Cisco Claws Back Enterprise Collaboration Leadership from Microsoft

RENO, NV, September 8, 2014

New Q2 data from Synergy Research Group shows that just one quarter after Microsoft had finally caught up with Cisco in enterprise collaboration infrastructure revenues, Cisco has regained the top spot, though the gap between the two is small. Revenues from collaboration - which includes enterprise voice, UC applications, telepresence, email software, enterprise content management, enterprise social networks and hosted communications and applications - were $7.7 billion in the quarter, with Cisco’s overall share standing at 16.0% and Microsoft just behind at 15.8%.

Total revenues for the quarter were up 2% year on year, with continued declines in the enterprise voice and telepresence markets being countered by strong growth in other segments. Of the larger segments, particularly strong growth was seen in hosted voice & UCaaS (up 17%), enterprise social networking (up 20%) and hosted web conferencing (up 9%). On a rolling annual basis revenues reached $30.5 billion, up 3% from the preceding four quarters.

“In Q2 Cisco bounced back from a poor start to the year in the enterprise voice segment and also saw strong growth in WebEx, though telepresence revenues remained soft” said Jeremy Duke, Synergy Research Group’s founder and Chief Analyst. “One issue that Cisco faces is that a substantial amount of its collaboration revenue comes from mature markets which are flat or declining. In contrast Microsoft achieved sequential growth in all ten of the segments in which it is active, and grew year on year in nine of them.