Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
Hello listeners, and thanks for tuning in to this edition of our Metroside Podcast. BETH I'm Beth Schultz, the vice president of research and principal analyst at Metro G. And along with me today is Diane Myers. Diane is our senior research director and she heads our metrocast service and she's joining me here today to talk about our 2026 UCAS and CCAS Metrorank report.
This is a first annual for us, so we're excited to be talking about it. Welcome, Diane.
Yeah, thanks, Beth.
Okay, so why UCAs and CCAs and why now? Yeah, that's, you know, that's the heart
[00:01:04] Speaker B: of this new report. Right. Is, you
[00:01:07] Speaker A: know,
[00:01:07] Speaker B: so let me, yeah, so I'm going to answer this in
[00:01:10] Speaker A: in a little bit broader context, right. So we have had over the last few years a number of
[00:01:16] Speaker B: discussions
[00:01:17] Speaker A: and you know, with a variety of different
[00:01:19] Speaker B: folks, right. From the vendor side to businesses and to what we hear in our, in our big stud that there is this drive, right. And there's this growing interest of companies using single vendor. Right. And there are you can use a lot of single vendors for UCaaS and CCaaS, but that could also be a mix of, you know, I am a UCAAS provider and I partner with a CCAAS or vice versa.
But for us to look at this, we decided to really kind of dig deeper and look at and really analyze and review companies that had the services on an integrated platform. Right. So real true UCaaS, NCaaS, underlying, you know, a single platform.
And that's the foundation. Right. And I think, you know, when we think about there is absolutely a market for best of breed for kind of really more sophisticated large platforms that may just have CCAAs or might just have UCAs. And there is a place for that. This isn't to say that the world will be fully UCAs plus CCAs. You know, we don't believe that. But this is really geared towards those companies that want to evaluate and really want to understand what are those options for a truly integrated UCAs and CCaaS.
So companies that might have had
[00:02:43] Speaker A: UCAs and those licenses are coming up.
That's going to be a real criteria for them to.
[00:02:50] Speaker B: Yeah. Or if they, or if they haven't moved. Right. You know, there's a couple things, right. So for companies who maybe adopted UCAAS really early, right. You know, maybe, you know, seven, eight years ago. Right. Or maybe even during the pandemic maybe on the ccas side and they, they kind of went with what was available and now they're in A refresh cycle or maybe they haven't done it at all. Right.
You know, we see it on both sides. Right. And definitely for smaller businesses, small to mid market businesses, you know, for, for sure.
Because there is that ease of having one vendor, one platform across, you know, maybe not as much on the larger end, but that's not to say it's not happening there either. But definitely we see it right now much more predominantly in the small to mid market.
That is where there's a lot of traction. It is, you know, a vendor, you know, decision to have that, you know, that one piece for sure.
[00:03:49] Speaker A: So vendors have to have to offer integrated UCaaS, CCaaS platform.
That's a baseline. What other criteria?
[00:04:00] Speaker B: Yeah, And I would say it's even above and beyond just, you know, integrated. Right. Cause I can integrate third party solutions. Right. But it's being run and operated on the same platform. So that was the criteria. And that really, you know, because we, you know, there are a lot of OEM relationships, there are a lot of, you know, partner relationships where they have done some integration work. And we didn't consider that. We were considering it had to be, you know, run and developed and, you know, and everything on a single platform, which really narrowed the pool.
And so we're not saying that those other solutions where we have integration with, you know, third party tools or third, you know, second party, you know, partner relationships, you know, that they're not valid and they're not out there. That's just, you know, we just didn't look at that.
We really did single platform, single vendor solutions and that narrowed the bucket down to less than 20 companies and really closer to, you know, 15. Right. And so then, so that was the first part and that was a pretty small pool. Right. Considering when we look at other markets, we could have, you know, 50, 60 companies more. Right. In some cases. But this, you know, the companies that truly had that are absolutely a much smaller base.
And that makes it interesting. Right. Just knowing who those companies are automatically starts to narrow your selection criteria. And then we looked at combined market share.
So we took the UCAs, you know, revenue based market share. We took, you know, what is their, what is their UCAs. And it was for the full year of 2025. Cause it's, you know, we did, we did full year data for the full calendar year. We looked at what their UCAS revenues were and we looked at what their CCAS revenues were. Right. So not market share, but what the, you know, what their straight revenues were for both areas and what they look like combined. Right. So we added those two together and you know, with the pool of who we had, so I think you. It was maybe just less than 15 in total, maybe 14.
And we took then the top 10 in terms of that combined revenue and that was the, the starting point to be included. Okay, so the top 10, which providers made the, made the list.
Yeah. So let me, I'm going to run down the list not in alphabetical order because I have it and based on kind of how they ended up. Right. So this is, you know, this is kind of a 1 to 10, right? This is who, who made the list and this is their ranking.
We had Zoom, RingCentral, Cisco, 8by8, Intermedia, Dial Pad, Go2, Nextiva, Content Guru and Vonage. Those were the 10. Those were the top 10.
[00:06:50] Speaker A: Just to be clear, you talked about revenue, you talked about some of that criteria, but it's just not revenue. Right. You're looking at momentum, you're looking at.
[00:06:59] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. Just like we do. So if you're new to the Metro ranks and this is the first time you're, you're hearing about them, it's the same criteria we use across the board in any of the Metro ranks. We do, but it's definitely worth discussing. So you know, the market share, right? So then, so we look at how much their revenues were, which then gets calculated into a market share, a combined market share, right. And then we look at market share momentum and that market share momentum is that combined share, right? So we did say, you know, okay, this is your combined revenue, so those are your top 10. And this was your market share in a Com. If we were to look at it in a combined view, ucas plus ccas, and then the market share momentum, that is are you growing faster or slower than the market than your peers? Right.
And so you could be, you know, everyone can be growing, right? And in most cases everyone is growing. But are you growing faster or slower than your peers? Right. So that's the market share momentum. That's like the market share momentum. We look at financials, especially for publicly traded companies. It's much easier to calculate some of these things like profitability and solvency and things like that. We have full details in the report. We're very transparent on our methodology. We look at the product and so we weren't looking at the core capabilities of UC or UCaaS or CCaaS, because everyone has that. We were looking at the product pieces that made it unique to a combined UC and cc. Right. So we were looking at things like do you have unified directories?
Do you have a shared, the telephony. Right. Do you have, you know, do you have overflow routing that is consistent between the CCAs and the UCAs? Do you have internal transfers? Right. The capability, do you have cross platform AI metrics or, you know, statistical data, shared AI context, the presence synchronization. Right. So that you, you know, if you're on the contact center side, you can see expert availability. Right. Subject matter experts. So those were the type of things that we dug a little bit deeper into versus just the core capabilities across the, the, you know, the UC or the cc.
[00:09:16] Speaker A: Okay.
And then we look
[00:09:18] Speaker B: at. Oh, let me catch on real quick. Yeah, let me, because this is worth pointing out. Sorry, didn't interrupt you. But as we were talking about the criteria, two areas in which we always include are the customer pieces.
So the customer sentiment and the customer business success. And we did not go out and calculate, we didn't ask companies. Okay, let's evaluate zoom or let's say dialpad on that UC cc. We had asked separately in our big study earlier this year, if you had CCAs, how do you rate these companies? If you had this company for ucas, how do you rate these companies across the customer sentiment and the business success? What we did is we averaged those up between those two categories. So I just want to be clear that the customer sentiment and the business success was kind of a. It was a combination of what we had found for each of these vendors across the two, you know, the UCAs and the CCAs. I think that's really important to, you know, to point out.
[00:10:20] Speaker A: Okay. And thanks for explaining all those criteria.
Helps put that list in context.
[00:10:26] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:10:27] Speaker A: Okay.
Now, in addition to the actual ranking, we've started to include a market landscape visualization in our Metro rank reports. So tell us what that is. Not everybody will be familiar with it. And then explain where the ucas and CCAS providers on our list fall within that landscape.
[00:10:46] Speaker B: Yeah, so what we've done is we've taken the six kind of scoring criteria that I just laid out and we put them into three buckets. Right. We do a foundation score, a customer score and a kind of a market score. Right. So the customer score is the two score the two, the customer sentiment and the business success. And we combine those.
Foundation is the product and the financials. And then the market score is the market share and the market share momentum. Right. And so there's two axes and then the market score creates the size of the bubble.
And so we have three different. So then, you know, they get plotted right into. Into three buckets. One are the leaders, then the challengers, and then the performers. Right. So there's waves of these companies.
And the leaders for this UCAAS plus CCAS were Zoom, RingCentral, Cisco, and 8x8. RingCentral. And Zoom being the largest in that, you know, having the largest bubbles, but also performing well on the matrix.
RingCentral and Eight by Eight, doing very well on the customer score, and Zoom doing very well on the foundation score. Right. It's not to say they, you know, that these four companies don't have good performance in the other scoring, but were real standouts. Right. So Ring and eight really stood out on customer scores. Zoom definitely stood out on the foundation score.
We had no one that was a performer. Right. Which is the smallest little segment. Everyone else fell really well across the, you know, the spectrum into the challenger segment. Right. And so let me just touch on a couple of those. And maybe where they. They fell out, which was nextiva and Intermedia and Content Guru had slightly better customer scores. Right. So they were a little bit higher up on that piece. And you had Vonage scoring a little bit better on the foundation score. Dial pad and go to a little bit of a mix of, you know, maybe a little bit higher on foundation.
Um, but. But still doing okay on the. On the customer score. But that. That they really. Those five. No, six. I should say one. Yeah, those six really. Yeah, six really are across the spectrum of challengers.
[00:13:18] Speaker A: Okay, great.
Now, anything that you didn't expect, I. I know this was our first year, but you go into it with maybe some expectations, so anything that you noticed pop up that you didn't expect or really kind of stood out to you as you went through this process or.
[00:13:34] Speaker B: Yeah. You know, so I will tell you.
So when we start these reports, especially if we've never done one, it's the first time you really. You're kind of, you know, you kind of maybe have a little expectation of who might be near the top. Right. Who you think, you know, just going in, you have, like, a hypothesis. Right. Without even doing any scoring, like, oh, this company, I think will. Will. Will score, you know, maybe in the, you know, in the top.
And I knew Zoom would do well, but I didn't know they would be number one. And as the scoring came out and as it was plugging things away and it all kind of rolled around, I thought, oh, wow, that was really interesting. And I think that's so Zoom. I knew they would be one of the top companies, but I didn't know they would end up as number one. And I think that's a real testament to what they have been able to achieve in a relatively short period of time in the contact center in their CCAS service. 100% like that is a newer service for them. They, they don't show up in our CCAS report, our CCAS Metro rank. They're close, they're really close to making that cutoff. But they're a smaller company in the CCAS space but growing quite well. Obviously have the foundation and the collaboration on the, you know, the, the Zoom phone and you know, obviously you know, the video and, and all of that. But that was, I hadn't expected that. Right. They're not the market share leader, a combined market share leader, but they're, but they're number two. Right.
And then they had really, you know, they have really good financials. They have really, they've worked so hard on that CCARS piece and having it be a true, you know, single platform solution that they really also stood out on the product side because when they built out their CCAAS service from the ground up, they really built it as this true integration. So that really came across on the product side.
[00:15:26] Speaker A: That's. Yeah, they really have done a lot in a few short years, I'd say. Okay, Diane, which providers that are on your watch list but didn't quite make the cut for the inclusion in the full report?
[00:15:40] Speaker B: Yeah, Wildix is one that really is top of mind that just missed it. They 100% right. They were very close and doing some good stuff. And I would, you know, gosh, you know, they're the ones that really in my mind, kind of, you know, stood out more than, more than others.
Let me see here. Yeah, you know, the thing is though, you know, we, so they're the ones, right? In terms of, you know, some, you know, the combined piece, you know, we think about, I think it's maybe even more interesting to maybe think about what companies are more pure plays in maybe either the UCAS or the CCAAS that didn't show up. And so let me just address that because people might be wondering, oh, well, Microsoft, let's just take some of the big ones like Microsoft. Right. So Microsoft obviously is the largest UCAAS provider out there with teams. They are now really making a, a real big push on the development and a lot of activity on the contact center side. But it's not on the same platform. It's not integrated.
That comes out of a different business side. Right. And, you know, and so they're doing some really interesting things, but it's not that integrated platform. And so for Microsoft, so I think that's one that stands out that someone might say, oh, well, why not them?
And particularly on the UCAAS side, the, you know, and then we have, on the flip side, we have some really big CCAS companies that aren't on here. Right. We have Nice, we have Genesis, we have Five, nine. They don't show up and you're kind of, oh, it's like, what's going on there?
You know, a lot of those companies partner, they have partnerships. Right. Nice obviously has a really strong partnership with RingCentral.
And we didn't include that piece of the RingCentral analysis. We use their own Ring CX, right. Not the Nice. It's not a single platform. But Nice is partnered with other UCAAS providers. Right. You know, within their own piece. But, you know, but, but they really don't have the integrated platform. Same thing with, you know, 5, 9 and Genesis. So they're, they're ones that kind of stand out of like, oh, why weren't they in there? And so I think that's, yeah, the, let me see. The. What I'm trying to think if there was another company that didn't make it. No, yeah, those are the big ones that, in terms of, you know, what's going on with them there, there's some, there's lots of other smaller companies for sure. But I think that really touches on, well, why is someone not in there?
[00:18:14] Speaker A: Well, you know, you've done a great job explaining the report and how, you know, everything that goes into it. I'd encourage listeners who are interested in UCAS and CCAS combined platforms to really take a look at it.
Diane, before we sign off, why don't you tell our listeners what's next for Metrocast?
[00:18:35] Speaker B: Yeah, so, well, we have the CPAs, Metrorank also coming out. Right. And so I think when you hear this, you may also be hearing one about, you know, that that will be, will have been out. So I think that's really worth, you know, cross referencing for sure.
The other things we have is we have, you know, our 3Q market shares, which will come out in the late November, early December time frame. Right. So those would be the last ones, you know, for the, for the calendar year. But discussing Q3, we're also working on an AI, a CX, AI, Metrorank. And, you know, we're really starting to start to dig into that right now, unfortunately, you know, things are changing so fast. So you know, in terms of looking at product and looking at criteria, it's, oh my gosh, it's changing so fast. And so we're trying to keep up and evolve with that as we work on that report. But that's the other big one for the rest of this year.
[00:19:31] Speaker A: That is a challenge indeed.
So thank you Diane and listeners. As a reminder, you can find our metrorank reports information on our metrocast service, all of our other content on the Metro G website which you can find at www.metrogy.com.
and as always, we're happy to hear from you and feel free to reach out to us directly via email. Just use our first namestragy.com or you can use the contact button on the Metrog Metrogy website.
And that is all for now on behalf of Diane and the rest of the Metrogy team, goodbye till next time and take care everybody.
