8x8 X Series (Formerly Virtual Office) vs HCL Sametime (formerly from IBM)

• Delivering voicemail via email and the ability to save, forward/share recordings with relevant parties is helpful and improves the ease and accuracy of relaying messages to the correct person.
• The ability to setup numbers to which to auto-forward in the instance of a power outage or internet outage is essential for running a customer service business like ours.
• The ability to record calls during training periods with new employees is great to improve customer service and sales abilities.

Read full review

• Sametime's web-based interfaces are "zero load", requiring no plug-ins to be installed to join a meeting, launch a meeting, or use chat in a browser. A plugin is required only if you want to share your screen.
• Integration with IBM Notes is very tight. Sametime's chat status can change according to your Notes calendar. You can easily see if someone who just emailed you is available to chat. Your chat History is right inside Notes as well.
• IBM's mobile apps are top notch. We automated the apps for our users thanks to IBM's work with third party MDMs. This made it very simple for us to deploy the Sametime mobile apps -- Chat and Meetings -- and get new capabilities such as Audio & Video mobilized quickly.
• No down time, ever. The rock solid WebSphere back-end of Sametime means the environment is always up. Period.

Read full review

• It is very difficult to schedule meetings in the future in the smartphone app.
• The smartphone app should add the ability to temporarily disable incoming calls on the smartphone when someone is working in their office.
• It would be nice to have better ways to configure assistants to manage the phone calls of their executives. There were limitations and the workarounds were not ideal. We did come from a Cisco Call Manager system offered much more functionality.

Read full review

• Not convenient for a large group meeting.
• Very basic tool for internal communication only not available for third party communication
• Very basic and limited mobile app features.
• High speed connection is needed to connect to Sametime

Read full review

• 8x8 has enabled us to totally streamline our voice calls.
• We now no longer publish our mobile phone numbers as we receive direct line calls straight to the 8x8 mobile app, eliminating the need to give out additional and personal number details.
• One single, fixed price gives us all the calls we need so we can budget precisely.

Read full review

• Sametime keeps many of our team members in contact throughout the day which leads to increased productivity which makes everyone happy.
• We use the team chat room feature every day. This allows a team to stay focused on the task without any extra messages that are not on topic.
• The split between IBM Sametime, Slack and Google Hangouts has caused some issues when team members are not checking for messages on a certain app.

Read full review