I have an issue with the portal. It would be nice to have more basic how-to reminders in the portal. Sometimes the Knowledge Base has so much in it that it's hard to figure out where I need to start. If you don't know what some of the things are, it can be complicated. For somebody like me, who may not be as network-savvy as my sysadmin, while he might be able to say, "Oh, I know what all these mean," I'm saying, "I just want the one that helps me with the phones." Their information is often geared towards the systems side and maybe not towards the people who are less nitty-gritty technical. There is room for improvement there.
I would like urgency at times on some of their issues or tasks. At times, it feels like we have to stay on top of them, when they should really be on top of it for us. My expectation is that they would stay on top of it from an urgency standpoint. They are good at a lot of it, but there are times where I feel that if something isn't a P1, then it disappears. It almost puts you in a situation where you want to say, "Everything is P1." We have had a couple instances where things have gone on longer than we would have liked because of the project management.
There is a little bit of a downside when you go through a provider for UCaaS, the downside being that you no longer have direct access to the system itself. That is something we had when we had it on-prem. There's a learning curve to using the CDW portal. Originally, the interface they provided to manage the solution was poor. However, they have upgraded that and the new solution is much better and much more powerful. It's a slight negative that you don't have direct access to the system, but the new management system probably provides enough support. Other than that, the only complaint I have is regarding their mean time to resolution for some non-critical issues. We're a little more involved in managing the system because the people we have are technically proficient enough to do it. CDW does struggle with getting some of those lower-priority tasks done in a time that is acceptable to us. Sometimes, it's just easier to do things ourselves because we can get them completed quicker.
We had a period where everything was great with the UCaaS solution. Then, we moved to a new building, and it was still good. After that, we had a period of two years, and I don't know why, where the phone system would just be down. We had problems with BGP between the data centers connecting, and they couldn't figure out why. Their technicians would keep bouncing the questions back to us. It was very unsatisfactory for a while, and the executive management was very irritated. This is why we have started to look for another solution and are in that process now. They have been a lot better. We haven't been in the office, but they have been a lot better over the last two years. We had a lot of phone calls with our account management team and some other service management to let them know what poor service we were receiving, which was very unexpected because prior to that we had great service. Having an engineer tell me, "Well, you need to check your BGP. Oh, it must be your router. Oh, it is your firewall." No, it wasn't and the experience was frustrating. Then, they said, "That's not acceptable. We are going to remedy that." Maybe it was a training issue for the people that they were using after hours. I don't know, but they seem to have gotten this issue resolved now.
Learn what your peers think about CDW Managed Collaboration Services. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: June 2023.
CAD/CAM Support Specialist at a engineering company with 501-1,000 employees
Nov 9, 2021
Another key factor in why we chose to go this route was that we have one place to call for support. We have one person that we deal with at CDW and that person handles things within CDW for us. It takes a lot of stuff off of our plate, internally.
Network Engineer at a computer software company with 201-500 employees
Nov 10, 2021
We do not have any VoIP admins onsite or within our organization. That is why we decided to outsource it to CDW. That makes our job easier because we don't have a VoIP admin.
Network Engineer at a computer software company with 201-500 employees
Nov 10, 2021
We are on a state contract, and they have negotiated state contract pricing. Since we are a state agency, we decided to go with them. It is a little costly sometimes. However, we are on a state contract, so we don't really have any flexibility in the pricing because that was negotiated for the entire state. They offer three service levels, which is fine, and we chose gold. We just want 24/7 support because our phone system has to be up 24/7.
I have an issue with the portal. It would be nice to have more basic how-to reminders in the portal. Sometimes the Knowledge Base has so much in it that it's hard to figure out where I need to start. If you don't know what some of the things are, it can be complicated. For somebody like me, who may not be as network-savvy as my sysadmin, while he might be able to say, "Oh, I know what all these mean," I'm saying, "I just want the one that helps me with the phones." Their information is often geared towards the systems side and maybe not towards the people who are less nitty-gritty technical. There is room for improvement there.
I would like urgency at times on some of their issues or tasks. At times, it feels like we have to stay on top of them, when they should really be on top of it for us. My expectation is that they would stay on top of it from an urgency standpoint. They are good at a lot of it, but there are times where I feel that if something isn't a P1, then it disappears. It almost puts you in a situation where you want to say, "Everything is P1." We have had a couple instances where things have gone on longer than we would have liked because of the project management.
There is a little bit of a downside when you go through a provider for UCaaS, the downside being that you no longer have direct access to the system itself. That is something we had when we had it on-prem. There's a learning curve to using the CDW portal. Originally, the interface they provided to manage the solution was poor. However, they have upgraded that and the new solution is much better and much more powerful. It's a slight negative that you don't have direct access to the system, but the new management system probably provides enough support. Other than that, the only complaint I have is regarding their mean time to resolution for some non-critical issues. We're a little more involved in managing the system because the people we have are technically proficient enough to do it. CDW does struggle with getting some of those lower-priority tasks done in a time that is acceptable to us. Sometimes, it's just easier to do things ourselves because we can get them completed quicker.
We had a period where everything was great with the UCaaS solution. Then, we moved to a new building, and it was still good. After that, we had a period of two years, and I don't know why, where the phone system would just be down. We had problems with BGP between the data centers connecting, and they couldn't figure out why. Their technicians would keep bouncing the questions back to us. It was very unsatisfactory for a while, and the executive management was very irritated. This is why we have started to look for another solution and are in that process now. They have been a lot better. We haven't been in the office, but they have been a lot better over the last two years. We had a lot of phone calls with our account management team and some other service management to let them know what poor service we were receiving, which was very unexpected because prior to that we had great service. Having an engineer tell me, "Well, you need to check your BGP. Oh, it must be your router. Oh, it is your firewall." No, it wasn't and the experience was frustrating. Then, they said, "That's not acceptable. We are going to remedy that." Maybe it was a training issue for the people that they were using after hours. I don't know, but they seem to have gotten this issue resolved now.