Call Manager is a unified call control center from Cisco that supports enterprise collaboration functions across the spectrum of IP telephony, video & web conferencing, and messaging. Features include call forwarding, call back, call transfer, ad hoc conferencing, and call park.
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Webex Calling
Score 8.6 out of 10
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Webex Calling is Cisco’s flagship cloud calling solution with over 12 million users worldwide. It delivers an enterprise-grade calling experience that enables customers to replace PBX hardware with a cloud calling solution. Webex Calling's connectivity and collaboration experience includes calling, meetings, messaging, contact center, and integrated devices.
Cube is a robust gateway works in conjunction with Cisco Unified Communications Manager for providing PSTN calling facility. Cube is easy to set up and manage and it has lots of security features. SRST is one of the best feature where in case of a network issue with the Cisco Un…
Webex Calling does very well against all their competitors. Its strength is integration with Call manager, enterprise feature set, End to End Encryption, their own phones. Most vendors use third party phones and gateways which creates extra overhead in management. Having a …
Webex Calling provides the majority of the features of Cisco Call Manager with the flexibility of a cloud-based platform. This offers ease of management, zero-touch deployment of users' phones and devices, and the ability for a limited IT department to handle a complex …
Cisco Unified Communications Manager (CUCM) does provide more flexibility in design, but is also more difficult than Webex Calling to configure to meet the requirements of the Ray Baum Act where there are multiple locations. CUCM also requires periodic updates, including …
Verified User
Contributor
Chose Webex Calling
Webex Calling works better with existing customers on CISCO UC/Communications Manager, and using the existing Cisco phone.
Verified User
Engineer
Chose Webex Calling
Previously we used Cisco UCM as our phone system, which is still Cisco's current on-premise offering. The main advantage of Webex Calling is the ability to easily connect phones and devices from outside the corporate network without having to create the Expressway setup first. …
The big advantage of Webex Calling is that the deployment could be fully in the cloud, you dont need to purchase hardware like SBC and you can add Cisco Webex Meeting and Teams to your user for more collaboration. It's the last piece of the puzzle if you already use theses …
From the experience we already have with working with Cisco technology and with everything new that is being brought to the cloud, we knew it was an excellent option.
Cisco Unified Communications Manager is suited for medium to large customers who are in search for a solid call control platform with added security in mind. Cisco Unified Communications Manager also supports receptions, small groups and also a mini contact center type of set up with its Hunt Group, Pick up Group and call queuing facilities and also with set up of music on hold function while calls queuing.
It seems quite able to handle the normal day to day voice call requirements quite well. Our previous Cisco phones had cameras that could do video calls, but if we need that we go to a Zoom session. Conference room use is not terribly convenient, although this might just be a case of us figuring out how to adapt the environment.
Internal calling can be done by searching user in directory or by dialing short code extensions for users. Pretty quick and easy to reach internal people.
Webex Calling integrated seamlessly with call recording solutions making it very useful for compliance call recording which is needed by customer service centres today.
Features like call forwarding, call transfer, conference, voice mail, etc are available.
User authorisation for different types of calls is available.
It provides basic call centre features as well so that companies requiring basic call centre features can use it within Webex Calling.
I think what it's doing is it is still the leader when it comes to being able to present calling platforms. And I mean I guess it's number one competitor from a software perspective is Microsoft Teams, Cisco is doing everything possible to provide open source to enable Microsoft and Cisco to work together, particularly when it comes to user room experiences so that no one is feeling like they're left alone or compromised or somewhat segregated when they're choosing one technology versus the other, which is a great thing.
The service can be intermittent and the call forwarding feature will not always work perfectly. There will be periods of time where the calling feature will not work at all and people on the other end can hear me but I am unable to hear them. It also requires a fairly strong signal which can be an issue if you work somewhere remote or a building without much service.
The usability part of Cisco Unified Communications Manager is very much simple from a usability point of view. Day-to-day Move Add Change Delete (MACD) can be performed by the administrators very easily with simple training. From the initial deployment point of view, some of the thing can be improved to simplify the process.
It is a very easy product to deploy and configure and to really take advantage of. It does not matter if you are using it in an office or your home, or for a security office or a collaboration meeting room - you have the right endpoint available for each case and the configuration parameters to improve the functionality you need.
I've not actually had it ever be unavailable when I needed to use it. As mentioned before, a network outage would take it down, but we have redundant systems for our network connections with automatic failover.
I don't really see this impacting any other system performance at all. The client is very light use on resources, even on my iPhone. I don't know what else it connects to behind the scenes other then the campus directory, but I haven't seen or heard of any impacts. It seems fairly self contained except for wherever it interfaces with the general telephone system connectivity outside the campus.
CUCM is supported by most third-party vendors for related products, so it makes finding solutions to specific needs easy. Also Cisco TAC is very knowledgeable, and we have never run into a problem they have not been able to resolve. Usually they are resolved without the need to escalate tickers either.
I have been working for a long time with Cisco as a provider and also Cisco TAC and Cisco Support Engineers. The support starts right beforehand in the documentation of the product you are interested in. From the start you have a good, complete, and detailed and easy to read datasheet and there's always someone available to answer any questions.
We have been a Cisco based shop and have looked at other cloud voice options such as MS Teams pbx, and others, but ultimately, the features, endpoints, and reliability of Cisco has been the common factor in staying with them as our voice provider. Their integrations, room systems, and hybrid design allows for us to be flexible and keep a high up time vs reliance on 100% cloud.
The company uses Microsoft Teams. They do use Microsoft Teams right now and for a long time a lot of the different practices have been using on-premise, contact Call Manager and Unified Communications Express. But Cisco WebEx, the cloud-based product is one of the new ones. And some of our other site practices are also using RingCentral. So cloud calling is not new to the company. For those of us who are familiar with Cisco products, the transition to WebEx calling is not as difficult as it might be for some other products. Going from on-prem to RingCentral, there is more of a learning curve with.
So far it has been very reliable, with very little down time that was associated with the product itself. We have had network outages due to external factors such as construction cutting a fiber link, but other than that kind of thing not much for failures.
Webex Calling allowed us to continue working in a remote world
While workshops are best in person, Webex Calling allowed us to continue offering that critical service and also included break out room functionality for small group activities, when needed.
The recording feature allows everyone to hyper focus on the discussion - if anything was missed in notes, it was always saved in the recording when we had one. Perfect for interviews and workshops.