The last week of November is usually a hectic time in any industry, with seasonal sales everywhere you look, and companies preparing for the end of the year.

In 2020, November has been an incredible month, brimming with new announcements, reports, and updates from some of the world’s leading companies. In the last week alone, we’ve explored the Gartner Magic Quadrant for UCaaS 2020, discussed the latest updates to Cisco Webex and even commented on Workplace from Facebook’s inclusion strategy.

If you haven’t had the chance to read all the reports we’ve published in the last week – don’t panic! Here are our top stories you can’t afford to miss.

Revealing the UCaaS Magic Quadrant for 2020

Gartner’s Magic Quadrant is one of the most well-respected reports on the market for technology buyers everywhere. This year, we got two crucial quadrants in a row, the Magic Quadrant for CCaaS, then the MQ for UCaaS. For this year’s UCaaS report, Gartner listed several impressive companies as leaders, including Microsoft, RingCentral, Cisco, Zoom, and 8×8.

Gartner also noted that by 2024, 74% of new UC licenses will be entirely cloud-based, an increase from only 48% back in 2019. That’s a sure sign that the world is becoming increasingly cloud-focused, especially for communication. Check out the full report here.

The Mystifying Magic Quadrants

Following the rapid release of two Magic Quadrant reports in November 2020, our founder, Rob Scott decided to assess the nature of the Gartner report, and ask how trustworthy it is. The CCaaS report, in particular, this year led to some controversy after Five9 lost its spot as a leader for the simple reason of not having enough seats in the Western Europe region.

Join Rob in his latest blog talking all about the issues with the Magic Quadrants, and whether we should really place so much weight on them when making decisions about things like unified communication and contact centre solutions.

New Updates to Cisco Webex

As the world of communication and collaboration continues to evolve, driven by the rapid increase in demand for things like remote work, market leaders need to ensure they’re staying ahead of the competition. That means we’re constantly getting access to new features from tools like Cisco Webex and Microsoft Teams.

Recently, Cisco announced a slew of updates to the Webex environment, including the option to remove background noise from conversations, and change menu view to dark mode. The latest Webex enhancements aim to deliver better user experience, security, and new integrations to users. You can check out everything new in this article.

Is Microsoft Teams a UCaaS Solution?

For some time, most market experts identified Microsoft Teams, the world’s leading tool for team collaboration, as just a “collaboration tool”. However, as the solution’s features continue to expand and evolve, it’s becoming increasingly obvious that there’s more to Teams than we originally thought. Leaders are beginning to agree that Teams is a UCaaS solution in its own right it earned a place on the 2020 Gartner Magic Quadrant as a Leader for 2020.

As we discuss in our recent blog, Microsoft has now infused Teams with all the features that a service needs to be officially classified as UCaaS. You can send messages, share files, host video calls, and even access business phone functionality. Learn more about the Microsoft Teams unified communication solution here.

Workplace from Facebook Focuses on Diversity

Workplace from Facebook is one of the most impressive solutions available for business leaders today. It’s a way for companies to create an online social environment for teams while maintaining security and privacy requirements. The Workplace from Facebook solution delivers a host of features to help people work more cohesively together while reducing the risks of lost engagement and productivity for remote workers.

Importantly, Facebook is also highly focused on ensuring that everyone has a voice in the business community. This means connecting not just back-end workers, but front-line workers and everyone else who might need to stay in the professional loop. Here’s how Workplace is reshaping what inclusion and diversity mean in the age of the pandemic.

Which stories caught your eye in the last week? Join the conversation with us on social media and remember to share your own news reports with us too!

 

 

 



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