It should be noted that Interactive Intelligence, a supplier often left out of discussions about industry market leaders, received slightly better than average grades for both survey questions despite a lesser and more focused market presence than their much larger competitors. Interactive Intelligence is an aggressive marketer, hence it received a good CLP grade, and also provides a solid level of field support for the consultant community. It doesn’t hurt that their corporate flagship product offering (contact center) is highly competitive and well rated by end users and consultants alike.
Voice Communications System Portfolio (PBX, KTS/Hybrid)
Little surprise that Avaya and Nortel received the highest grades from the consultants for the strength of their voice communications system portfolio (Figure 1), despite the former’s declining fortunes in the small systems market and the latter’s recent PBX market share decline. The two vendors have a collective share of about 40 percent of the domestic installed base.
Of the next four ranked vendors, only NEC Unified is a strong KTS/Hybrid vendor, although Mitel’s recent acquisition of Inter-Tel gives them coverage in the space as well. Grades for Interactive Intelligence and ShoreTel placed them ahead of several longer-established vendors, particularly a few with strong global market presence.
Desktop Telephone Instrument Portfolio (Digital, IP)
The top five ranked vendors—Avaya, Mitel, Cisco, NEC Unified, and Nortel—were closely bunched with strong overall grades from the consultants in this area (Figure 2). Siemens lagged slightly behind the top group, despite the introduction this year of their high performance OpenStage models. One can speculate that the new Siemens IP telephones require more marketing support to receive the grades their performance capabilities warrant.
Several of the other vendors received slightly better grades for their telephones than they did in most of the other categories. For example, Toshiba’s telephone grades were its highest among the five product categories.
Contact Center
Avaya received the survey’s highest grades for its contact center offering, with only one consultant offering a grade (Fair) less than Good or Excellent. This is Avaya’s strongest product offering, one that they leveraged a few years ago to expand into global markets.
