Gartner defines contact center as a service (CCaaS) as solutions offering SaaS-based applications that enable customer service departments to manage multichannel customer interactions holistically from both a customer-experience and employee-experience perspective. CCaaS is a key technology platform used to support the customer service experience, whether it be self-service or assisted by customer service representatives. All organizations need to offer customer assistance. The preference is for remote support via voice and digital channels over physical presence in offices and stores, though it is common for organizations to offer multiple options. The ambition is for customers to self-serve assistance, through web portals or chatbots. But it is also recognized that complex issues still need the support of employees. CCaaS technology is instrumental in orchestrating both self- and assisted-service engagement with customers. The technology can also manage the quality of engagement between the customer and the customer service representative, recognizing that premium customer experiences are achieved through premium employee experiences.
Enterprise Networking and Communications refers to the products and services that enable secure, scalable, and high-performance connectivity and communication across distributed enterprise environments. This category includes markets that focus on core and edge networking, unified communications, private and public mobile networks, and managed network services—supporting digital transformation, and operational efficiency.
Gartner defines event marketing and management platforms as tools that enable B2B marketers to execute virtual and/or in-person events for external audiences. These platforms provide native capabilities to engage and communicate with prospective attendees, registrants and sponsors, manage logistics, deliver content and enable attendees to engage with other participants. Out-of-the-box integrations with sales force automation and marketing automation platforms are provided to track engagement. Features and capabilities are provided in a self-service model, with some platforms offering managed service support to run the technology when preferred. The event technology market does not include webinars or internal meeting-specific solutions.
Gartner defines the generative AI (GenAI) knowledge management apps/general productivity submarket as technologies that enable companies to better retrieve and contextualize information and insight from their knowledge bases, including enterprise AI search, conversational AI platforms, and productivity tools for communications and content development.
Meeting solutions are real-time communication services with their associated devices that support live interactions between participants for internal and external collaboration, presentations, learning, training sessions and webinars. Meeting solutions power diverse use cases, such as one-on-one meetings, remote sales engagements, board meetings, telehealth sessions, remote banking and consulting services, to name just a few. Meeting solutions enable rich information sharing and interaction by combining audio and video, in-meeting chat, content and screen sharing, and visual collaboration and whiteboarding.
Productivity and Collaboration refer to products and services that enhance how teams work together, manage projects, and drive innovation across the enterprise. This category includes markets that focus on enabling organizations to streamline resource planning, improve cross-functional collaboration, and boost employee engagement through integrated tools for communication, task management, and workflow optimization.
Gartner defines unified communications as a service (UCaaS) as a multitenant, subscription-based service that is cloud-delivered. It provides business telephony features; public switched telephone network (PSTN) connectivity that enables inbound and/or outbound external calling; and collaboration features, such as messaging and meetings. UCaaS services can be consumed by end users with traditional handsets, desktop clients, web clients, meeting room systems and mobile apps. UCaaS is used by organizations to securely communicate and collaborate — both internally and externally. It includes telephony, messaging and meetings. UCaaS providers may offer variations of each of the three core modes of communication and also offer a range of cloud contact center functionalities, either self-developed or through integration/partnerships with cloud contact center specialists. Gartner’s definition of meetings for the UCaaS market mostly focuses on the capabilities for internal collaboration, work from home and external presentation meeting use cases. Other specialized use cases — such as webinar, remote support, distance learning and training — are often available from UCaaS offerings, but are not mandatory for inclusion in this research. These use cases are part of a separate market defined by Gartner (the meeting solutions market).
Virtual care solutions represent a set of IT capabilities and related services that enable augmentation and substitution of conventional face-to-face care delivery. Virtual care solutions enable delivery of care where the clinician is not in the same physical location as the patient, either synchronously (that is, in real time) or asynchronously. Virtual care solutions support direct-to-patient (for example, provider to patient, patient/consumer to provider) and provider-to-provider (for example, telestroke, e-ICU, specialist consultations) models of care.
Visual collaboration applications center on an infinitely scalable, shared digital canvas where teams can creatively collaborate on asynchronous and real-time work activities. These applications support colocated and remote users in creating, co-editing, reviewing and sharing content to visualize complex ideas and processes. All providers provide templates and elements to enable structured work activities. Some providers also offer extended capabilities, such as voice and video communication, and APIs to connect with other business applications and generative AI tools, although none of these capabilities are the core focus of visual collaboration applications. These applications are generally offered as cloud-based SaaS products, but a few providers offer on-premises and private cloud deployment options. Providers typically market their products as a canvas, whiteboard, workspace or platform where visual collaboration and work take place.
Gartner defines the workplace experience (WEX) application market as a discrete application or well-defined module, which is designed to enhance an employee’s interaction with the corporate workplace/office. These applications help workers plan their days in the office by facilitating the booking of individual desks, collaborative workspaces and workplace amenities such as parking or lockers. They offer capabilities that empower workers by making it easier to establish a workplace schedule, navigate the office and find their colleagues. WEX applications offer AI/ML-driven analytics that offer personalized recommendations to workers and insights to help workplace managers optimize their offerings.