Gartner's UC Magic Quadrant warns against single-vendor approach

Interoperability is the magic word for vendors in Gartner's unified communications (UC) Magic Quadrant this year, as market giants accept they have to let third-party developers play in their sandboxes.

Gartner is advising enterprises to shop around for interoperable communications products across the market.

"... the benefits are worthwhile because you will end up with more choice and more control over your direction, and more control over your costs."

Ross Daniels, director at Cisco: "Certainly, whenever possible, we'd love people to use Cisco, but the clear reality is that there is a significant installed base of other suppliers' applications across unified communications," he said. "As things have moved to an environment where communication means more than just voice, interoperability has become even more of a premium."

Microsoft has also opened the doors of its unified communications portfolio, recognizing "the customer has a choice," said Moz Hussain, the company's director of product management in unified communications.

"Unified communications doesn't have to stop with the products we deliver. A customer can take that and enrich it to their business needs," Hussain said. "If another vendor has a solution they want to plug into our client experience …. we have the APIs [application programming interfaces] to allow them to do that."

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