A new report says Vocalocity and ShoreTel
were the biggest gainers among the most significant players in the cloud
Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) market last quarter.

The Synergy Research Group study says cloud
UCaaS was up 22 percent year over year in Q2. Vocalocity’s annual revenue
growth during the same period was 45 percent, while ShoreTel’s was 37 percent.
iCore, RingCentral and 8×8 all had good years, each up between 18 and 22
percent.

Synergy says the market leaders accounted for
more than half (54 percent) of total quarterly UCaaS revenue. 8×8 maintained
its overall market share lead at 15 percent.

Public-cloud service
offerings accounted for 52 percent of quarterly UCaaS revenue. Private cloud
accounted for 30 percent, with the rest coming from premise + hybrid cloud and
contact center SaaS. North America continues to account for more than 85 percent
of worldwide revenue due to many other regions being underdeveloped.

"Looking beyond
North America, I expect to see stronger growth in EMEA and APAC regions, which
currently account for 49 [percent] of traditional UC and enterprise voice
revenues but only 13 [percent] of UCaaS revenues," said Synergy Research
Group’s founder and Chief Analyst Jeremy Duke. "Operators such as Telstra
and Orange are becoming increasingly active in these regions and UCaaS is
becoming more accepted as a reliable, secure and economically compelling
business communications solution."