New Delhi, Oct 4 (IANS): As businesses increased their spending on secure, scalable communications and collaboration solutions and apps to support work-from-home (WFH) employees, the global unified communications and collaboration (UC&C) revenue grew 25.1 per cent (year over year) to reach $11.5 billion in the second quarter this year, according to a new IDC report.

Microsoft's global revenue reached $4 billion, up 19.5 per cent over the first quarter and representing 35.2 per cent of the total global UC&C market in the second quarter.

With 11.1 per cent market share, Cisco's worldwide revenue was $1.3 billion, up 11.7 per cent quarter over quarter.

"Zoom's global UC&C revenue increased an exceptional 103.2 per cent over 1Q20 and 363.3 per cent year over year, totaling $648.6 million in 2Q20. Zoom's overall UC&C market share was 5.6% for the quarter," the IDC report said.

Avaya's global UC&C revenue was up 6.6% quarter over quarter and 7.1 per cent year over year, despite seeing 30.3 per cent decline in the IP Telephony/UC Systems segment.

"In the second quarter, organisations worldwide turned to video and collaboration solutions in particular to meet work-from-home employee requirements during an extraordinary time of crisis," said Rich Costello, senior research analyst, Unified Communications and Collaboration.

In the second half of 2020 and beyond, IDC expects that worldwide UC&C growth will be driven by customers across all business size segments (small, midsize and large) with interest especially in cloud-based solutions for voice, video and collaboration, mobile applications, and digital transformation projects.

In the second quarter, the UC Collaboration market (including video conferencing software and cloud services) saw its revenues grow 46.9 per cent year over year and 22.4 per cent sequentially to $5.5 billion, with seats increasing 35.5 per cent year over year.

Enterprise Videoconferencing Systems (video endpoints and infrastructure) rebounded from a weaker 1Q20 to grow 21.5 per cent sequentially and 26.8 per cent year over year.

From a geographic perspective, the UC&C market saw positive results across the globe in the second quarter.

In North America (US and Canada), UC&C revenue was up 15.9 per cent sequentially and 27 per cent year over year.

The Asia/Pacific region, including Japan, saw revenue increase 12.6 per cent quarter over quarter and 28.5 per cent year over year, the report said.