Microsoft and IP PBX + unified communications (UC) platform market in Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA)

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Markets evolve at the rapid with new realities and actors that are increasingly disruptive.

Lot of transformations are underway in the unified communications and collaboration (UC&C) market, where businesses now require inter alia: easy access to UC&C functionalities irrespective of end-user's preferred endpoint; and demand has grown for traceable improvements to business processes.

For many years, the EMEA IP PBX and UC platform market had been dominated by: Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise, Avaya, Cisco, Aastra (now part of Mitel), and Unify (formerly Siemens Enterprise Communications). 

Henceforth, according to IDC, this has changed; Microsoft's market share has grown from 4.8% in Q1 2011 to 15.5% in Q2 2015, and the company has become the fourth-largest player in the Q3 2014–Q2 2015 period.

Once can also observe that, the companies that had dominated the EMEA IP PBX and UC platform market come from equipment- and on-premises-focused backgrounds. Microsoft’s rise has relied on its overall strategy. Microsoft through Skype for Business has built the options for cloud delivery and mobile access natively into the product. Businesses pay fees based on end-user functionality, while no charges are added for different access modes or preferred customer endpoints. 

The vendor is also strongly focusing on as-a-service (aaS) version of the product, Skype for Business Online. Microsoft aaS packages often combine cloud and hardware-based resources for delivering functionalities, while businesses are charged on a "pay-as-you-go" basis.