Microsoft: A Leader in hybrid work solutions across 23 analyst reports
The last two years have proven that every organization needs a digital fabric that connects the entire organization—from the boardroom to the frontline, and from internal teams to customers and partners. No company is better positioned to help organizations meet the demands of hybrid work than Microsoft.
As the future of work unfolds, industry analysts weigh in. Microsoft is recognized as a Leader in seven different Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ reports, eight different Forrester Wave™ reports, and eight different IDC MarketScape reports. We believe these reports reflect the breadth and depth of our comprehensive solutions across Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Teams.
Delivering the most advanced platform for work with Microsoft Teams
With more than 270 million monthly active users, Microsoft Teams is the most used and most advanced platform for work, and the only solution with meetings, calls, chat, collaboration, and business process automation—all in the flow of work. Organizations of all sizes, from enterprises to small businesses, rely on Teams every day to run their business. With Teams Rooms, we’re bridging the gap between people working remotely and those in the office—helping people participate fully in meetings from anywhere. Teams is rapidly becoming the standard for unified communications.
Microsoft is recognized as a Leader in the 2021 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Meeting Solutions.1 Microsoft is also a Leader in the 2021 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS), Worldwide.2
In the 2021 IDC MarketScape Vendor Assessments, Microsoft is named a Leader in the Worldwide Unified Communication and Collaboration 2021 Vendor Assessment3 and the Worldwide Collaboration and Community Applications 2021 Vendor Assessment.4
“We’re all moving at lightning speed to meet our customers’ needs in the moment, and we use Teams to get communications out to our teams as quickly as possible. Teams probably saves me at least four to five hours a week.”—Courtney Eladasari, Senior Store Manager, Kendra Scott
Microsoft is also recognized as a Leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Content Services Platforms Report for 2021.5 According to the report, Microsoft placed highest in Ability to Execute and is placed higher on both Completeness of Vision and furthest on Ability to Execute than any other company in the Leaders’ quadrant.
Increasing productivity through data insights and automation
The transition to hybrid work requires transforming business processes. Microsoft’s Power Platform—comprised of Power Automate, Power BI, and Power Apps—provides a set of tools to analyze data, build solutions, automate processes, and create virtual agents.
Microsoft’s Power BI, which is included with Microsoft 365 E5 or available separately, is an industry-leading unified, scalable platform for augmented business intelligence enabling organizations to connect to, visualize, and create deep insights from any data.
Forrester has recognized Microsoft as a Leader in The Forrester Wave™: Augmented BI Platforms, Q3 2021.6 The Forrester Wave™ report states: “It is hard not to consider Power BI as your top choice for an enterprise BI platform, especially if your organization plans to deploy most of its business and productivity applications and store and process most of the data on Microsoft Azure.”
Additionally, the March 2022 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Analytics and Business Intelligence Platforms,7 recognizes Microsoft as a Leader among analytics and business intelligence platforms. For the fourth year running, Microsoft is again positioned furthest in Completeness of Vision and highest in Ability to Execute.
Delivering trusted security solutions for hybrid work
Security is a top priority for every organization. To keep our customers secure, we build security by design into every product we sell. And we deliver end-to-end solutions spanning security, compliance, identity, device management and privacy, across clouds and platforms, informed by 24 trillion threat signals each day. Microsoft is the only cloud provider with native multicloud protection for the industry’s top three cloud platforms. Microsoft Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) is the undisputed market leader, with more than 550 million monthly active users.
Industry analysts recognize Microsoft as a Leader across multiple security categories which we believe is a testament to the trusted security solutions Microsoft offers.
Identity and access management
Zero Trust security starts with strong identity verification. Microsoft is recognized as a Leader in the 2021 The Forrester Wave™: Identity As A Service (IDaaS) For Enterprise, Q3 2021,8 IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Advanced Authentication for Identity Security 2021 Vendor Assessment,9 and Gartner Magic Quadrant for Access Management.10
Endpoint security and protection
Ensuring the devices accessing your corporate resources are healthy and compliant with security policies is critical before granting access. Microsoft is named a Leader in the 2021 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Endpoint Protection Platforms11 and IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Modern Endpoint Security for Small and Midsize Businesses 2021 Vendor Assessment.12 From the IDC report: “Microsoft’s momentum in the modern endpoint security market is undeniable and that lends to more customers considering and trialing Microsoft Defender Antivirus and Microsoft Defender for Endpoints.”
Microsoft is also recognized as a Leader in The Forrester Wave™: Endpoint Security Software as a Service, Q2 2021,13 receiving the highest possible scores in the criteria of control, data security, and mobile security, as well as in the criteria for Zero Trust framework alignment.
Application usage and management
Microsoft Defender for Office 365 helps organizations safeguard against malicious threats posed by email messages, links, and collaboration tools. Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is recognized as a Leader in The Forrester Wave™: Enterprise Email Security, Q2 2021,14 receiving the highest possible score in the incident response, threat intelligence, and endpoint detection and response (EDR) solutions integration criteria, as well as in the product strategy, customer success, and performance and operations criteria.
The Forrester report states: “Enterprises have been migrating from their on-premises email solutions (mostly Exchange) to Microsoft 365 with increasing speed in the past couple of years, making it attractive for them to adopt Microsoft’s native security controls.”
Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is a leading cloud security gateway (or cloud access security broker) that provides multifunction visibility, control over data travel, and sophisticated analytics to identify and combat cyber threats across your cloud apps, including Microsoft 365. Forrester has named Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps as a Leader in The Forrester Wave™: Cloud Security Gateways, Q2 2021.15
Extended detection and response
Microsoft 365 Defender again made the top ranks in 2021, placing as a Leader in The Forrester New Wave™: Extended Detection and Response (XDR), Q4 2021.16 As the Forrester report states: “[Microsoft 365 Defender] offers robust, native endpoint, identity, cloud, and O365 [Microsoft Office 365] correlation… singular and cross-telemetry detection, investigation, and response for Microsoft’s native offerings in one platform.”
“The difference we’ve experienced in visibility and threat detection since deploying Microsoft Security solutions is like night and day.”—Raoul Van Der Voort, Global Service Owner, Rabobank
Simplifying device management to empower work from anywhere
Staying ahead of today’s evolving business needs requires organizations to be agile. Microsoft Endpoint Manager offers a unified endpoint management tool that helps solve the challenge of device management in today’s hybrid work environment that spans across platforms and device types.
Microsoft Endpoint Manager empowers IT to assess, manage, and protect apps and devices with or without device enrollment. Whether personally or company-owned, full endpoint visibility and IT control across device platforms simplifies workloads, builds a stronger Zero Trust security architecture, and improves user experiences while reducing the total cost of ownership (TCO).
Microsoft Endpoint Manager is recognized as a Leader in the 2021 Forrester Wave™: Unified Endpoint Management Q4 2021.17 As the Forrester report states: “Endpoint Manager excels at helping customers migrate to modern endpoint management, with differentiating features, such as policy analysis, to determine readiness for cloud management, templated group policy migration, and pre-canned reports for co-management eligibility.”
Microsoft is also named a Leader in the 2021 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Unified Endpoint Management Tools for Microsoft Endpoint Manager.18 In the 2021 IDC MarketScape Vendor Assessments, Microsoft was named as a Leader in Worldwide Unified Endpoint Management Software.19
“We have a lot of people who work from home, remotely, or from client sites. Before Autopilot and Intune, they would have had to spend an entire workday coming to the office just to set up their devices. Today, they can tackle that same setup in under two hours, from home.”—Ralf van Houtem, Global Manager, Digital Workplace, Atos
Learn more
To learn more about Microsoft 365 and its solutions built for hybrid work, visit our website. Bookmark the Microsoft 365 blog to keep up with the latest announcements, research, and resources. Also, follow us at @Microsoft365 for the latest news and updates.
1Gartner Magic Quadrant for Meeting Solutions, by Mike Fasciani, Tom Eagle, Brian Doherty, Christopher Trueman, 7 October 2021.
2Gartner Magic Quadrant for Unified Communications as a Service Worldwide, by Rafael Benitez, Megan Fernandez, Daniel O’Connell, Christopher Trueman, Pankil Sheth, 18 October 2021.
3IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Unified Communication and Collaboration 2021 Vendor Assessment, Doc # US48389221, December 2021.
4IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Collaboration and Community Applications 2021 Vendor Assessment, Doc # US46743820, September 2021.
5Gartner Magic Quadrant for Content Services Platform, by Michael Woodbridge, Marko Sillanpaa, Lane Severson and Tim Nelms, 18 October 2021.
6The Forrester Wave™: Augmented BI Platforms, Q3 2021, by Srividya Sridharan, Danielle Jessee, Fayzan Sabri, 16 August 2021.
7Gartner Magic Quadrant for Analytics and Business Intelligence Platforms, by Austin Kronz, Kurt Schlegel, Julian Sun, David Pidsley, Anirudh Ganeshan, 22 March 2022.
8The Forrester Wave™: Identity As A Service (IDaaS) For Enterprise, Q3 2021, by Sean Ryan, Merritt Maxim, Elsa Pikulik, Peggy Dostie, 31 August 2021.
9IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Advanced Authentication for Identity Security, Doc # US46178720, July 2021.
10Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Access Management, by Henrique Teixeira, Abhyuday Data, Michael Kelley, 1 November 2021.
11Gartner Magic Quadrant for Endpoint Protection Platforms, by Paul Webber, Peter Firstbrook, Rob Smith, Mark Harris, Prateek Bhajanka, Published 5 May 2021, Updated 5 January 2022.
12IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Modern Endpoint Security for Small and Midsize Businesses 2021 Vendor Assessment, Doc #US48304721e, November 2021.
13The Forrester Wave™: Endpoint Security Software As A Service, Q2 2021, by Chris Sherman, Merritt Maxim, Allie Mellen, Shannon Fish, Peggy Dostie, 13 May 2021.
14The Forrester Wave™: Enterprise Email Security, Q2 2021, by Joseph Blankenship, Claire O’Malley with Stephanie Balaouras, Allie Mellen, Shannon Fish, Peggy Dostie, 6 May 2021.
15The Forrester New Wave™: Cloud Security Gateways, Q2 2021, by Andras Cser, Merritt Maxim, Shannon Fish, Peggy Dostie, 19 May 2021.
16The Forrester New Wave™: Extended Detection And Response (XDR) Providers, Q4 2021, by Allie Mellen, Joseph Blakenship, Alexis Bouffard, Peggy Dostie, 13 October 2021
17The Forrester Wave™: Unified Endpoint Management, Q4 2021, by Andrew Hewitt, Will McKeon-White, Lauren Nelson, Abbey Brinkey, Diane Lynch, 2 November 2021.
18Gartner Magic Quadrant for Unified Endpoint Management Tools, by Dan Wilson, Chris Silva, Tom Cipolla, 16 August 2021.
19IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Unified Endpoint Management Software 2021 Vendor Assessment, Doc # US46957820, January 2021.
IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Unified Endpoint Management Software for Ruggedized/Internet of Things Deployment 2021 Vendor Assessment, Doc # US46957920, January 2021.
IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Modern Endpoint Security for Enterprises 2021 Vendor Assessment, Doc # US48306021e, November 2021.
IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Modern Endpoint Security for Small and Midsize Businesses 2021 Vendor Assessment, Doc # US46965720, January 2021.
The Forrester Wave™: Content Platforms, Q2 2021, June 14, 2021.
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