Cisco Unified Communications vs Skype for Business comparison

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Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"The Click to dial feature was one of the most important features for the customer.""We use Extension Mobility and Jabber a lot with mobile remote access. In addition to video calls with Jabber, this greatly enriched communications between coworkers."

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"The product helps me make international calls.""The calling features are most valuable, especially now as we are working remotely.""It's a good and stable product that fits my needs.""Making calls and having meetings is easy.""The deployment is very fast.""The most valuable features are the history tracking which allows us to see who participated and who didn't in the meetings as well as the integration with Outlook.""Using this solution has helped us to cut long distance calls, as well as video services from third parties.""The GUI is very user-friendly."

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Cons
"An improvement option could be to incorporate the Voicea solution with Communication Manager, allowing it to make a translation between different languages automatically in a conversation.""Some features take a lot of steps to configure, so having areas where a few clicks can configure a feature for a user would be nice."

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"The cost of Skype for Business has room for improvement.""I feel bored with the look and feel of the tool, so it should be changed.""I believe optimizing the solution for lighter endpoints, particularly for embedded endpoints on mobile devices, would be valuable.""We have found that there is a lag because it cannot integrate with the internal landline.""The solution requires deployment on a Microsoft server and its performance is heavy because it consumes too many resources from the RAM.""The tool needs to have a dynamic file updating feature, so people you share a file with could update the file dynamically, all at once, all at the same time.""Lacks a zoom-in feature for whoever is presenting.""Sometimes Skype is slow, and we cannot use other elements of our devices while using the Skype solution."

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Pricing and Cost Advice
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  • "We have been able to save money by moving our conferencing solution to Skype for Business Conferencing."
  • "We negotiated a fair price with Microsoft. It is definitely worthwhile to negotiate with them for the best price for your solution."
  • "The pricing is really good. It is quite affordable because it came with our Office 365. It is on a per-user license, which is nice. I quite like that they have made it very granular with all of their licensing."
  • "It may be considered costly for certain markets, such as in India."
  • "It may be slightly costly, but the features are awesome."
  • "To realize value from the purchase of Skype Business, you need to take advantage of all the important functions of the program."
  • "The cost of Skype for Business is incorporated into our Office 365 licenses."
  • "We purchased an open license."
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    Questions from the Community
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    Top Answer:Desktop sharing is a valuable feature.
    Top Answer:When it comes to the pricing of the solution, I rate it as a five out of ten. It falls somewhere in the middle between being cheap and expensive.
    Top Answer:The video conferencing quality can be improved. The video conferencing quality can be temperamental with internet access and bandwidth availability for a geographically dispersed team environment.
    Ranking
    4th
    Views
    988
    Comparisons
    869
    Reviews
    0
    Average Words per Review
    0
    Rating
    N/A
    4th
    out of 62 in Virtual Meetings
    Views
    2,952
    Comparisons
    1,128
    Reviews
    22
    Average Words per Review
    340
    Rating
    7.6
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    Skype for Business Plan 1, Skype for Business Plan 2, Lync Server
    Learn More
    Overview
    With Cisco Voice and Unified Communications, you can unify all your voice, video, data, and mobile applications for interactive collaboration.
    Skype for Business offers features including presence, IM, voice and video calls, online meetings, conferencing, and telephony solutions that support enterprise-level collaboration requirements. Skype for Business Record meetings, share your screen, and annotate PowerPoint for real-time collaboration with up to 250 people and use whiteboard, polls, Q&A, and built-in IM during your business meetings to make them more productive. Skype for Business provides new client experience, Skype for Business Server provides several new features to improve manageability of on-premises servers and hybrid solutions. Skype for Business also supports the Lync client experience so that you can choose a phased upgrade approach to the new client experience for users. Skype for Business is also an integral part of Microsoft Office 365, providing PSTN Conferencing, Cloud PBX, PSTN Calling, and Skype Meeting Broadcast capabilities to Office 365 users.
    Sample Customers
    Afni, Allied Irish Banks, Bellevue, Came Group, Children's Hospital Colorado, Erickson Living, IDEALondon, Instituto Zaldivar, John Lewis, Linz AG, London Hydro, Lone Star College System, Lone Star College System, Mondi Group, North West Redwater, Park Nicollet, Pentana Solutions Australia, Pilatus, Pirelli, Portugal Ministry, Presidio Inc., Republic Bank & Trust Company, Saipem, SickKids Foundation, Top Right Group, Vital Images
    EmpireCLS Worldwide Chauffeured Services,LA Fitness, MedcoEnergi International, Tampa General Hospital, and HopewellHoldings Limited.
    Top Industries
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company12%
    Financial Services Firm11%
    Government10%
    University10%
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company25%
    Financial Services Firm20%
    Comms Service Provider13%
    University8%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization87%
    Computer Software Company2%
    Government2%
    Financial Services Firm2%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business57%
    Midsize Enterprise29%
    Large Enterprise14%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business24%
    Midsize Enterprise15%
    Large Enterprise60%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business27%
    Midsize Enterprise27%
    Large Enterprise46%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business4%
    Midsize Enterprise89%
    Large Enterprise8%

    Cisco Unified Communications is ranked 4th in Unified Communications while Skype for Business is ranked 4th in Virtual Meetings with 59 reviews. Cisco Unified Communications is rated 9.0, while Skype for Business is rated 7.8. The top reviewer of Cisco Unified Communications writes "I find the ability to block incoming calls based on the originating number to be the best feature, but the reporting system needs to be more in-depth". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Skype for Business writes "Reliable, useful for remote work, and great but isn't as robust as Microsoft Teams". Cisco Unified Communications is most compared with Fortinet FortiVoice, Cisco Jabber, Digium Asterisk, Siemens OpenScape and Alcatel-Lucent OmniPCX Enterprise Communication Server, whereas Skype for Business is most compared with Webex, Zoom, TeamViewer, Cisco Meeting Server and 3CX Live Chat.

    We monitor all Unified Communications reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.