King Of The Hill

The worldwide collaboration market share numbers are in, and Cisco is the winner -- again -- according to Synergy Research Group. The networking giant is widening its collaboration leadership gap even further between it and its main competitor -- and partner -- Microsoft.

"Cisco has that integration between the user experience on the device levels, which can be mobile devices, room systems, personal systems -- Microsoft doesn't have that," said Chris Bottger, senior vice president of collaboration services at IVCi, a Hauppauge, N.Y.-based solution provider and a top Cisco collaboration partner. "They simply don't have that. Microsoft is in their own little world and don't go outside that."

Cisco is the collaboration market leader, owning 16 percent of the total market, while Microsoft trails in second at 13 percent, according to fourth quarter 2015 market share data from Synergy. The report came the same day Cisco unveiled its plan to purchase collaboration specialist Synata.

Total revenue from collaboration hit a record high during the fourth quarter at $9 billion.