Each year, when the Magic Quadrant (MQ) is published, I look forward to generating a quick visual to assess year-over-year changes. By placing the current year graphic over the previous year’s, it’s easy to see the movement and degree of change amongst the vendors.

The scoring of each vendor’s product/service capabilities and support for specified use cases is standardized by Gartner and changes very little from year to year. So performing a more detailed, objective analysis of factors influencing our position—and that of other vendors—is a fairly straightforward process.

Of course, as with all industries, things are changing in the contact center space. As a result, Gartner’s inclusion criteria, as well as their definition and description of the market, must also change to reflect the needs of current contact center buyers. Last year, Gartner consolidated the North America and Western Europe MQs into a single, consolidated worldwide report. This was a significant change. Evaluating and understanding the impact of that change on vendor placement was not so straightforward.

This year, there are very few changes in Gartner’s market definition/description. Gartner still defines CCaaS as an “application that enables customer service organizations to manage multichannel customer interactions holistically in terms of both customer experience and employee experience.” They still view CCaaS solutions as “systems of differentiation” and the “four pillars of great customer service” remain unchanged. Gartner’s description of who uses CCaaS solutions, and why, is also unchanged.

So what has changed this year, you ask? It’s their view of the 2021 CCaaS market. Which is not today’s market.

Wait, what?

Yes, you read that correctly. According to the 2021 Gartner Magic Quadrant for CCaaS, Gartner’s view of the CCaaS market “is focused on transformational technologies and approaches to meet the future needs of end users. It is not focused on the market as it is today.”

If you’re actively evaluating CCaaS providers, understanding this provides valuable context for the report and adds dimension to the otherwise flattened representation of vendors, all neatly placed in four little squares. While Gartner certainly evaluates the vision of contact center vendors (and their ability to meet changing requirements in the future), it does not appear to include in its formal evaluation those same vendors’ ability to natively support all communications requirements in a world where the lines between formal and informal customer-facing roles are blurring. Let me use a few points from the report to illustrate.

According to the 2021 Magic Quadrant, CCaaS solutions are

  • Used by structured customer and employee service and support organizations

At 8x8, we call these structured use cases “formal” contact centers. Of course, you can’t have formal without informal, right? (If you question this, just take a look at your closet and quickly identify your office attire from your work-from-home favorites.) In this year’s report, Gartner acknowledges 8x8’s “strong support for tracking activity in informal centers.” With 8x8 it’s easy to support the needs of all employees. Whether they are formal contact center agents or help desk advisors, inside sales representatives, or HR benefits administrators--we can support every communication need.

  • Considered go-to technology for most contact centers with less than 500 seats, although some organizations may deploy a number of smaller business units or groups that result in thousands of seats

Gartner cites consolidation of standalone environments as a key driver. We believe that working with a single vendor, especially one who can power the communication needs of all employees globally, should be a key consideration for forward-thinking, strategic IT and customer experience leaders. And don’t forget to ask about reliability. The 8x8 eXperience Communications Platform offers the highest levels of reliability with the first financially-backed, platform-wide 99.999% global uptime SLA across an integrated cloud CCaaS and UCaaS solution, setting a new industry benchmark for cloud communications reliability.

  • Usually deployed along with other technology solutions to support a larger customer service and support ecosystem

Increasingly, successful customer experience requires tight integration with other systems and applications. Whether through pre-built integrations or APIs, your contact center provider should be able to help you connect to CRM, Business Intelligence (BI), HR and other solutions. The 8x8 eXperience Communications Platform brings together native contact center, voice, team chat, video meetings and CPaaS APIs and embeddable apps capabilities in a single-vendor solution. Why deploy a complex tech stack when you can have the simplicity of a single, open platform today?

8x8 is honored to be recognized as a 7x CCaaS Challenger and a 9x UCaaS Magic Quadrant Leader. And we appreciate the insights that Gartner provides to help shape the future of the contact center and unified communications industries. We believe that 8x8 brings together the best of CCaaS and UCaaS to power best-in-class customer and employee experiences. And our customers agree. Whether inside or outside of the contact center, structured or unstructured, formal or informal, with 8x8's Platform, the possibilities are endless. Now and into the future.