:
- net2phone – quietly growing UC+CC with no debt. Owned by IDT, an international LD carrier.
- broadvoice – also quietly growing a UC+CC business
- Weave – $130M+ publicly traded cloud comms provider for clinics, vets, dentists and healthcare.
- NEC – as one of the largest PBX vendors, their BRIDGE product that adds mobility, business continuity and other cloud functions to an on-premise PBX is a huge bonus for customers still glued to boxes. Also, NEC allows for upfront commissions and besides an Agency plan, offers something like white -label for maximum control and margin for partners.
- Panterra always had good features early – like a dropbox-esque function, end-to-end encryption, and browser-based, but no marketing to speak of.
- SimpleVoIP in Chicago which specializes in retail and restaurant.
- Evolve IP is over $250M in revenue; is PE owned; and hasn’t been the same since the founders left. Big Microsoft shop that also has a Broadsoft switch.
- BluIP which just chases hotels. This is the pivot that most providers need: to a vertical or three. Integration is the key to significance.
- Europe based Wildix has 1.2M users according to the new manager of North America.
- CallTower is a weird one offering Zoom, Microsoft and Webex.
There was a HippoUC paying 40 points in commission. At ITEXPO, there are always a few new UCaaS providers trying to make some headway in a crowded, uninteresting market.
Mobile UC will be the next phase of this game. Sure the noise is around UC+CC for pure play UCaaS providers, but they have to figure out how to sell UC+CC, since that is a consultative sell, not a transaction like PBX replacement, I don’t think it will work well for them. It will be about packaging and story telling. Nothing they are good at.
AT&T has a long standing deal with RingCentral that they brand as Office@Hand. No idea if that is native dialer or not, but AT&T just did a deal with Webex. Cisco Webex Go is native dialer on the cell phone – and connected to AT&T Mobility via IMS, which is something Sprint did with Broadsoft providers 10 years ago. Sprint cell phones were an extension off the Broadsoft. This is a smart move by AT&T Mobility but late to that game as well. Sprint did it in 2014 and in 2016 VZW launched OneTalk.
OneTalk, a Broadsoft based, mobile first, native dialer UCaaS that VZW sells for $15 per seat. VZ also did a deal with Microsoft to make MS Teams the mobile softphone. This is Microsoft’s end game: every telco will have a big pipe to Azure Telecom in order to connect to the Metaswitch in NFV, the vSBC and connect to Teams.
Nothing from T-Mobile despite having a big investment in Dialpad.
Google has an investment in Dialpad as well. Google hasn’t really crushed it with its many components. They have Workspace which is their UCaaS product. Google also has an MVNO called Fi and its ISP, Google Fiber. It has yet to put all those pieces together. They even put too many hurdles around bundling them. I don’t really know what the adoption numbers look like for Google Workspace. They leverage UJET for CCaaS in Google Cloud.
Dialpad is at $200M in ARR. Google would be smart to buy it and scrap their myriad attempts at putting forth a competing product offering.
There are thousands of options for Cloud Voice.
Last Thought:
With the top telcos reselling the same thing – RNG – and most of the providers have the same HPBX features, what is the difference? I have no idea. SPIFFs, commissions, and how easy to work with before the sale. After the sale, you find out how bad service delivery and continuing customer service is.