Call Manager is a unified call control center from Cisco that supports enterprise collaboration functions across the spectrum of IP telephony, video & web conferencing, and messaging. Features include call forwarding, call back, call transfer, ad hoc conferencing, and call park.
N/A
Ooma Office
Score 9.2 out of 10
N/A
For businesses of all sizes, Ooma provides advanced voice and collaboration features which they describe as flexible and scalable. With plans starting at $19.95 per user per month, Ooma Office is available without contracts or long-term commitments so as to make it easy for a small business to scale its office phone system with Ooma as its business grows. Ooma Office features include: Unlimited Calling in U.S., Canada, Mexico and Puerto Rico Free Local…
The Cisco Unified Communications Manager platform would be most suited for the below scenarios. 1. An organization with very restricted policies and compliance where can't move to cloud-based solutions for data security. They can install the CUCM on-premises. 2. An organization that is still on a legacy phone system could adopt CUCM to save costs and have better services.
[Ooma Office has] good customer service: this is important in our business as we have 24/7 phone service and rely on any tech issues being solved quickly. The price point is very good for small businesses. Being able to block robo / spam calls with one click is a huge plus as it saves us time on the phone and cleans up our incoming calls for the future.
CUCM is overly complex and requires a very capable engineer to maintain it. Similarly, implementing anything new requires a great deal of specialized knowledge of CUCM.
CUCM is difficult to troubleshoot because of it's complexity.
CUCM is expensive licensing and they nickel and dime you with a plethora of tiny little license charges for every little feature. They have the most convoluted licensing models, ever, for their CU products in general.
We have found it very easy to configure, manage, and expand our phone operations with Ooma Office. We needed a reliable phone network as this is the first means of communication for our customers - Ooma has made it a lot easier for us to manage. Their support is also available 24x7 so that's a huge plus.
Although it's very easy to use, once you understand the concepts of IP telephony, as I said before, I think Cisco could have improved the management interface of the platform, adding modern technologies and the design language of the other platforms like DNA Center, etc. This interface hasn't had a substantial improvement for about 10 years
If I had to rate Ooma Office’s overall usability on a scale from 1 to 10, I’d give it a solid 9 out of 10.From my experience, the setup was incredibly straightforward — honestly one of the easiest systems I’ve ever rolled out for a small business. The dashboard is clean, user-friendly, and doesn’t take a tech-savvy person to navigate. Within a short time, our team was up and running without needing IT support.What I really appreciate is how intuitive the call handling features are — forwarding, voicemail, virtual receptionist — it’s all laid out in a way that just makes sense. Plus, the mobile app makes it super convenient to stay connected when I’m not in the office.
CUCM is supported by most third-party vendors for related products, so it makes finding solutions to specific needs easy. Also Cisco TAC is very knowledgeable, and we have never run into a problem they have not been able to resolve. Usually they are resolved without the need to escalate tickers either.
Ooma Office support is always available. I've never been on the phone with them for longer than 5 minutes. They are knowledgable, have great active listening skills, are able to make recommendations on how to make Ooma Office work even better for you, and wait times to speak with an agent are reasonable and typically less than 1 minute.
Have a plan in place before you start the implementation, open communication with the staff on the changes being made, prepare a reference guide on the system and how to navigate the new setup. Budget and allocate time for helping staff learn the new system. Consolidate and coordinate all the questions internally before reaching out to support.
The Cisco Call Manager application has been around for much longer than many of the competitors. As such, they have had plenty of time to resolve bugs and increase the feature set that comes natively with this solution. One of the biggest factors for us was the professional services/support that comes along with using any Cisco product.
We use Ooma Office for everyone in the company including mobile users. It has allowed us to eliminate the spam callers as well give our mobile and remote users the ability to make business calls - from any device, from anywhere, at any time - without having to worry about any long distance charges, or without giving up their personal telephone numbers (at home or cellular).
