Item: Webex Meetings
Rating: 6
Author: Daniel Meyer

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We have utilized Cisco Webex Meetings as a primary meeting hosting platform for meetings with vendors and clients, training for faculty and staff, and live online class sessions with students throughout the world. We began online learning in 2010 and at the time did an assessment of relevant options. Cisco Webex was the most reliable way at the time to allow our faculty and students to interact safely and securely in real-time across multiple timezones.

Pros and Cons

Super easy-to-use screen share and presentation tools.
Trusted and secure.
Reliable service with few technical issues and problems.

Expensive relative to other services available.
Not all that different when it comes to a suite of services and tools offered through the platform.
The platform itself was the best option for a long time but has not enhanced its offerings to stay relevant and competitive relative to a number of newcomers in the space.

Return on Investment

The costly nature of individual accounts across multiple schools made it difficult to maintain the budget when our student population grew exponentially.
Often communicated to clients and stakeholders that we were a trustworthy and elevated provider.
Limited engagement and interactive features with students often contributed to complaints around student engagement and buy-in.

Alternatives Considered

Zoom, Skype, Skype for Business (formerly Lync), now part of Microsoft Teams and Join.me

Initially, Webex was the most reliable, secure, and feature-rich option on the market when we started our online schools 12 years ago. Skype was much more of a social platform (prior to Skype Business) and we wanted to communicate to potential school partners and parents that we were, indeed, a reputable, trustworthy, and reliable organization that didn't just throw open-source technologies together and then charge an arbitrary price.

Key Insights

Do you think Webex Meetings delivers good value for the price?

Are you happy with Webex Meetings's feature set?

Yes

Did Webex Meetings live up to sales and marketing promises?

Did implementation of Webex Meetings go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Webex Meetings again?

Other Software Used

Skype for Business (formerly Lync), now part of Microsoft Teams, Zoom, Join.me

Reliability and Availability

Like a number of video meeting hosting applications, it requires that an applet be downloaded in order to run it from a machine with full features. Although it is rare that the application crashes or doesn't work effectively, the downloading of the applet/application for new users can often be prohibitive and itself somewhat of a deterrent to easily login and join.

Scalability

The platform itself is well designed when it comes to scaling usage within a company, allowing for departmentalization of accounts and the ability to build groups and administrative hierarchies when it comes to account management as well as defining universal settings that can be differentiated based on user needs. Cisco does a great job with this feature.

Performance

Once users get through the download process, Cisco is mostly seamless when it comes to performance. However, while video streaming/presentation lagging and audio dropping was not constant, it was still common enough not to make the cost of the service justifiable relative to other cheaper or free options that we evaluated and ultimately chose to replace Webex.

Likelihood to Recommend

We have tested out multiple online video meeting hosting platforms since 2010 when we first commenced our online and international learning programs. Although Cisco Webex Meetings was our primary platform across all of our schools in multiple countries--secure, reliable, and with decent video bandwidth--we have since transitioned away from the platform since we now use Zoom which is exponentially more affordable and provides a much more dynamic and user-friendly experience, especially with younger people.

Once the Best in Class But Now Hard to Justify Cost Relative to Distinct Features and Special Abilities

Overall Satisfaction with Webex Meetings