Organizations across the globe are shifting the way they do business. From in-office and hybrid work models to entirely “work-from-home” office spaces—one thing doesn’t change: employees, partners, prospects, and customers need to connect. While email is great, the truth is that people work together in different ways using various tools: voice calling, web, and video conferencing, voice mail, mobility, desktop sharing, instant messaging and presence, and much more.

Unified communication (UC) integrates these different tools so people can work together more effectively: seamlessly, from anywhere, and on any device. However, UC can be complicated, and with many businesses moving to the cloud to reduce CAPEX spending and get away from constantly maintaining costly infrastructure, unified communications as a service (UCaaS) is an attractive alternative.

While there are many different UC solutions, organizations want to go with a trusted UC leader and a well-established company. Companies are consistently implementing Cisco for their UC and UCaaS needs. Not only are they an established leader by multiple analyst firms like Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for UC and Aragon Research’s Globe for Unified Communications and Collaboration, but they also have names people trust: Cisco and Webex. 

With a team of UC experts and experience deploying solutions for many industry-leading UC vendors including Cisco, Burwood allows you to unify your communication channels so you can provide increased business continuity and employee productivity.

If you’ve decided on a Cisco solution but are still early in your UC journey, knowing which of their multiple UCaaS solutions is right for your business can be a bit confusing, both from business and technical requirements points of view. Should you invest in Cisco UCM Cloud for your communications needs? Or is Webex Calling a better fit for your business? We’ve provided some guidelines to help you better evaluate your path forward with Cisco UC solutions.

The first decision that must be evaluated is whether an on-premises UC solution or a cloud-based subscription service makes sense for your business. There are multiple factors at play in that debate including technical expertise and requirements, the cost to benefits analysis, and strategic goals and directions of your organization.

Also, the nature of your business should be considered. In many cases, a hybrid cloud solution may be the best UC approach for your organization. There are no “one size fits all” answers here, but there are some general questions and criteria that may help you decide. Asking yourself these three questions may help bring some clarity to your decision: 

• How large a role is the cloud playing in my overall IT strategy today and in the future? 

• What kind of control do I need to have over my communications and why? 

• What other systems do I need to integrate with and support any UC decision? 

If UCaaS is right for your organization, then making decisions on which of the many UC solutions a leader like Cisco provides is next. Here, we are going to focus on two of Cisco’s most popular offerings and their benefits to help you make a better-informed decision.

Cisco Unified Communications Manager (UCM) 

Cisco Unified Communications Manager provides reliable, secure, scalable, and manageable call control and session management on any device with integrated collaboration infrastructure for voice and video calling, messaging, and mobility.

 You can select unified communications as a public hosted or private cloud service from Cisco Powered Partners, such as Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform. You can also choose Cisco Unified Communications Manager Cloud, a Cisco hosted and operated cloud calling solution that is partner-led, delivering enterprise-grade unified communications and collaboration as a service from the Cisco Webex cloud. 

The Cisco UCM solution features IP telephony, high-definition video, unified messaging, Instant Message, and Presence. Cisco UCM supports dedicated office-desk VoIP phones as well as other endpoint devices like telepresence endpoints, media-processing devices, gateways, and multimedia applications. For businesses with dedicated communication devices and spaces, Cisco UCM may be the right choice since it supports dedicated desktop phones—and allows for detailed UC device and session management options, and provides critical metrics and management features. 

Webex Calling/Webex Calling Dedicated Instance 

If you feel like you need a more hands-off approach to voice and video communications without the need to support dedicated communication equipment, Webex Calling or Webex Calling Dedicated Instance might be a better fit for you.

Webex Calling provides soft-client apps across mobile, tablet, and desktop devices, so your employees can get dedicated business numbers without having a physical VoIP phone.

Webex Calling contains all the critical features you’d expect from a professional, business-grade video and voice solution, including:

• the ability to seamlessly switch from desktop to mobile,  

• call transferring,  

• call waiting,  

• voicemail,  

• call merging, and  

• the ability to make a call into a meeting to involve multiple stakeholders.   

Webex Calling Dedicated Instance is an add-on service within Webex Calling that provides a fully redundant dedicated cloud instance based on the Cisco Unified Communications architecture. It focuses on serving customers who need to support older Cisco endpoints, local survivability solutions, or existing integrations as part of critical business workflows.

Webex Calling is perfect for organizations of any size but may be a better choice for small and medium-sized businesses that don’t need detailed control of their UC environment or intend to provide dedicated VoIP desktop devices. Alternatively, Cisco UCM Cloud and Webex Calling Dedicated support more legacy Cisco devices than Webex Calling, which requires specific devices in order to connect.

Cisco UCM Cloud to Webex Calling: Head-to-Head 

Sometimes when trying to decide between two UCaaS platforms, it is important to keep size in mind. Historically, Cisco UCM Cloud has been mainly aimed toward enterprise customers (1,000+ users) while Webex Calling is targeted more towards SMB and mid-market customers (10-1,000 users).

This doesn’t mean Cisco UCM isn’t a good choice for customers needing only 1,000 users or that Webex Calling can’t scale to larger enterprise needs. Both solutions are enterprise-grade, but if you need to support less than 1,000 users, consider Webex Calling as your first solution.

Another topic for consideration is the integration of existing systems and technologies you are already using in your organization. While both Webex Calling and Cisco UCM Cloud are enterprise-grade platforms for UCaaS, Cisco UCM Cloud offers the broadest set of features for calling and voice messaging in its current state.

Cisco UCM supports robust APIs for configuration and provisioning (e.g. AXL) and device monitoring and call control (JTAPI). Webex Calling cloud API capabilities are still in their infancy and support a limited subset of features when compared to Cisco UCM Cloud. This is particularly true when trying to integrate with existing solutions you may already be using like ServiceNow for your service and support desk, where integrations to Cisco UCM already exist or are possible via a richer set of APIs.

In the end, the decision of which UCaaS solution is right for your business will come down to a detailed examination of technical requirements, business objectives, and offered features/functions. It will also come down to how your UCaaS solution needs to interact with existing systems and solutions you may already be using too. Current device usage must be factored in to determine which solution will provide the best results and whether it would require swapping out any physical devices that are in use.

Burwood Group can help you make a wise decision for your individual organization if you’re struggling and can help with the UCaaS migration process to get you where you want to be. 

Learn more about preparing for a UCaaS migration with our latest whitepaper. 

Download here: Three Critical Considerations for Migrating Voice, Video, and Contact Center Applications to the Cloud

With a team of UC experts and years of experience deploying solutions for Cisco UC in addition to other industry-leading UC solutions, Burwood allows you to unify your communication channels to allow for increased business continuity and employee productivity.

Our programmatic approach aligns architectural, engineering, and project management resources to deliver a comprehensive experience to guide you through your entire UC migration. Burwood also offers an Adoption and Training team that can assist with driving end-user adoption of your new UCaaS solution and promoting ongoing employee productivity and success.

As the nature of how and where we work changes, organizations everywhere will continually need to evaluate how they communicate and do business. Burwood’s Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) solution with Cisco gives you the flexibility you’ll need to quickly adapt to changing business needs, no matter if you choose Cisco UCM Cloud or Webex Calling.

To learn more about Burwood’s UCaaS solutions, contact us to identify your requirements, evaluate your current workstreams, and learn about more UCaaS best practices. 

Updated: April 1, 2022