(NOTE: This story was originally posted to CRN.com April 19.)

A Widening Gap After Q4 2016

New research data from the fourth quarter of 2016 shows Cisco is pulling away from its unified communications and collaboration (UC&C) rival Microsoft for leadership supremacy, according to Synergy Research Group.

"Cisco's pullaway in market share in the quarter is due to a variety of factors, I would say the most significant is its ability to execute on a cloud-like architecture with its premise-based call servers and the reality that some competitors, especially Avaya, had a challenging quarter," said Jeremy Duke, founder and chief analyst of Synergy Research, in an interview with CRN.

Click through to read a breakdown of the key UC&C market numbers, trends and leaders in Q4 that you need to know.