A few days ago, Gartner released their latest report evaluating multiple vendors around the globe who deliver Meeting Solutions. Gartner is a well-established and respected reporting agency and their findings are highly regarded in many industries.

As part of Gartner’s report, they included a magic quadrant which plots companies against each other based on their Completeness Of Vision, and their Ability To Execute. Once again Cisco was named the best in both of these fields and retains its place as the leader of the Meeting Solution providers for 2018. This brings many advantages with it as customers frequently look at Gartner’s reports to assist them in selecting their technology providers.

One of Cisco’s primary meeting clients referenced in the report is Webex Meetings. This is an intuitive, feature-filled platform that allows companies to meet virtually and collaborate with ease. It provides an advanced foundation for communication and enables professionals to orchestrate business regardless of their physical location. More people use Webex Meetings every day than all of the other vendors combined and Cisco hosts over 6 billion meeting minutes every month.

There are several factors that caused Cisco to rank so highly on the Magic Quadrant. In a recent Cisco blog post, they attributed their success to three main strengths in which they are more efficient and effective than the other vendors in this market.

With Webex Meetings, and any other Cisco collaboration product or service, there is a strong focus on providing customers with a large range of features that they can utilise in order to streamline everyday tasks and improve business productivity. This is a real strength of Cisco because they are constantly updating their platforms and adding new features and functionality without any additional cost. Just this year, Cisco added over 1000 new features. One feature Gartner highlighted as being most revolutionary was the development of the AI Voice Assistant. This project is still in its early days but will be a huge benefit to users once it is finished.

Just recently, Cisco released a new Webex Desktop Application which gives users many new features including a highly customisable window which they can tailor to suit their exact needs. Cisco has also partnered with Apple in order to fully optimise the Webex experience on all Apple devices. Alternatively to these applications, Cisco also developed an extremely easy process to join meetings which did not require participants to download anything, but instead just click a single button and they are on the call.

These are clear examples of Cisco’s innovation and evidence of a complete and forward-thinking vision which is why they were so highly rated by Gartner.

It’s one thing to have vision and innovative ideas, but it’s another thing to be capable to execute these ideas properly and successfully. When it comes to rating vendors based on Ability to Execute, Gartner often looks at customer opinion as this is the best test of whether a company can actually meet customers expectations in terms of quality.

As mentioned previously, Cisco’s customer base is enormous. This is a powerful tool that Cisco use to its full potential. It gives unparalleled insight into platform usage, enabling Cisco to constantly evolve and improve their products to most effectively meet customer’s needs.

Customers of Cisco report that two of the main reasons they choose to use Webex is consistency and reliability. In the fast-paced world of modern business, interruptions to proceedings because of malfunctioning technology can be extremely frustrating. Cisco Webex is a refreshingly reliable platform that has very little problems. Combined with the advanced security and threat prevention software that Cisco provides, it’s no surprise that customer opinion of Cisco Webex is great.

You would be hard-pressed to find anyone that would deny that Cisco’s support systems and distribution channel are the best around. Across the globe, Cisco has thousands of partners which handle deals spanning from pre-sales through to implementation and beyond. Putting time and effort into perfecting the partner program has had a huge pay-off for Cisco. Customers in virtually every country can rapidly order and deploy Cisco services as there is also a partner nearby them to help. This is another reason that Gartner ranked Cisco so highly on their Ability to Execute.

Cisco has also won CRN’s 5-star partner program award for 6 years running which further displays the effectiveness of their channel.

The channel ecosystem enables Cisco to deliver the most robust services and solutions. The expertise within the partners is critical for deploying the largest and most complex meeting solutions.

The latest Gartner Magic Quadrant report is proof that Cisco is the best vendor to choose for your meeting client in terms of innovation and quality of service. They will continue developing their solutions into the future and Webex Meetings will likely continue to lead the market for years to come.

If you would like the full Gartner report then please click here.