In 2021, the top 10 Collaboration software vendors accounted for nearly 65.9% of the global Collaboration applications market which grew 20.3% to approach nearly $19.2 billion in license, maintenance and subscription revenues.
In 2021, Microsoft led the pack with a 19.8% market share riding on a 11.8% jump in license, maintenance and subscription revenues. Zoom Video Communications was #2, followed by Google, Cisco Systems, and GoTo.
We ask the simple question: Who’s buying Collaboration applications from whom and why? And we provide the answers – supported by decades of research – to our clients around the world. (Sample from our Apps Database)
Through our forecast period, the Collaboration applications market size is expected to reach $20.8 billion by 2026, compared with $19.2 billion in 2021 at a compound annual growth rate of 1.6%.
| Exhibit 2: Worldwide Collaboration Software Market 2021-2026 Forecast, $M | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Year | 2021 | 2026 | 2021-2026 CAGR, % |
| Total | 19241 | 20799 | 1.6% |
Source: Apps Run The World, September 2022
Collaboration Market Definitions And Forecast Assumptions
Collaboration applications include Cloud tools for Web conferencing, team collaboration, social business platforms, event management, eSignature, and sharing of online community resources. Collaboration applications also include conventional tools for email, group calendaring and scheduling and threaded discussion.
Box, Dropbox, Slack and other startups are turning the concept of collaboration upside down with a whole new approach to knowledge sharing, team collaboration and information filtering through smart messaging with contextual and decision support capabilities.
Top 10 Collaboration Software Vendors
Here are the rankings of the top 10 Collaboration software vendors in 2021 and their market shares.
| Rank | Vendor | 2020 Collaboration Apps Revenues, $M | 2021 Collaboration Apps Revenues, $M | YoY Growth | 2021 Collaboration Market Share, % | Recent Developments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Microsoft | Subscribe | Subscribe | 11.8% | Subscribe | In January 2022, Microsoft officials noticed, that the company has surpassed 270 million monthly active Teams users as of its second quarter in fiscal 2022. That’s up from 250 million monthly active Teams users, a figure Microsoft officials cited in July 2021. |
| 2 | Zoom Video Communications | Subscribe | Subscribe | 51.8% | Subscribe | Zoom remains the favorite among a large crop of video conferencing applications because of its ease of use widely embraced by tens of millions users. In 2021, it tried but failed to acquire Five9, following a number of tuck-in purchases including for Keybase, a secure messaging and file-sharing service, and Karlsruhe Information Technology Solutions – Kites GmbH for real-time Machine Translation. |
| 3 | Subscribe | Subscribe | 41.1% | Subscribe | In October 2020, Google Workspace totaled over 2.6 billion monthly active users (MAUs), up from 2 billion MAUs for G Suite in March 2020. In 2020, Google reported more than six million monthly paying customers of Workspace. There are currently more than 5,300 public apps in the Google Workspace Marketplace and 4.8 billion apps installed in Google Workspace. Recently, Google released a new Jira integration for Google Chat and Spaces. This integration enables users to quickly create new Jira tickets, see actionable previews, and monitor issues as they collaborate in Spaces. | |
| 4 | Cisco Systems | Subscribe | Subscribe | 3.9% | Subscribe | In collaboration, Cisco continue to invest in and accelerate Webex, through both acquisitions and delivering new innovations, including the introduction of more than 1,000 new features and devices since last year. These innovations include the all-new Webex Suite, with a new look and feel that support hybrid work collaboration. Cisco acquired several software-based companies within the collaboration space, including Slido and Socio Labs, which we are integrating into our Webex platform to provide a comprehensive event management solution. We also acquired IMImobile, a cloud communications software and services company, and Involvio, a leading student experience platform. |
| 5 | GoTo | Subscribe | Subscribe | 6.8% | Subscribe | In October 2021, LogMeIn unveiled a new version of its unified communications as a service (UCaaS) platform, GoToConnect Legal, tailored to address the needs of those in the legal profession by streamlining collaboration with clients and colleagues to maximize billable hours. |
| 6 | Salesforce.com | Subscribe | Subscribe | 33.9% | Subscribe | After buying Slack in 2021, Salesforce is turning it into system of record for enterprise collaboration. One new use case is Dealroom for Sales Cloud users to conduct real-time team collaboration by sharing best practices and driving more Customer 360 conversations through such Opportunity Channels. |
| 7 | RingCentral | Subscribe | Subscribe | 34.8% | Subscribe | In 3Q21 RingCentral signed Mitel as its exclusive UCaaS partner, essentially replacing its products such as Mitel Onprem PBX and CloudLink with RingCentral MVP under a $650M deal. Mitel’s investor Searchlight Capital Partners will in turn invest $200M in RingCentral, which now have full access to Mitel’s 35 million users and 5,000 channel partners. |
| 8 | Cvent | Subscribe | Subscribe | 4.0% | Subscribe | In 2021, Cvent went public again via a SPAC offering. Following that, Cvent touted strong revenue growth and momentum by signing up deals that underscore growing interest in use of its applications to host virtual and hybrid events among its installed base of 21,000+ customers. |
| 9 | Vonage | Subscribe | Subscribe | 13.0% | Subscribe | In July 2022, Ericsson completes the acquisition of Vonage to spearhead the creation of a global network and communication platform for open innovation. The cloud-based Vonage Communications Platform (VCP) serves more than 120,000 customers and more than 1 million registered developers globally. |
| 10 | Momentive AI (formerly SurveyMonkey) | Subscribe | Subscribe | 12.9% | Subscribe | In the online survey market, SurveyMonkey has become the gorilla with over 345,000 customers, 17 million active free users, 720,921 paid users and 90 million monthly visitors to its website. |
| Subtotal | Subscribe | Subscribe | 24.5% | Subscribe | ||
| Other | Subscribe | Subscribe | 12.9% | Subscribe | ||
| Total | 15997 | 19241 | 20.3% | 100% |
Source: Apps Run The World, September 2022
Other Collaboration software providers included in the report are 3cx, 8×8, Adobe, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Arkadin, Asana, Atlassian, Aurea, Autodesk, Aurea, Axway, Box Inc., Brainshark, Calendly, Citrix, Cybozu, Dalet, Esker SA, Eventbrite, Evernote, Fuze, Granicus, Huddle, IBM, Intrado, Mitel, monday.com, NCR Corporation, Neudesic, ON24, Open Text, Oracle, Pexip, Premiere Global Services, Tencent, Tivian, SAP, ServiceNow, Smartsheet, Qualtrics, Zoho Corp. and many others.
Custom data cuts related to the Collaboration Applications market are available:
- Top 200 Collaboration Applications Vendors and Market Forecast 2021-2026
- 2021 Collaboration Applications Market By Industry (21 Verticals)
- 2021 Collaboration Applications Market By Collaboration Segments and Categories
- 2021 Collaboration Applications Market By Country (USA + 45 countries)
- 2021 Collaboration Applications Market By Region (Americas, EMEA, APAC)
- 2021 Collaboration Applications Market By Revenue Type (License, Services, Hardware, Support and Maintenance, Cloud)
- 2021 Collaboration Applications Market By Customer Size (revenue, employee count, asset)
- 2021 Collaboration Applications Market By Channel (Direct vs Direct)
- 2021 Collaboration Applications Market By Product
Exhibit 4 shows the enterprise applications market by functional area. The highest growth functional markets revolve around smaller segments like eCommerce, Enterprise Performance Management, Sales Performance Management and Treasury and Risk, where first movers remain less established than those that for decades have been entrenched in functional areas like ERP, CRM and PLM.
Collaboration Win/Loss Analysis As Part Of Enterprise Applications Buyer Insight Customer Database
On the buyer side, customers are investing in Collaboration systems based on new features and capabilities that are expected to replace their existing legacy systems. In many cases, competitive upgrades and replacements that could have a profound impact on future market-share changes will become more widespread.
Since 2010, our global team of researchers have been studying the patterns of the latest collaboration software purchases by customers around the world, aggregating massive amounts of data points that form the basis of our forecast assumptions and perhaps the rise and fall of certain vendors and their products on a quarterly basis.
Updated continuously, our database features extensive win/loss analysis. Each year our research team identifies tens of thousands of these collaboration customer wins and losses from public and proprietary sources.
The research results are being incorporated into regular updates in our Enterprise Applications Buyer Insight Customer Database. You can access the Quarterly Win/Loss Analysis Scoreboard and our Enterprise Applications Buyer Insight Customer Database by becoming a subscriber.
Source: Apps Run The World, September 2022
Further Readings
An expanded version of this report covers the top 200+ Collaboration Software vendors, offering in-depth analysis of the market dynamics, vendors’ Strengths, Customers, Opportunities, Risks and Ecosystems as well as their ability to gain Shares (SCORES) within their respective space. We also offer win-loss analysis of the quarterly wins of these top vendors and whether incumbents and upstarts pose any real threat to their standing amid shifting market requirements and user preferences.
More Enterprise Applications Research Findings
Based on the latest annual survey of 3,000+ enterprise software vendors, Apps Run The World is releasing a number of dedicated reports, which profile the world’s 500 largest Enterprise Applications Vendors (Apps Top 500) and the world’s 500 largest Cloud Applications Vendors (Cloud Top 500) ranked by their 2015-2021 product revenues.
Their 2021 results are being broken down, sorted and ranked across 16 functional areas (from Analytics to Treasury and Risk Management) and by 21 vertical industries(from Aerospace to Utility), as shown in our Taxonomy. Further breakdowns by subvertical, country, company size, etc. are available as custom data cuts per special request.
Research Methodology
Each year our global team of researchers conduct an annual survey of thousands of enterprise software vendors by contacting them directly on their latest quarterly and annual revenues by country, functional area, and vertical market. We supplement their written responses with our own primary research to determine quarterly and yearly growth rates, In addition to customer wins to ascertain whether these are net new purchases or expansions of existing implementations.
Another dimension of our proactive research process is through continuous improvement of our customer database, which stores more than one million records on the enterprise software landscape of over 100,000 organizations around the world. The database provides customer insight and contextual information on what types of enterprise software systems and other relevant technologies are they running and their propensity to invest further with their current or new suppliers as part of their overall IT transformation projects to stay competitive, fend off threats from disruptive forces, or comply with internal mandates to improve overall enterprise efficiency.
The result is a combination of supply-side data and demand-generation customer insight that allows our clients to better position themselves in anticipation of the next wave that will reshape the enterprise software marketplace for years to come.
