How will cloud communications disrupt the collaboration market?

The total collaboration market will grow by 9% this year and reach over $45 billion. This is according to the latest research from Synergy Research Group, which also found that the cloud collaboration market will fuel this growth.

Demand for TeamWork Apps rises

TeamWork Apps will reportedly be the highest growth market, up by almost 60% in 2019. Overall, the research firm expects spending in this segment to reach $500 million during this year alone.

In addition to this, Communication Platform as a Service (CPaaS) and Video as a Service (VaaS) will each grow by approximately 30%. Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) and Contact Centre as a Service (CCaaS) are the next highest growth markets.

In total, the hosted and cloud collaboration markets will grow by 19% in 2019. Total worldwide Q3 revenues for collaboration almost reached $11 billion, while Q4 will be substantially higher.

Market leaders

Meanwhile, revenue from on-premise products will decline by 3%. Nevertheless, quarterly vendor revenues from collaboration are at an all-time high and will continue to grow steadily over the next five years.

Cisco is currently maintaining the lead in the collaboration market as it overtook Microsoft in the last quarter. However, Slack, twilio, BroadCloud (Cisco), Zoom, Fuze, Dropbox, RingCentral and LogMeIn are growing the most rapidly in the high-growth segments.

Slack in particular is demonstrating impressive growth as the workplace app has more than doubled in size year on year. Last year, the company acquired its competition HipChat and Stride in order to dominate the market.

Cloud communication triumphs

Jeremy Duke, Synergy Research Group’s founder and Chief Analyst commented on the shifting market. “Collaboration continues to be a somewhat fragmented market with many disruptive and high-growth companies targeting specific technology areas,” he stated.

“Traditional on-premise sales are shrinking and being replaced by cloud-based communication services," he added. "There is now wide adoption of these new emerging cloud services and our forecasts show that they will continue to grow strongly over the next five years.”

Indeed, Gartner insists that cloud computing continues to provide a “disruptive foundation for all communication-related processes and offerings” in the enterprise. By 2023, 30% of today’s on-premises virtual desktop infrastructure users will access a workspace in the cloud using DaaS.

How can the cloud transform workplace communication? Listen to our podcast with CMO of Workfront Heidi Melin to find out