Cisco Hosted Unified Communications Services vs. MiVoice Office Application Suite (Mitel Application Suite)

It is well suited for: Clients with call managers that want to continue using Cisco and want to minimize the new CAPEX. Clients that want to outsource the platform management and support. Clients that have a variation on the number of extensions. Although, Cisco HCS, is a solution that has a higher opex than the ones supported in ISP IP Centrex.

Incentivized

Mitel is useful for larger organizations where instant messaging can be used throughout departments and in-house phones need to be set to cell phones. I wouldn't say that it's not appropriate for smaller organizations, but they might not need all of the robust features that Mitel offers. The user experience is extremely intuitive and organizations of any scale will be able to easily navigate it.

Incentivized

• VoIP best practices
• UC and IM
• Centralized management and provisioning
• Reduced OPEX/CAPEX in the implementation
• Security and integration with other UC platforms using SIP (Except Lync)

Incentivized

• Call reporting
• Voicemail system and transfers: This is one of my favorite features! I am able to transfer voicemails and leave notes for my team. It also comes in an email notification.
• Integrated with our email system.

Incentivized

• Integration with contact center plaforms
• Integration with other UC platforms
• Lower the tennant size and clusters capacity
• Cisco's pressure to buy more and more licences, even not having a stale client pipeline (From the ISP point of view)

Incentivized

• It would be nice if they had more documentation on how to do things within the system that was easier to find.
• The software has so many features that it can be overwhelming.

Incentivized

Great technical support. My only recommendation would be to have staffed support after hours. They have an after hours answering service and while the technicians always called back it would be good to reach support immediately 24/7. Technicians are very knowledgeable and helpful as is their sales staff. They also have great training to take.

Incentivized

Cisco HCS platform is to be seen as a centralized UC platforms, that can be scalable as an IP Centrex solution and as rich in functionalities as a Cisco CUCM. If you're looking for a solution and your main focus is IM & P functionalities rather than voice, Lync is a good solution. If your focus is voice and telephony, Cisco is a better solution

Incentivized

In retrospect, Mitel was not the right solution for us but it has sufficed while we look for a replacement that integrates with our CRM. Skype for Business was being phased out, we were currently using RingCentral, and we anticipated the conversion back to ShoreTel (we had a hosted environment in the past) would be similar to our previous experience with the system. The Cloud-based software and technology, however, did not meet up to the hosted environments capabilities, at least when it came to call-management

Incentivized

• Reduces the need to have a higher CAPEX in order to buy all the licenses at the start of the project.
• The licensing is perpetual, the only associated cost with the licenses are SWSS.
• Desktop sharing isn't a functionality.
• Cisco SMB series can be used only with the higher cost licensing (Foundation/Standard).

Incentivized

• Efficient, easy to use conference system for better communication
• Useful mobile app to allow employee presence while out of office.
• Global directory removed the need for employees to maintain one.

Incentivized