Microsoft Office 365 is considerably less expensive than a comparable bundle of cloud-based unified communications and collaboration applications from Cisco. But a close examination of the two leading UCC suppliers shows that enterprises should weigh more than price when comparing the vendors' products.
Brent Kelly, an analyst at KelCor Inc., based in North Logan, Utah, broke down pricing and features for the providers' cloud communications bundles during a session at last week's Interop trade show in Las Vegas. Cisco and Microsoft dominate the UCC market for companies with more than 2,500 users, according to Nemertes Research.
While Microsoft is less expensive, its architecture is a lot different than Cisco's. Microsoft's approach is a merger of its Office productivity suite and UCC applications. Cisco, on the other hand, builds its UCC platform on top of its data networking gear and software.
"It's really a different kind of mindset," Kelly said of the two vendors' cloud communications platforms.
Competition between Cisco and Microsoft is fierce. Almost half of large enterprises surveyed by Nemertes use a single UC vendor or plan to use only one by the end of 2016. Of that group, 53% were in Microsoft's camp and 35% favored Cisco.
