Solid replacement for physical phone system

We recently replaced almost all of the physical phones with Webex Calling across campus. It was a building by building phase in as part of the "Next Generation Voice Services" project here. The basic business case was that management of the physical phones was getting unwieldy and expensive, and a more sustainable solution was sought. Since every full time employee is supplied an enterprise managed computer to which we could deploy a digital solution, it seemed a natural progression.

We have a very balkanized communication envelope. Several systems are currently in use (Slack, Google Chat, Microsoft Teams, etc.), depending on the specific features desired by the particular unit involved. It is unlikely, just due to university politics, that we will ever be able to completely consolidate this into one vendor's array of products. We do heavily rely on Cisco networking equipment, though.

I believe it meets the needs quite well. It is much more convenient for me to take a call on my desktop computer, laptop, or iPhone than with a separate physical phone. Our Information Security department reviewed the system and found that it met all appropriate security requirements for Higher Education. It is quite easy to set up for most endpoints through our existing endpoint management systems, and we are able to pre-configure anything specifically needed.

We had to take the campus into full remote mode during COVID, and several teams are still on either hybrid or full remote. Most of the system engineer and administrator groups are still working remotely for the most part. We have set up "hotelling" suites on campus for normally remote users who need to come in to campus on an ad hoc basis.

We had to support full off campus classes and support structure during COVID. Much of that carried over into our post-pandemic crisis atmosphere. Mostly the challenges involved making sure we had sufficient bandwidth to support those function, making equipment upgrades to classrooms to facilitate as much "personal" contact as possible, and re-engineering some things for peer to peer contact.

Since hybrid/remote revolves around efficient networking use, Cisco was a huge help in basically reconfiguring most operations on the campus to be able to exist in as low of person to person direct contact as possible. Most of that work has now carried over into the hybrid environment. It was a pretty smooth transition with very little waste (some rooms received some fancy camera systems that they would not have otherwise received).

Things have been very flexible. Speaking as a systems engineer, it is really no different functionally (with the systems and procedures we have in place) for me to be working on campus or remotely. The security products and features that are provided through Cisco make "virtual" work just as effective as in person on campus work.

The original choice of Cisco was essentially made by our networking group. We have been on Cisco networking equipment for quite a while. I don't have experience with any other core networking equipment in the time I have been here.

The pilot was fairly limited to people in the IT division of the university. I would probably try to get more novice technology users involved. Students were not part of the conversion since we haven't supplied residence hall private phones in quite some time (almost every student has a mobile phone), but I might bring in a few students just to have a representation of the population.

Very easy to pick up just by running the client and reading the screen. Some departments requested training, but it was discovered that the client was so easy to use that it really wasn't necessary. We have a few open Zoom meetings for people that had questions, but it was very low key.

I do not know if we have a premium level of support. That would be something decided by senior management. We do have extensive agreements with Cisco on a variety of equipment, though.

As I mentioned before, I haven't really needed a lot from tech support, but I did just talk to the project manager for the Next Generation Voice Services project, and he said that Cisco was very responsive and helpful throughout the proof of concept and the actual roll out of the service on campus.