Cisco positioned highest in "ability to execute" among Leaders in the first ever Gartner Magic Quadrant for Unified Communications for Midsize Enterprises, North America.

Many midsize organizations are seriously exploring solutions to replace maxed-out, expensive-to-maintain, and/or end-of-life PBXs. They're weighing what they may need to support their future communications. This new Magic Quadrant from Gartner, published in May, is the first to look specifically at the unified communications requirements of midsize organizations with between 100 and 999 employees.

Phone System or Full UC&C Suite?

Many midsize organizations talk to us about deploying a new phone system. But most I talk to are balancing a much wider range of evolving challenges.  For example, those may include how to:

• Empower an increasingly mobile workforce
• Transform team working
• Increase employee engagement

It's important to consider vendors that not only fulfill your initial needs, but enable you to evolve. You need a solution that will scale as you grow and your priorities change. We feel that Cisco Business Edition 6000, which Gartner evaluated, features all the essentials.

Simple and Affordable?

Gartner's analysts emphasize the need for simple, affordable solutions for midsize organizations. We've worked to make no-compromises, enterprise-grade unified communications and collaboration affordable to organizations of all sizes. For example, over the last 18 months we have:

• Refreshed our IP phone portfolio with affordable options including the 7800 Series and 8800 Series with superior audio fidelity and enhanced mobile integration with Cisco Intelligent Proximity
• Significantly reduced price and deployment complexity of desktop and room-based video conferencing systems
• Simplified user experience with intuitive, consistent interfaces across all collaboration endpoints and applications
• Created new wizards and improved workflows to simplify quick and efficient deployment and management
• Enhanced Business Edition 6000 with a broader range of pre-installed, ready-to-activate mobility and conferencing applications
• Packaged essential UC capabilities, together with routing, switching, and security in a single platform (BE6000S) specifically to meet the needs and budgets of smaller organizations
• Offered complimentary access to WebEx Meetings solutions for new and existing BE6000 customers
• Enabled simple, agile team working with Cisco Spark

Too Cloud or Not to Cloud?

One of the questions facing organizations is whether to transition to a cloud model. The reality for many is that it isn't a black-and-white choice between premises and cloud. There is no one-size-fits-all answer. Most organizations are looking to a hybrid-cloud solution to suit their business needs, policies, IT priorities, and available resources. Cisco Business Edition solutions feature our comprehensive Collaboration Edge architecture, which provides the flexibility to run key services on-prem and/or leverage conferencing, IM, and other services from Cisco and third-party cloud providers.

Leading Execution with Partners

Providing compelling, yet simple and affordable collaboration requires resources and successful channel partnerships. Simple, delightful experiences require an architectural approach. It begins and ends with a combination of great hardware and software that deliver intuitive and consistent experiences across any device.

Midsize organizations with limited resources rely on partners that understand their business to achieve successful business outcomes. They work with partners that can provide services that combine best-of-breed switching, routing, data center and security with unified communications and collaboration. Cisco and its partners are ideally placed to help businesses realize those outcomes.

We feel that being named as a Leader in the Magic Quadrant for Unified Communications for Midsize Enterprises, North America, is testament to the great work done by the Cisco team, Cisco's partners and customers in providing outstanding collaboration solutions that are changing the way people live, work, and communicate.

This new analysis represents the latest piece of good news for Cisco Collaboration. We've previously been recognized as a leader in Gartner's Magic Quadrant for Unified Communications, Magic Quadrant for Corporate Telephony, Magic Quadrant for Contact Center Infrastructure, and Magic Quadrant for Web Conferencing.  Indeed Cisco is the only vendor named as a leader in all these reports.

No vendor can rest on its laurels. We welcomeallthe feedback Gartner provided as part of this latest evaluation. We continue to identify ways to deliver even simpler, yet compelling no-compromises communications and collaboration solutions. Our goal is to help even more businesses enhance customer and partner interactions, engage employees, raise team productivity, and reduce costs.

I encourage you take a look at the full report from Gartner here.