Cisco Business Edition 4000 (discontinued) vs. Polycom Trio

The availability of numerous subscription options is one of the most impressive features of Cisco Business Edition 4000. Businesses can purchase prepaid subscriptions for 1, 3, or 5 years, depending on their needs and budget. The Cisco Business Edition 4000, which is cloud-managed, is the phone system that the small-scaled industry has been waiting for. It seamlessly blends the old and modern, allowing [organizations] to meet their conventional communication demands while remaining compatible with cutting-edge communication technology.

Incentivized

It is well suited, I believe, in small to mid-level organization where use will be light to moderate. It is useful in a situation where both ends have the same equipment, the same model and the same software release upon them. A scenario where it might be less appropriate is single-use installations and large corporate environments. Though in the future it may become more adapted to the 'open range' of telephony systems right now the system is best when working with others of its kind. It is also inappropriate in a situation where the organization does not have a fully developed Information Technology team or arrangement with a telephony contractor to handle the devices when things go wrong.

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• Call routing
• Voicemail
• SIP Trunking

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• The microphones are extremely sensitive. They make it easier for soft spoken individuals to be heard clearly.
• It is easy to operate. Once connected through Outlook all it takes is one click to get to into a meeting and two or three to bring in outside attendees.

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• Integration with other vendors
• More suitable GUI for newbies in IT
• Integration with other Cisco products in term of WAN connections

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• Our greatest disappointment in Polycom Trio was the lag in using the screen, it wasn't nearly as intuitive and "snappy" as the iPads were.
• Paired next to the iPad's, the Polycom Trio was much more expensive and couldn't be a justified member of our mass Zoom Room adoption.

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As it is a completely cloud-based product this is easy to access. We easily manage or access it from anywhere. It is very easy to deploy and easy to manage and use. Its mobile device integration feature is very good and we loved it. It is ideal for remote access.

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A well known product that most users are familiar with and simple enough for new users to learn and understand.

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The support once you have been able to actually connect with someone is great. The challenge is that it is very difficult at times to get someone from support at short notice to work with you, especially when you have a production impacting issue. I had a licensing issue that took me about 1 week to get support attention, once connected with them was resolved with two days.

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I have never contacted support for this product.

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Cisco Business Edition 4000 is an simple to use, cloud-hosted system based on Cisco's IP telephony technology. It is a optimal solution for for SMB businesses and supports up to a maximum of 200 IP Phones. For customers looking for larger user group, Cisco BE 6000 or BE7000 would be a better option.

Polycom Trio provides better conference call quality, picks up voice from corners of the room with additional mics for large room, better widescreen display, and it was mostly the user satisfaction which made us choose Polycom Trio.

• Optimal solution for small/medium organizations.
• Lowers cost with reduced IT overheads and cloud management.
• Rapid deploy model helps for fast setup.

• Since we were really looking for a device that could provide Skype for Business Online services (web conferencing/video/audio/local screen presenting) at a reasonable price point, I cannot say that this device meets all of our needs. The device has to be at least 99.99% reliable. This is about 60% there. Audio is definitely in the 99% range. Local screen presenting is probably around 75%. Video and web conferencing is about 70%. To comfortably deploy a device in the wild you really need to have 99% reliability. It has to work when its needed. I can understand an occasional hiccup, but one every other day is a too many. If you are replacing older SoundStations with an IP or Skype based audio solution, then this is it.

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