The Cisco Room Series is a video conferencing solution that wakes up when users walk into a meeting room where it is installed and provides theater-quality voice and video, as well as content sharing from personal devices. For small to medium rooms with 6-8 people, there's Cisco Room 55, and for larger rooms of 7-14 people there's Cisco Room Kit (camera and codec in one device) and Cisco Kit Plus (separate codec plus and quad camera). Any of these systems can be run in the cloud or on-premises.
N/A
Microsoft Teams
Score 8.1 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft Teams combines video conferencing software with team collaboration tools. The communications platform allows MS Office users to conduct conference calls and share files via SharePoint, and join or initiate a group chat.
$4.80
per month per user
Pricing
Cisco Room Series
Microsoft Teams
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Microsoft Teams Essentials
$4.80
per month per user
Microsoft Teams Enterprise
$5.25
per month (paid yearly) per user
Microsoft Teams Enterprise
$5.25
per month per user
Microsoft 365 Business Basic
$7.20
per month per user
Microsoft 365 Business Standard
$15
per month per user
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Cisco Room Series
Microsoft Teams
Free Trial
No
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
No
Yes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
No setup fee
Additional Details
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Discounts are available for non profit organizations.
When it comes to compatibility with other systems, the Cisco Webex Room Series offers the most leeway. Without an additional Cisco license, the Room Series can connect to Zoom and Microsoft Teams rooms. When compared to our product, the alternatives from other manufacturers …
Cisco has and is the only vendor currently doing native MTR integration within the video collaboration space. No other vendor stacks up against Cisco as you are getting all of the value that Cisco provides such as noise cancellation, cinematic meetings, cross view, intelligent …
Compared to its competitors, Cisco equipment stands out due to the quality of the components it consists of. Absolutely any of their devices is the Rolls-Royce of video conferencing equipment. I would also like to note the extreme ease of setting up the devices. Cisco's …
The Cisco Webex Room Series is the most flexible in terms of interoperability. The Room Series can join both Zoom and Teams rooms without requiring any extra Cisco licensing. The other vendors either don't work at all or require extra licensing in some cases
We tend to purchase the Cisco Webex Room Series for larger rooms with the dual-screen option (ie: 55 or 70-inch dual screens). We're able to duplicate the output on each screen for local presentations and if on a video call the participants will show up on the left screen …
The Cisco room kits it a cut above the rest of the competition, the interface is easy to use and intuitive. The video quality is best in class. I would recommend that you get one or more if you run any sort of remote training or town halls
Unfortunately, I cannot say anything about a different brand [as] a competitor, but I choose [Cisco] Webex Room Series as it's a more complete setup than other brands that require third-party platforms and sometimes don't work very well.
Cisco Webex Room Series has the largest range of room options in a suite that is cohesive, global, and centralized. The hardware has a long service life [and] is quick to deploy, reliable, and easy to manage.
The quality of the Logitech Rally series camera is sub-par in comparison to the Room Series Cameras. Also, the audio and noise cancelation features on the [Cisco Webex] Room [Series] kit make it a far superior product. Also to note, there is no wireless sharing feature on the …
Cisco delivers the best devices and apps for office use. Webex room 55 is also a great product from cisco. GoToRoom was our first option because it's cheaper. But when coming to user experience Webex room 55 was on the next level. It's so good and well designed. It delivered …
Actually, we have other room systems and desk products as well. Deskpro, dx80, Room Kit Mini, and room USB. We, as an IT integrator, installed almost every type of Cisco collaboration device. I think the Webex Room Series portfolio is absolutely good for any kind of conference …
Cisco Webex Room Series offers a great integration of the different Webex solutions together. For instance, starting a Cisco meeting on a Webex Room Devices directly from the Cisco Webex App, sharing content from the Webex App wirelessly with Cisco Proximity. In addition, a …
I have used several video conferencing systems e.g. Skype and Polycom, for which both are far behind with respect to ease of use, speed, stability and options for interaction. Polycom (older solution) has rarely worked as expected. The Webex solution provide a much better and …
The Zoom Rooms are a nice product line but they are bulky and require a lot of wired connections. The Cisco Room Kit series is simpler and the all-in-one models are much more practical. Plus the Cisco Room Kits don't require an additional PC/Tablet to run.
We had a conference room with a Radvision board that needed to be replaced. Our HQ is not fully Cisco but rather a mish mash of different products such as Rally bars, Poly, Radviison and Cisco. Putting Cisco into the conference room allowed us to have a single pane of glass for our needs.
Teams is inferior to other platforms like Slack for messaging or Zoom. If it were up to me, I'd use Zoom for video conferencing as it's better for large groups and online training, and cleaner. Slack would be my preferred tool for chat as it's much easier to create channels, push notifications for teams, and integrations with other tools like Seismic.
Perhaps any downside I might see is not necessarily with this product, it's more interoperability with other products. And I think these are all roadmap items that are being addressed. For instance, when you're in a Cisco meeting, it's not as feature rich as it might be as if you joined from a computer. However, as I said, these seem to be roadmap items which are coming along soon. Things like integration with the text or chat rather in a meeting, and also whiteboard integration.
Microsoft Teams does rely on internet quality, so If you are needing information on found in Teams and your internet is down or choppy, you wont be able to access those files unlike if they were stored directly on your computer or network.
Some of the user interface of Microsoft Teams is not user friendly, it can take a long time to figure out how to use some tool even if you are using the help or troubleshooting.
Some of the Microsoft Teams features are limited to anyone using the free version vs. paid. With the paid, you have more storage, more video time, more tools. It would be nice to see the free version have the same features and ability.
By the time we are up for an upgrade, this particular series of products might not even been in the market. The typical product cycle for such products in the market are about 5 years. More importantly, the codec supported by such devices may also change by the time we are up for an upgrade. Even so, getting this system to a level of functionality we require was a frustrating ordeal that I do not look forward to during the next cycle.
Microsoft Teams is included with our Office 365 subscription and we have no intention of migrating off of Office 365 and Microsoft products. Since Microsoft Teams is included for free with our Office 365 subscription, and since we enjoy all the features, benefits, and functionality, there is no question that our team will continue to use the product
A lot of the features are really easy. You can just click connect and you're in. But using all of these other integrations and all these other features that are there, it's kind of the blind leading the blind as to how we use it. So it's probably the downside of it.
I personally have not come across a comparable platform that does what Microsoft Teams does and I believe there are very few competitors that offer the integration and user-friendly features that Microsoft Teams provides. You don't need to have special training to successfully benefit from Microsoft Teams features. If you can text, you can Microsoft Teams chat. If you can make a phone call, you can make a Microsoft Teams call - I think that in itself grants the platform a 10/10 rating for me.
Cisco has always stood out for the excellent support and documentation on its products, this is one of the reasons why they are so well positioned. The means by which you can create a case and the response times are very good. I especially like the support through the Webex teams.
The overall support provided by Microsoft for Microsoft Teams has been quite good but there is still some room for improvements. Microsoft needs to proactively work on fixing the open bugs in order to provide a seamless experience to the users. But over the service and experience provided by the Microsoft team have been quite satisfactory.
As a partner, I always used mainly Cisco products and offered them to my customers. I have personal experience with Avaya, Team and polycom but non of them provided me with the Premium feelings which Cisco does. Even the product quality and look of the product by itself gives you the premium experience. But I want to mention that Polycom has some features and easy setup which Cisco lacks sometimes. It is mainly 3rd party integration.
We chose primarily because of the promised integration with the Microsoft Business Suite - which it mostly delivers on. That does give Teams an obvious advantage over competitors. IMHO Teams has a richer, more mature feature set, and the experience is more reliable and stable. Although like any of there there is room for imporvement.
Honestly, this tool is worth every penny. Yes, it's not free and you pay for the quality of services and the license. But the ROI and the benefits are all there. Also, the renewal, negotiation, and contract terms are all very well explained by our Microsoft account manager, and she's a charm.
I used Skype for Business to take calls, hold conferences, and provide remote assistance to users. Microsoft Teams, on the other hand, is superior to Skype for Business in my opinion. My job entails a lot of screen sharing.
The Cisco MTRoA solution has reduced the time it takes for our users to join their meeting and spend more time concentrating on business rather than the technology.
It simply works.
Ease of support.
We also appreciate the great support we get from intelligent folks in Cisco TAC organization.