Both Microsoft Teams and Cisco Unified Communications Manager are online communications platforms that offer centralised communications across businesses. At the outset, we can say that Cisco UC is an established enterprise option with a wide range of flexibility suited for complex communications requirements. On the other hand, Microsoft Teams largely focuses on collaboration within a business by offering additional features to facilitate better collaboration between the users. Although both platforms offer core communications features such as high-quality IP telephony and video conferencing, they are distinct from each other and offer unique user benefits.
Let’s try to find out how both differ from one another:
Telephony
Microsoft Teams provides cloud VoIP PBX telephony and PSTN services with the Microsoft Calling Plan. The users of Teams can enjoy features such as easy access to information, call forwarding, auto-assistant, voice/video calling, desktop sharing, and conference calls, among others. Teams also offer e-meetings with a shared feature, recording ability, and access to past meetings along with comprehensive analytics and call analysis. The direct routing feature allows users who wish to use their own trunking services and carriers.
On the other hand, Cisco UC offers an IP-based communications system to allow customers and co-workers to connect through audio or video. Its primary function is call processing and phone registration.
Security
Both Teams and Cisco UC have emphasised security during the development and building phases, and they offer a range of tools and options for ensuring enhanced security. As Teams was built on the Office 365 hyper-scale, enterprise-grade cloud, it delivers the same security as the rest of the Office 365 platform. It has an inherently deep-rooted architecture of protection as the tools are integrated with the Office 365 suite.
Likewise, Cisco offers several certifications to support its security claims. Some of these are eDiscovery, unique device PINs, idle time-out, and flexible content retention, which means it offers slightly more control at the user level. But this can be tricky for untrained users or IT teams with stricter policies than the end-users.
Rooms
Microsoft Teams Rooms has greater flexibility and comes with a variety of hardware options including HP, Yealink, Crestron, Poly, Lenovo, and Logitech. There are several options to support a range of room sizes and other features like proximity detection, single touch-join, companion experiences with mobile, and support for dual-screen rooms.
On the other hand, Cisco builds on the legacy of Cisco’s meeting room hardware. It also offers several choices such as options with turnkey video collaboration and connectivity kits with 4K displays. Furthermore, Cisco’s RoomOS offers an overview of new features and capabilities available for Cisco WebEx registered room and desk devices.
Integrations
Microsoft Teams is firmly integrated with Office 365 and has an evolving list of applications and bots in its app store. The Cisco value-addition is higher for those who have already installed a base of Cisco voice and video endpoints. They can also benefit from a fairly long list of apps accessible via their App Hub.
Conclusion
It is not possible to conclude that one is better than the other because the target users of both platforms are entirely different to a large extent. While Microsoft Teams wraps everything around the broader Office 365 for better productivity and collaboration, Cisco UC is part of the larger Cisco meeting and conference setup backed by a longstanding legacy of hardware focus. To conclude, we can summarise that Microsoft Teams will make more sense to an existing Office 365 user. However, if you are heavily invested in the Cisco environment, it makes sense to prefer Cisco UC over Teams.
