The collaboration market is at an all-time high, Synergy Research Group reports, as Q4 2017 revenues total $10 billion, thanks to strong growth in hosted/cloud solutions.

The analyst includes enterprise voice, UC applications, telepresence, email software, enterprise content management, enterprise social networks and housed/cloud communications and applications as part of the collaboration market. The quarter sees "particularly strong" growth in teamwork applications, cloud/hosted email, cloud file sharing and contact centre as a service (CCaaS), while teamwork applications such as Cisco's Spark and Slack are "an emerging and super-high growth area."

“Collaboration continues to be a somewhat fragmented market that is characterised by a long list of disruptive and high-growth companies and we are now having to track 160 different vendors and service providers in order to really understand the market” Synergy says. “That being said, Cisco and Microsoft clearly set themselves apart as large-scale vendors whose portfolios span multiple major segments of the market and whose activities span the globe. Cisco is a clear market leader in N. America and APAC regions, while Microsoft has a lead in EMEA and Latin America.”

Cisco and Microsoft are the top collaboration vendors, with IBM and Avaya following "at a distance." Cisco leads thanks to a dominant position in premise-based solutions, although it also sees growth in the hosted/cloud segments. Meanwhile Microsoft has a strong lead in hosted/cloud collaboration, but the market segment is fragmented to the point no single vendor has double-digit market share.

Other major collaboration players include Mitel, Google, Polycom, LogMeIn, Genesys, AT&T, Verizon, RingCentral, UNIFY and ALE.

Go Cisco and Microsoft Battle for Leadership as Collaboration Market Reaches All-Time High