Episode Transcript
[00:00:21] Speaker A: Hi, everyone. I'm Erwin Lazar, president and principal analyst here at Metro G, and welcome to this episode of the Metroside Podcast.
During this episode, I'm delighted to be joined by Diane Myers, our senior research director, who heads up our Metricast service. And we're going to talk about UCaaS, specifically our recently published UCaaS, Metrank, as well as our UCAAS Metra stars. Diane, welcome.
[00:00:44] Speaker B: Yeah, thanks, Erwin.
[00:00:46] Speaker A: So we've talked about metrank quite a bit on a podcast. You just recently published 1 on CCAST, Metrorank. Go ahead and share a little bit with our audience about what metrorank is and what makes it unique.
[00:00:59] Speaker B: Yeah. So our metrorake reports are one of our core benchmarking studies.
And in this case, typically we are looking at 10, sometimes 12 companies.
And to, you know that the qualifier to get into these reports is market share. Right. So we're taking the largest companies and then we're evaluating them. This is a quantitative study. This is, you know, there's nothing subjective about this, Right. It's all based on the data, and we look at it across a variety of different other metrics, including market share momentum, you know, how is market share changing relative to their peers?
The product. Right. So we do a product matrix, right? We look at all the features and capabilities, and we score based on what, you know, what each individual company has. We look at the financial strength, right? So we're pulling financial metrics from publicly released data. And then the other two pieces are based on our large study where we're looking at customer sentiment and we're looking at how successful business customers are through a variety of business metrics.
[00:02:06] Speaker A: It's really important. This isn't our opinion or your opinion of who you think is the best or is performing well. It's verifiable market data as well as customer sentiment.
[00:02:15] Speaker B: Right? Yeah. No, everything within the reports, we show the breakdown of the methodology, we show the actual scoring across the board. And I would say, so, yes, we are, you know, it is a quantitative approach. There is no subjectivity, except for, you know, the only subjectivity pieces. We're figuring out what are the product components that we're going to measure. Right. That's really the only piece, right. It says, what do we value in terms of looking at the product. Product mix. And I would say the other thing is that this year. So we've always done a ranking, right? Metro rank, Right. We rank them according to all of these different categories and we give things a slightly different weight. Right? Market share gets the highest weight. It's the most component of a leadership is, you know, how much of the market you control. But this year we, we took a little bit of a different approach. We still do, we still do the ranking, however, we, we created a new graphical representation of how to look at these companies. And we did this across three, you know, we took those six scores and we put them into three different buckets. One is a foundation score, which is the financials is the product, the customer score, which are those two customer scoring that we just talked about and then the their size. Right. So the market score, which is their market share and their market share momentum. And we put them into a graphical representation which really lets us evaluate how companies in a given area, in this case UCAs, are doing relative to each other.
And then putting into three buckets, the leaders, the challengers and the performers.
[00:03:59] Speaker A: What providers comprise the landscape this year in those buckets? Leaders, challengers and performers.
[00:04:04] Speaker B: Yeah, let's start with the leaders. Right, so we have Cisco, Microsoft, Zoom, Ringcentral and Verizon.
Within the graphic here we'll show this, you'll see it on the screen here. But you can see here that Microsoft has really strong, has the strongest foundation score. Right. So that means, and that would be for Microsoft Teams. Right. So that's the UCAS product we're looking at with Microsoft. And you know, they've got good, strong financials. They've got the strong financials, strong product mix. Right. That they've got the product components. And then if you look at the, on the customer score piece, RingCentral is really the highlight there. Right. They had very, very strong customer scores. So that really, you know, that really is kind of a standout where we have Zoom and Cisco also doing well in both foundation and customers in kind of more of a balanced, you know. Right. Like they have strength in both so that they show up there on the challenger side. Right. So that's our second tier and that's a real mix of different companies. That includes Gamma, which is a, you know, predominantly a European focused, Western European focused provider. We have Vonage, we have goto, we have 8x8 and then we have Nextiva, which kind of really is on that border of Challenger. It's a challenger, but just sits in that border of what we call the third kind of bucket we have, which are high performers.
[00:05:45] Speaker A: And it's interesting you mentioned having providers like Gamma in here, that this is a global study. This isn't just North America or US based.
[00:05:53] Speaker B: That's right, that's right, absolutely.
[00:05:56] Speaker A: So as you created the metrorank. Was there anything that stood out or any surprises that you saw?
[00:06:02] Speaker B: No, because we've been doing this now for a number of years and Cisco, Microsoft, Zoom, RingCentral, they're the market share leaders. They're very strong.
They've got a lot going for them. They've got the product and pieces, they've got financial strength, especially the large companies. The Zoom, Microsoft, Cisco knows they're, they're just doing really well and they're, they tend to be firing on all fronts. So no, no big surprises in this. And I, and I think that's a really a good indication that. It is not even just a good indication, it's just an indication that this market, the UCAS market is stable and steady and there's not a lot of, you know, besides, you know, obviously we have AI in the mix, but AI is additive to these pieces. There's not a lot that is really shifting and changing in terms of UCAs. Right. This is a pretty steady market at this point.
[00:07:01] Speaker A: And I think it's important to note that you're looking at the entire provider, not specific applications. Right. So you're not looking at, you know, an AI add on or just an individual feature within the portfolio, right?
[00:07:12] Speaker B: Well, we could be looking at those in the product mix, right. We could be saying like, you know, do you have this capability? Do you have that? But no, it's, you know, to be in this. And we're looking at it as a whole, right. It's, it's, it's the completed service and for us probably should have talked about this at the top. So for UCAs. Right. And that definition can mean different things to different people. I do recognize that. But really in this scenario they have to have the calling, right? That's kind of the core, you know, the phone, the phone system, the kind of the core. But it's, you know, they all have the meetings and the messaging and then above and beyond we start seeing all these other new enhanced features like, like you mentioned, like on the AI side.
[00:07:52] Speaker A: Yeah, makes sense. So how do you see metrocast evolving or metrorank, I should say evolving in the future as we continue to see convergence around say UCAAS and CCAS as examples.
[00:08:06] Speaker B: Yeah, so that's actually the next one we're working on. So at the top. Erwin, you had mentioned we had published the CCAs, but now the one I'm going to be working on and what everyone can expect to see next is UC and cc.
[00:08:18] Speaker A: Right.
[00:08:18] Speaker B: So we're going to do a UC and cc, Metro Rank and We're going to really evaluate those companies that have both, right, not, not a resale, not an oem, like their own service that they're selling, right.
In terms of CC and UC. Right. So CCAs and UCAs. So those are going to include companies like Zoom and Cisco and RingCentral and 8 by 8 and Vonage and Goto and Microsoft. Right. You're going to, you know, you're going to see that because that's where we're seeing a lot of the decisions being made right now, is that combination. And so that's, to us is going be a very interesting view and how that, how that plays out. And quite frankly, it's gonna, it's gonna, the mix is gonna be different, right? We're not gonna, you know, necessarily see the same type of ranking that we would see on the CCAS or the UCAS side, right? Because we're, we're really blending the two.
[00:09:08] Speaker A: That makes perfect sense. So, you know, we also touched on metrostar and metrostar is essentially a subset, right. Of, of Metro Rank in that you talked about customer sentiment, business success. So Metrostar dives more deeply into those specific areas. So 100% based on what customers say about their providers, how they rate them in a variety of different areas, and what kinds of success that they're seeing with the use of those products. So specifically in UCaaS, we looked at areas related to cost savings, employee efficiency, productivity improvements, as well as revenue improvements through improved communication and collaboration.
As we're publishing this, we've released our 2026 UCAST MetroStar Awards.
And the companies that we recognized as MetroStar Award winners this year were 8x8 Cisco, Intermedia, RingCentral, Verizon and Zoom. Those are companies that had above average customer sentiment ratings as well as measured business success. We also recognize Google and Gamma for high customer sentiment ratings and Microsoft and nextiva for high business success.
Diane, what are your thoughts on metrostar versus metrank? How do you see the difference in those and how the vendors are performing?
[00:10:27] Speaker B: Well, I mean, the metrostar, those measurements that you're looking at for customer sentiment and customer business success become a key component of what we look at within the metrorank. But the metrorank takes those and they're important, but expands above and beyond. Right. You know, understanding that the customer input is one key measurement. But for metrorank, we are trying to do a much more holistic approach.
[00:10:54] Speaker A: Makes perfect sense. Excellent. So with that, I'll go ahead and wrap up. As a reminder, you can find our Metrorank and Metrostar reports on the Metro G website at metrogy.com click up on the top and click on Browse and then use the filter on the left to look for Metrocast content and you'll see the latest report. They're available to our clients as well as for individual purchase. As always, we're happy to hear from you. Feel free to reach out directly to researchetragy.com is the best way to get a hold of us, or use the contact form on our website. Please continue to follow our Metra site channels on both YouTube and your favorite podcasting app. And if you enjoyed what you heard today, please feel free to share and rate our podcast. We certainly appreciate that with on behalf of Diane and the rest of the Metro G team, goodbye for now.
