New Q3 data from Synergy Research Group shows that after two quarters where they were virtually evenly matched, Cisco once again pulled away from Microsoft in the enterprise collaboration infrastructure market. After inexorably narrowing the gap with Cisco, Microsoft took over the market leadership role in Q1, only for Cisco to win it back in Q2 — though in both cases the margins were extremely narrow. But in Q3 Cisco managed to grow its revenues sequentially while Microsoft’s declined, and Cisco once again opened up a substantial gap. Revenues from collaboration — which includes enterprise voice, UC applications, telepresence, email software, enterprise content management, enterprise social networks and hosted communications and applications — were $7.8 billion in the quarter, with Cisco’s overall share once again exceeding 16%.

Total revenues for the quarter were up 4% year on year, with continued declines in the enterprise voice and telepresence markets being countered by strong growth in segments such as hosted voice and UCaaS and enterprise social networking. Across all applications, revenues from premise-based solutions fell 1% year on year while revenue from hosted/cloud solutions grew by 13%.

“While Cisco’s Q3 revenues were down 7% on a year on year basis, it can have some cause to be pleased with its sequential growth which helped to arrest a steady decline in market share,” said Jeremy Duke, Synergy Research Group’s founder and Chief Analyst. “Microsoft’s sequential drop was due primarily to weakness in its large enterprise email revenue stream, though pretty much all of its other collaboration segments saw decent growth.Given ongoing major shifts in the structure of this $30 billion market, I have no doubt that that the competition will intensify."

This article was originally posted “Report: Cisco Pulls Away From Microsoft In Enterprise Collaboration” from Cloud Strategy Magazine.