Cisco Hosted Unified Communications Services vs. Vonage Business Communications

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

Vonage Business Communications excels in scenarios requiring seamless remote work, such as virtual teams and remote workers. It's also ideal for businesses needing reliable disaster recovery solutions. However, it may be less appropriate for very small businesses with minimal communication needs or those with limited budgets, as the comprehensive features might be more than necessary.

• 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

• Eliminates physical phone consoles that can be pricey and unnecessary for staff.
• Has a companion app that allows you to use your personal cell phone to check messages or make calls.
• The desktop application is easy to use and has a number of customizable settings so that the app can be minimized but alert you of incoming calls.

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

• The extension can only have three devices which is difficult if you work in multiple locations. Your cell phone is one of the three, so you really only get two. I have three office locations that I work out of and it would be nice to have my extension at each.

Incentivized

I think it will be renewed as overall it is a midrange product that mostly does what we need it to

Incentivized

I thought it had very practical and useful usability. It has a clean and simple interface with large fonts that make it easy to read. It isn't particularly difficult, although figuring out some operations may be a bit challenging. For the most part though, it isn't very difficult to use

Incentivized

We hardly have any issues with it to where we need to call them. There was a point where our connections across the board were terrible and it held us up in production quite a bit but since then things have been pretty simple and streamlined.

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

We believe Vonage Business Cloud is best for our organization over the AT&T and the Verizon platforms for several reasons including price, ease of use, connectivity, and other options. Since we have implemented this solution along with newer Polycom phones, we have had very few issues with our phones or our phone platform.

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

• Cut down phone hardware expense since the soft phone is free and easier to use.
• Text is becoming a more important and effective way to reach clients. Some will not answer a call or accept voicemail but respond quickly to text messages.
• Allows me to work from anywhere with smart phone app saving hours at work.