Cisco Business Edition 7000 (discontinued) vs. Intel Unite

Cisco business edition are well suited for the environment where we need regular communication as they are easy to dial and has got great features. The product is well suited for both small business and large enterprises. Speed dial, good voice quality are key features of Cisco phones. They are not well suited in scenarios where we do not have LAN connectivity or internet. Sometimes we may face latency and jitteriness which is not good.

Incentivized

It's a fantastic tool [Intel Unite] in meeting rooms where staff frequently change and/or bring their own devices to connect. No more wires or dongles, just a wifi connection needed and that's it to stream to the screen. It'll even display on the screen exactly what end-users need to do to connect, which makes getting connected for less tech-savvy users very easy. If you have an IT or AV department that isn't great, this probably isn't a great option to roll-your-own, but they do sell dedicated Intel Unite PCs with everything pre-done on them.

Incentivized

• The platform supports up to 5,000 users connected at the same time in voice and video calls.
• Everything is virtually deployed on Cisco servers with reliability.
• Intuitive configuration and user-friendly web interface.
• It has several types of IP phones and is compatible with legacy and multi-brand hardware with SIP protocol.

Incentivized

• No dongles needed any longer for connections, it's all through a local wifi (or the corporate one depending on how you set it up). You can stream from mobile devices too.
• Simple set-up - laptops connect very easily, mobiles connect quickly with an app.

Incentivized

• More cloud based services need to be added to the default service package.
• Companies frequently require a small contact center within the UC environment. It would be nice to see a build it contact center in the box.
• It would be nice to see some advanced AI based services (IVR voice recognition service) in the BE7K application list.
• Call recording should be also built in.

Incentivized

• The initial setup was a bit of a pain - when we started they required specific hardware to make it work (Intel vPro), which wasn't on the PC used for presentations at the time and we had to change hardware out.
• Software versions are difficult to find on the Intel website - it's a bit of a jumble and not clear as to what needs to be installed and where.

Incentivized

I've used 220s and 240s too, but it takes a lot of time to set them up, a lot of time to download the iso files, and set up of datastores. 7k saves the engineer a lot of pre-build assessment and evaluation time. Gets a lot done in a lot less time, returns are a happy engineer and a happier customer.

Incentivized

GoToMeeting and Webex both require either a connection to the display screen or a PC mounted to the display to connect through. [Intel] Unite handles both of those areas, though it doesn't function as a remote meeting platform to bring people together from different locations. It's just for local display.

Incentivized

• It has allowed for mostly smooth communication from department to department/office to office.
• It allows for saved phone # / last contact to appear quickly.
• It has allowed for safety warnings/announcements to emerge all across every office so that everyone within the organization is on the same page about events when they occur.

Incentivized

• For us, this has been a creature comfort primarily as it has allowed us to simplify connections in meeting rooms for infrequent staff.
• We had a lot of theft of dongles from meeting rooms due to presenters snatching them when they packed up for the day. [Intel] Unite let us allow presenters to connect wirelessly to the display screens, and no more dongles to hand out in the first place!

Incentivized