The Best UCaaS Providers for Mid-Market & Enterprise

The mid-market and enterprise space was once a scary place to operate a UCaaS business in. As cloud phone systems were fairly immature 15 years ago, adoption in larger businesses was poor. Fast forward to 2019 and putting your phone system and collaboration tools in the cloud is the norm. As cloud acceptance has gone mainstream, UCaaS vendors have had to change their sales propositions from educating customers on the benefits of the cloud to the specific benefits of their platform. Differentiating between UCaaS platforms is not a task that most businesses have somebody specifically employed for. Hence, we’ve created an introduction to the best UCaaS providers for mid-market and enterprise.

Gamma

Gamma’s UCaaS offering, Horizon, is totally scalable and integrates with leading contact centre providers like Serenova and Cirrus as well as offering their own Horizon call centre. Boasting functionality like CRM integration, call recording and mobility as standard, Gamma’s platform offers enterprises deeper access into their existing applications. Gamma also recognises that not all mid-market and enterprise customer is alike. Demonstrating this, Gamma provides a wide range of handsets and devices to cater to the needs of a typical knowledge worker environment through to a bespoke warehouse type deployment.

Built on a BroadSoft core, Horizon is a complete voice service that provides an extensive range of fixed and mobile telephony capabilities – as well as fixed mobile convergence – via an easy-to-use web portal.

As enterprises seek a catch-all provider for data and communications services, Gamma is well positioned as an independent network carrier and also offers, SD-WAN, MPLS and cloud services.

Gamma already boasts enterprise clients like Pret a Manger, Metro Bank and Knight Frank and is also featured in the Best UCaaS Providers for Small Businesses.

RingCentral

RingCentral personifies UCaaS by offering both small business and enterprises options – displaying the technology’s scalability. The platform, RingCentral Office, is available in both premium and ultimate product tiers which include enterprise-grade UCaaS features. 24/7 support is introduced and virtual meeting minutes become unlimited as you step up a tier. Glip, the flagship collaboration tool, is included in every tier. When upgrading through the tiers, the number of unlimited video meetings with screen sharing on desktop and mobile increases to 100 at the premium level and 200 at the ultimate level.

For enterprises looking to do more with a UCaaS platform, the premium and ultimate tiers open up access to the RingCentral developer platform and provide integration into apps like Salesforce, Zendesk and Desk.com.

Bridging the gap between UCaaS and CCaaS, RingCentral Office comes equipped with single sign-on, call monitoring and interactive voice response (IVR). RingCentral has also recently acquired Dimelo, a digital engagement provider, and now looks set to acquire Connect First, a customer engagement provider.

8×8

8×8’s UCaaS offering has recently undergone a facelift when they introduced the X-series. The new X Series platform is designed to arm enterprises with one set of data, one workflow engine and one analytics package to cover all their voice, meeting, collaboration and contact centre requirements.

The X4 license is aimed at enterprise customers. It includes the core functionality found in the X2 license like auto attendant, team messaging, video conferencing, integrations into G Suite, Salesforce, Zendesk, & NetSuite and basic analytics. By selecting the X4 license, enterprises also benefit from barge, monitor and whisper services, an operator switchboard, supervisor analytics & enhanced service quality statistics.

Enterprises requiring contact centre functionality can upgrade to either X6 or X8 licenses and benefit from omnichannel functionality including co-browse and quality management. Businesses selecting 8×8 as their UCaaS vendor can tailor their solution so each user or department has a specific license rather than having to consume all functionality across the board.

Recognising the higher and often more complex security consideration in enterprises, 8×8’s entire X series comes with enterprise-grade security compliant with regulations such as GDPR, HIPAA, and ISO 27001.

Vonage

Vonage’s enterprise UCaaS offering is built on their private and fully managed network, Vonage SmartWAN. Vonage is unique in breaking down their enterprise UCaaS licenses into three tiers of their own.

Enterprise Basic recognises that whilst you may be a large company with thousands of users, some users only require minimal functionality. This license includes basic telephony features like call waiting, three way calling and call forwarding rather like a basic voice license. This stripped back license is ideal for devices without users or shared phones that do not demand the feature-rich experience of a fully fledged UCaaS solution.

Enterprise UC builds on the Basic license and adds a softphone, unified messaging and hot desking – amongst other features. This is an ideal middle ground for users requiring more than simply voice functionality.

Enterprise Plus is the most feature-rich license provided by Vonage. This includes the functionality seen in Basic and UC and further enables a true UC experience. Auto attendants and hunt groups are introduced to improve inbound call management and improve the overall customer experience. Instant messaging, presence and collaboration tools are included to enhance productivity within internal communications.

Masergy

Masergy offers global presence across 60 countries and complete PSTN replacement capabilities in over 23 countries, and can also supply Local Enterprise Gateways leveraging local PSTN connectivity where their services are not yet available.

Masergy’s mid-market and enterprise bundles include WebRTC, collaboration, mobility and conferencing services as well as traditional features like unified messaging, instant messaging and video.

Masergy also offers their own open APIs to integrate into popular CRM software like Salesforce, NetSuite and Zendesk, as well as bespoke created solutions. Through these APIs, end users can apply triggers, fetches or queries based on specific call events, actions and commands. On the back of the Masergy API – and all features within the UCaaS solution – Masergy provides comprehensive call reporting software. Agent evaluation scorecards and scoring templates are available on the call recording module for businesses looking to employ quality management outside the contact centre.

West UC

West only provides enterprise UCaaS solutions and has been named a Gartner Magic Quadrant Leader in UCaaS for 6 consecutive years. West specialises in providing UCaaS solutions to finance, healthcare, manufacturing and pharmaceutical enterprises and include 89 of the of Fortune 100 companies using at least one of their services. The platform itself is split into 8 components: hosted voice, unified messaging, mobile apps, video conferencing, integration, mobility, secure managed networks and system integration. When bought together, these components cater to the majority of enterprise stock requirements.

The core of West’s business is developed through their InterCall arm. West acquired conferencing giant InterCall in 2003 and supported 28 billion minutes of conferencing last year.

West’s UCaaS platform sees tight integrations with Cisco products like Jabber and Cisco Webex Teams, with West recognising that around 86% of businesses plan to use video conferencing as part of their UC environment. Other integrations include BlueJeans, Microsoft Office 365 and Salesforce.

Telstra

Typical enterprise concerns when deploying UCaaS include global availability and ensuring a service is always available. With infrastructure long established across Asia, US, Europe, Middle East and Africa with 99.99% availability, Telstra ticks these requirements boxes with ease. Established in Australia in 1975, Telstra has been providing telecommunications services in markets like voice, mobile, internet access and even television for many years.

The platform itself is tightly integrated with the entire Cisco platform and incorporates telephony, conferencing, collaboration tools and contact centre. This all resides on top of Telstra’s own resilient network infrastructure. Existing Cisco hardware and on-premises customers should consider Telstra when looking to deploy a UCaaS solution across multiple continents.

Frost and Sullivan awarded Telstra the 2018 – Frost and Sullivan Asia Pacific ICT Awards – UC-as-a-Service Total Solution Provider of the Year, enhancing their leadership status in APAC.

If you are responsible for sourcing a new UCaaS platform for your mid-market or enterprise business, it can be a tricky and drawn out process. Fortunately, each provider has their own niches and specialist areas. Hopefully, this post has helped narrow down your long list to at least a slightly shorter one. The enterprise market is, of course, made up of more than these providers. If you’d like more information on any of the providers featured in this article, or feel any other provider should have been mentioned, then please reach out in the comment or on social media.

As the UCaaS market continues to grow, as will this list. For ongoing changes and updates to the UCaaS market, keep an eye on UC Today.