Vocalocity, ShoreTel See Strong Growth in UCaaS: Report

Vocalocity and ShoreTel are the fastest growing providers in a growing unified communications-as-a-service market, according to numbers from market research firm Synergy Market Group.

Synergy found that the unified communications-as-a-service market grew 22 percent in the second quarter over the same period last year, and that Vocalocity—which sells voice-over-IP technology (VOIP)—and ShoreTel saw revenue growth that outpaced the overall UCaaS space.

Vocalocity saw revenue growth of 45 percent, while ShoreTel revenue grew 37 percent. Among other vendors seeing strong revenue growth were iCore, RingCentral and 8×8, with revenues for those companies increasing between 18 percent and 22 percent, according to the report, released Aug. 20.

About 52 percent of the UCaaS revenues in the quarter came from public cloud service offerings, while private clouds accounted for 30 percent. The rest came from on-premises-hybrid clouds and contact center software-as-a-service, according to Synergy.

The bulk of revenues—more than 85 percent—came from North America.

“Looking beyond North America, I expect to see stronger growth in EMEA [Europe, Middle East and Africa] and APAC [Asia-Pacific] regions, which currently account for 49 percent of traditional UC and enterprise voice revenues but only 13 percent of UCaaS revenues,” Jeremy Duke, Synergy’s founder and chief analyst, said in a statement.

UC vendors increasingly are expanding their offerings to include cloud options as demand for UCaaS continues to grow. ShoreTel created its ShoreTel Sky cloud-based offering last year after buying M5 Networks in a move designed to complement the company’s on-premises solution.

Other vendors also are making the push into the cloud. Avaya last year launched its Collaborative Cloud framework to bring UC and video to the cloud. Most recently, Mitel and Black Box announced Aug. 26 that they were partnering to offer cloud-based UC offerings to businesses in the United States.

Given the potential market for UCaaS, it’s no surprise vendors are looking to expand their solutions to the cloud. Research firm MarketsandMarkets stated in a report in May that the global cloud-based UC market could grow from $2.52 billion this year to $7.62 billion by 2018.

Both vendors and IDC analyst Rich Costello said earlier this year that while UCaaS is still a nascent market, it will grow in the near future and will help fuel interest in UC in general. Former ShoreTel CEO Peter Blackmore said in 2012 that about 20 percent of the company’s UC deployments were cloud-based, but that that number should grow to 42 percent by 2015 and continue to increase in the following years.