Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology is the evolution of outdated PBX (Private Branch Exchange) calling, allowing phone calls to take place over an internet connection. The benefits of adopting a VoIP phone system are big, and it starts with your business’s bottom line.

Here, we’ll break down the difference between VoIP and more traditional solutions while exploring how the technology can improve business outcomes altogether through:

• Better employee and customer experiences
• Reduced cost and complexity
• Seamless cloud migration paths
• Support for a flexible, extensible solution

How is VoIP an improvement over legacy systems?

VoIP phone systems offer advanced features and modern flexibility that PBX simply can’t match.  And adopting VoIP can yield tangible results for your company, including:

1. Easy deployment, onboarding and maintenance

Cloud-hosted VoIP solutions eliminates the need for on-premises PBX hardware. So, adopting cloud-hosted VoIP mitigates all of the associated maintenance and management of that hardware. This ultimately leads to less of a need for internal IT to troubleshoot and amend issues. With that saved time and budget, businesses can focus less on upkeep and more on productivity.

2. Better call quality

Another benefit of moving to a cloud-hosted VoIP phone system are the advanced features a business can take advantage of. Advances in AI for collaboration have led to much better call quality for fully cloud-hosted VoIP phone systems. From background noise removal and audio intelligence to personalized voice optimization settings, call quality is taken to a whole new level, which means less distractions for remote and hybrid workers and less interruptions for any size call.

2. Advanced functionality and features that are always up to date

Landlines are limited to a single function: voice. With VoIP, users can communicate in real time with voice or video calls, and keep software stay up to date thanks to the cloud—among a myriad of other functionalities.

The best VoIP phone systems include a single dashboard to manage users and onboard new team members. Plus, you eliminate the headaches of PBX installation, since you can port over existing lines or create new lines without external help.

3. Built-in security that protects sensitive data

Thanks to additional layers of encryption like Transport Layer Security (TLS), VoIP offers built-in call and data protection that’s better at guarding sensitive information than landline phone systems.

4. Improved collaboration

With an increasing number of professionals working in a hybrid environment, employee availability and their ability to connect to each other is essential. Leading VoIP providers can deliver elite features to make team collaboration smoother in these cases. For example, the ability to elevate a VoIP call into a full video conference with ease. Or the ability to use a personal mobile phone with the native phone dialer when on-the-go and transition to any other device without leaving the call. And of course, teams need full-featured communication capabilities—instant messaging, group chats, file and screen sharing, and breakout calls.

How a cloud VoIP phone system can improve your business’s bottom line

The improvements that VoIP makes over legacy PBX systems will help your business’s bottom line. Here’s how:

1. Reduced capital costs

Without the need for additional hardware or service packages, VoIP is far more affordable than landline calling. It’s not unusual for traditional private branch exchange (PBX) systems to cost upwards of $1,000 per user. On average, VoIP systems come in at a much lower cost per user, usually somewhere around $20 per user, per month.

2. Scalability for evolving workplaces

Without the need for additional hardware, and the only requirement being an internet connection, VoIP is much easier to scale as IT personnel are able to add additional lines and numbers with ease, all in one dashboard. This gives VoIP a clear business advantage over traditional PBX.

3. Supporting flexible work environments

VoIP empowers businesses to lean fully into hybrid work. With the right tools, employees can work more easily from home and with less trouble than outdated communication tools. With that, VoIP can have a material impact on efficiency of your business by providing streamlined communication to all employees, no matter where they’re working from.

4. Easier management and administration, and reduced IT costs

Another key benefit of VoIP technology is how much easier it is to manage for your IT department. Typical VoIP solutions feature a centralized platform for administration. This empowers IT admins to monitor call performance for the entire phone system and every user from a single dashboard. From optimizing call quality and bandwidth utilization to easily adding users, this feature makes life easier for your entire IT team.

Key Takeaways

VoIP enables better experiences for employees and customers across the board while being more affordable, reliable and flexible than legacy PBX technology. Its benefits far outweigh those offered by traditional landlines. And, it’s incredibly easy to move away from a PBX system to cloud-based VoIP. Whether taking a phased approach or moving completely to the cloud, businesses can significantly cut costs, simplify management for IT, and make work easier for every department.

Reilly Nolan, Content Marketing Manager, Webex by Cisco.

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Announced at Cisco Live, the features – powered by large language models – come as Cisco is also bringing generative AI to its security tools to help augment security analysts and simplify policy management and threat response.

The news also comes as competitor platforms such as Zoom and Microsoft Teams are announcing similar generative AI capabilities in their respective collaboration platforms also designed to help users become more efficient during and after meetings.

Cisco’s new Webex AI features, which will be available by the end of the year, include  “Catch Me Up”, which is designed to allow users to catch up on missed interactions such as meetings, calling, chats and more.

Meanwhile, intelligent meeting summaries will give users outlines of meetings with key points and action items. Users can opt in to automatically generate the most important parts of a Webex meeting, extract the key points and capture action items with owners.

Cisco’s vision is for intelligent meeting summaries to be a time-saver for attendees and employees with busy schedules who may be unable to make every important meeting. This also eliminates the need to listen to a recording or read through a transcript.

Similarly, Cisco Summaries in Vidcast, the company’s video messaging solution, that will produce highlights and chapters so viewers can navigate to the most important parts of the video quickly.

For contact center agents, Cisco is also bringing AI-powered conversation summaries to Webex Contact Center to give agents an automated way to consume long-form text from digital chats with customers as well as facilitating post-call wrap-up and resolution with customers, the company says.

Cisco gives the example of a customer call being escalated to a human agent where the customer expects the agent to be informed and not have to repeat what they’ve already told virtual agents and automated systems. Summaries give agents a clear summarization of issues and resolutions already explored via self-service and a summary of the call to both the agent and customer once it ends, the firm says.

In a statement, Jeetu Patel, the company’s executive vice president and general manager of security and collaboration, said generative AI will quickly become part of any business’ tools.

“At Cisco, we’ve been using AI for years,” Patel says. “Now we’re unveiling how we’re incorporating generative AI into our existing products, helping customers drive real value to unlock the most secure, unrivaled work experiences possible.”

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According to Cisco, the solution aligns with the U.S. government’s approach to security for cloud products, including air-gapped cloud deployments that are isolated from public networks and operated on U.S. soil by local staff with specific security clearances to handle sensitive data.

The Webex solution for air-gapped deployments will provide an extra layer of security and still allow teams to collaborate through the company’s modern meeting, chat, and calling experiences via the Webex App.

Customers leveraging the air-gapped solution will have interoperability with existing Cisco Unified Communication Management (CUCM) to capitalize on previous investments in Cisco technologies.

According to Cisco, the company already offers Webex for Government, which is currently used by some U.S. security and defense agencies. That includes on-prem solutions for secure collaboration, including calling, messaging, meetings and file sharing. In addition, Cisco says Webex operates a FedRAMP authorized U.S. Trusted Cloud in-country, adhering to FedRAMP requirements.

“There is not a one size fits all solution for collaboration, which is why Webex’s approach to developing fully compliant collaboration solutions for Government takes into account local regulations, compliance requirements and security controls for individual Government communities,” the company says in a blog.

The air-gapped, cloud-based collaboration experience for National security and Defense will be available in 2024, the company says.

While specific to National Security and Defense, Cisco says it will continue to develop compliant and customized Webex solutions across all facets of government.

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The company’s release of small conference room bundles adds to Biamp’s existing conference room bundles that include solutions for both medium and large conferencing spaces.

According to Biamp, the bundles provide options for other unified communication-controlled rooms leveraging Google Meet, Zoom or Microsoft Teams, as well as bring-your-own-meeting (BYOM) scenarios in which users can manage meetings on their own devices.

Biamp’s new BYOM meeting room solution for small rooms starts with the Devio SCR family of devices for PCs running Microsoft Teams, Zoom, Google Meet, Cisco Webex and other conferencing platforms. The Devio SCR devices support a single USB connection to a host computer for audio and video media using DisplayLink USB graphics technology the company says.

The company’s BYOM bundles include a range of options, such as pairing the Devio SCR-10 with a Vidi 250 camera as an entry-level solution, along with Parlé table mics, Parlé ceiling mics, or pendent mics featuring Parlé Beamtracking technology to intelligently track and mix conversations from around the room.

These systems can also be paired with the Vidi family of 4K conferencing cameras, the company says.

In addition, Biamp says the  Parlé VBC 2500a and Parlé ABC 2500a all-in-one conferencing bars will be compatible with assistive listening systems beginning this month. The bars feature a new dedicated 3.5-militeter output connector with a mono balanced line level output for users requiring hearing assistance.

Included in the room kits is the Biamp Launch software that analyzes and tunes the acoustic performance of the room, including ALS. The Parle bars can be controlled via a BYOM device or through a dedicated UC host device, the company says.

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According to Microsoft this unlocks top-requested Teams Rooms features for both users and IT admins, such as Front Row, persistent chat, consistent remote management capabilities and more. The new Surface Hub 2S with this new experience will become available later this year, and existing Surface Hub 2S devices will have a path to migrate to this experience at a future data, the company says.

“The future of Surface Hub will meet the realities of modern work, combining the latest Teams Rooms features with the iconic Surface Hub 2S design and premium hardware – a thin edge and bezel, dual active inking, and 20-point multi-touch – and providing users with a natural experience for enhanced collaboration,” the company says in a Tech Community blog.

The change means users and IT will have added functionality for Surface Hub 2S in Microsoft Teams Admin Center and Pro Management Portal, consistent with other Teams Rooms devices. In addition, IT can use Microsoft Intune  and classic management options with System Center Manager.

In addition to Front Row and Chat, users can use the Microsoft Whiteboard feature and will be able to quickly start a meeting with remote participants who can collaborate across the same whiteboard in real-time.

The Surface Hub 2S will also pair with the full list of Teams Rooms-certified accessories for use in any meeting space, Microsoft says.

In addition to Teams, users can join Zoom and Webex meetings from then Surface Hub 2S with via a one-touch join experience.

Organizations running the current Windows 10 Team Edition experience on Surface Hub 2S will continue to get support with security updates and critical fixes through October 14, 2025, the company says. The Teams Rooms experience will only be available to Surface Hub 2S devices, both 50 inches and 85 inches.

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According to the companies, the Cisco Board Pro is now certified to run Microsoft Teams Rooms natively on the device, giving customers more choices for flexible collaboration to enhance the hybrid working experience.

The 55-inch and 75-inch models of the Cisco Board Pro can be configured to set up and run Teams Rooms as the default experience, allowing customers to use Teams with Cisco’s purpose-build videoconferencing hardware. These are the first Cisco Rooms devices to be officially certified for Microsoft Teams.

Customers can leverage the AI capabilities built into Cisco’s hardware, including video quality, camera intelligence and noise removal technologies. In addition, Customers can easily switch between Teams and Webex meetings the same device from the Teams Rooms home screen with no reboot or reconfiguration required.

For IT administrators, the collaboration between the two companies allows them to manage Board Pro in the Microsoft Teams Admin Center and the new Teams Rooms Pro Management Portal. In addition, they can leverage other device management and analytics capabilities in Cisco Control Hub and Cisco Spaces.

In addition the Board Pro interoperability, the company are also announcing the new Webex Contact Center for Microsoft Teams, another integration designed to help simplify agent to subject matter expert collaboration and unlock knowledge across the organization to create a more seamless customer experience.

Agents can leverage the integration to connect and collaborate with knowledge workers through the Teams app and route customers to knowledge workers using Teams helping to lessen customer effort.

In addition, the integration provides calling interoperability, directory services, presence awareness, centralized management and administrative features.

More Cisco collaboration devices are expected to receive Teams certification throughout the year, including the Room Bar, Room Kit Pro, in mid-2023. The Room Kit EQ as a native Teams Room solution, the Cisco Desk Pro, running the native Teams Display or the Teams Rooms experience, and the Cisco Room Navigator, supporting the native Teams Panel room scheduling app, will follow in mid-2023.

Other Cisco devices such as the Cisco Desk Camera 4K USB webcam, Cisco Headset 720 Series Bluetooth wireless headsets and the Cisco Headset 320 Series wired headsets already have Teams certification.

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According to Cisco, Webex is expanding its video intelligence in devices through conferencing room operating system Cisco Room OS, allowing users to benefit from the ability to provide optimal views in any meeting with new AI capabilities.

These new features include cinematic meeting experiences on Cisco devices that enable cameras to follow speakers through voice and facial recognition, automatically switching views to capture the best angle of the speaker.

In addition, IT admins can set virtual boundaries for collaboration spaces with a new meeting zones feature that will automatically frame users in a condensed view, leaving any blank space out of the view. Only people inside defined areas are included in the meeting, making this ideal for busy open spaces and conference rooms with glass walls, according to Cisco.

Other new AI capabilities in the Webex Suite include the ability to hold HD meetings that don’t require HD bandwidth, smart re-lighting to automatically improve poor lighting and an automatic “be right back” update that will blur the background and mute audio when a user steps away from a Webex meeting.

For customer-facing tools such as Webex Contact Center and Webex Connect, Cisco is releasing new AI capabilities to help bring organizations actionable insights on customer interactions and make agents more efficient.

These include Topic Analysis in Webex Contact Center, a new tool designed to surface key reasons customers are calling into the contact center and aggregate call transcript data to help business proactively adapt to meet their customers’ needs.

In addition, Cisco is launching Agent Answers, a real-time agent coach that pulls learnings from self-service and automated interactions and brings them into the self-learning contact center to increase human agents’ effectiveness.

Other AI features include AI-powered chat summaries and automated code generators in Webex Connect.

Jeetu Patel, Cisco’s executive vice president and general manager of security and collaboration at Cisco, calls AI the next evolution of hybrid work.

“Cisco has decades of experience in AI with its industry-leading natural language understanding, and audio and video intelligence in Webex, which I’m thrilled is extending into even more innovations across our collaboration portfolio,” Patel says in a statement. “As we double down on our AI investment, we’re empowering our customers to deliver exceptional hybrid work and customer experience outcomes based on their datasets, while relentlessly protecting their confidentiality and privacy.”

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The companies first announce the partnership in October, and the solution is now available in beta for enterprise customers and partners. The solution is expected to be certified and available for the Cisco Board Pro, Cisco Room Bar and Cisco Room Kit Pro in March.

According to Cisco, the innovation will deliver meeting experiences to Microsoft Teams customers and leverage Cisco’s experience in designing reliable and secure video collaboration systems.

First-of-its-kind interoperability

The interoperability is the first of its kind, Cisco says, as the company is the first vendor to offer devices with Microsoft Teams Rooms as the default experience with support to join Webex meetings with full feature and functionality without rebooting or reconfiguration by IT.

The interoperability solution is powered by the RoomOS and Microsoft Teams platform, allowing joint customers to run fully featured Microsoft Teams and Webex meetings natively on their Cisco devices while leveraging advanced device management and analytics in Control Hub.

Cisco collaboration devices to be certified for Microsoft Teams will include the Cisco Board Pro 55 and 75, Cisco Room Bar, Cisco Room Kit Pro, Cisco Room Kit EQ, Cisco Room Navigator, and Cisco Desk Pro, alongside remote work peripherals such as the Cisco Desk Camera 4K, the Cisco Headset 320 and the Headset 720.

Cisco Table Microphone Pro

In addition to the Microsoft Teams interoperability with Webex, Cisco at ISE announced a new Cisco Table Microphone Pro designed to create meeting equity and eliminate background noise. The device is multi-directional and harnesses intelligent audio capabilities to only capture in-room participants’ voices using four built-in microphone elements.

The Cisco Table Microphone Pro can is designed for a range of room sizes, from huddle rooms to large conference rooms and custom AV deployments.

In addition to AI-enhanced audio features designed to reduce distractions during meetings, the Cisco Table Microphone Pro is designed for simplicity, allowing IT professionals to easily deploy and monitor the microphone with plug-and-play functionality. IT pros can configure, customize and monitor the microphone in Control Hub for centralized cloud management alongside other Cisco collaboration devices.

The microphone is also protected with end-to-end encryption for enhanced security.

Enhanced audio interoperability

Cisco also announced that it is extending its video and device interoperability to enable IP-based integration with third party audio systems, with audio equipment manufacturer Shure becoming the first Cisco partner it is supporting. The partnership provides seamless with integration into Shure’s microphones, including Shure’s MXA930 Ceiling Array or MXA710 Linear Array.

This allows customers invested in the Shure Microflex Ecosystem to leverage easy manageability, pristine quality, and plug-and-play compatibility with Cisco video collaboration endpoints, says Brian Woodland, vice president of global business development at Shure.

“The new generation of IP-based audio interoperability between Cisco and Shure provides flexibility and seamless collaboration to future-proof video conferencing environments and provide end users with world-class audio experiences,” Woodland says.

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These unified communications and collaboration (UC&C) tools became the “saviors” of the COVID era that allowed work to happen virtually around the globe. Overnight, online meetings became the norm for conducting meetings, no matter where teams and people were located. This phenomenon didn’t just impact enterprises, but doctors, contractors, SMBs, retailers, and others, too. Case in point, Microsoft Teams usage increased by 260 percent in less than two years, and Zoom meeting participants grew by 2900 percent during the pandemic.

With more than 58.6  percent of Americans working remotely and over 11 million virtual meetings held daily in the U.S. alone, it has become increasingly more challenging for IT to provide direct support. Most tech teams are working with little visibility into what might cause microphone and webcam issues, connectivity and performance problems, login error messages, and more. The biggest challenge facing IT teams today is how to keep everyone productive and up and running despite not necessarily being responsible for what tools are being used in various locations.

How to Guarantee Optimal Virtual Collaboration Experience

When tools like Zoom and Microsoft Teams do not work correctly, eliminate friction by adopting common-sense solutions. Consider making the following steps part of your retroactive plan to help IT teams, employees, and even customers experience effective meetings and collaborations from any location.

• Share best practices. With digital transformation continually bringing new tools to the virtual workplace, set your IT teams and employees up for success by equipping them with tips they will want to follow before, during, and after meetings.
• Use the right UC&C tool. Determine which unified communications tool will meet participant needs best before scheduling meetings or collaborating on projects. For example, Zoom is typically better for external meetings, while MS Teams works best for internal meetings for collaborating with people inside your organization.
• Book at the right time. Remember time differences when scheduling meetings across time zones, so you schedule meetings at times that work for everyone. Recording the call can provide a great reference point, reaffirm action items, and be helpful for those who might miss out due to connectivity issues.
• Check your internet connection. Test internet speed before calls. This step is particularly important whenever someone is traveling or working remotely. If someone finds that Wi-Fi connections are operating slowly, personal hotspots might provide the best temporary backup. When team members are consistently on video chats or streaming data, bandwidth may need to be increased.
• Update your software. Don’t wait until the last minute to update your apps. Encourage participants to download the latest version of the UC&C platform before the meeting. Nothing can hold up a meeting like waiting for software updates to download and install.
• Secure your network. With business information traveling over public and home networks, it is essential to establish policies and protocols that add additional layers of security. These steps may include addressing password changes, router updates, VPN access, and proper configuration.
• Set IT up for success. Allow tech teams remote access to all team members’ devices so they can quickly correlate and pinpoint the root cause of problems when people use UC&C tools like Zoom or MS Teams. IT teams need access to quick insights to track the number of calls and meetings, quality of calls, physical endpoint problems, or local network connectivity issues that could cause issues.
• Make sure your technology works. Simple steps will go a long way toward eliminating online collaboration headaches. Encourage everyone to establish a routine to follow at the beginning and end of every workday (e.g., charging headsets, testing microphones and audio settings, etc.) Be aware that issues will still happen and will still arise. But IT teams will want to understand what happened, so they can try to prevent the problems from happening in the future.
• Learn and improve with user feedback. Conduct consistent post-mortems after virtual meetings, video conferences, file transfers, and online training sessions. Ask team members for insights about the quality of their calls. Collect data by asking employees for written feedback and user sentiment scoring that can be used to provide quantitative metrics and qualitative feedback. Since the numbers don’t tell the whole story, use integrated surveys to push out communications that get the other side of the story and help IT pinpoint issues.

While these steps are key to proactively managing challenges when UC&C tools don’t work as intended, remember that these applications are only part of the hybrid workforce technology toolbox. Establishing a dedicated approach and strategy for using all the SaaS apps, collaboration tools, and physical endpoints teams use to remain productive is also important. With digital transformation creating a ripple effect that impacts businesses everywhere, now is the time to put these success tips in place.

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According to Google, this means Zoom Rooms will be able to join Google Meet meetings, and Google Meet devices will be able to join Zoom Meetings either directly from a Zoom Room or a Google Meet device calendar with the tough of a button or by entering a meeting code.

Google already has already launched bi-directional interoperability between Cisco Webex devices and Google Meet devices, and the company says it will continue to support Pexip for Google Meet to allow users to join Meet meetings from a range of third-party videoconferencing solutions.

The news comes the same week as Cisco announced an integration with Microsoft Teams that enables the Teams Rooms experience on Webex devices. Cisco is now a Teams Rooms certified partner, meaning that Teams meetings will be available natively across certified Cisco meeting devices. This allows users to configure Teams as the default meeting experience.

At launch, Zoom’s interop with Google Meet will be supported all ChromeOS-based Meet devices with support for additional products over time. Google Meet interop will be supported on all Zoom Rooms across all platforms. Administrators will be able to turn on interop for registered devices in their organization, and allow trusted devices to join cross-platform calls without knocking, according to Google.

Elsewhere in the videoconferencing industry, interoperability is somewhat mixed. Microsoft Teams users can join third-party meeting platforms with Teams Rooms via Direct Guest Join. Currently, Teams Rooms can join meetings hosted on Webex and Zoom.

According to Microsoft, a Teams meeting add-on lets Google calendar users schedule and join a Teams meeting from Google Workspace, but the kind of interop enjoyed by other conferencing service providers has not yet come to the two tech giants.

Meanwhile, Webex can interoperate with Zoom, Teams and Google Meet.

According to a early 2022 study from IT monitoring and management software company Netscout, 72% of enterprises currently support between three and nine UC&C tools. That figure is up 9% from 2020. Even new Cisco research finds that 85% of organizations use more than one meeting platform.

Google is also expanding its Google Meet devices outside of the ChromeOS platform, bringing in Poly and Logitech devices as the first two videoconferencing partners to deliver meet for Android-based appliances.

According to Google, this will enable customers to buy a device from Poly or Logitech that will run Meet, or another third-party conferencing platform, based on admin configuration. Customers with existing Poly or Logitech Android-based devices will be able to leverage their investment and move to Meet by just adding a Meet license for these devices.

The Poly Studio X family of Android-based videoconferencing bars certified for Meet will be available in early 2023, and Logitech’s lineup of Rally Bar and Rally Bar Mini for Google Meet will also be available next year.

In a blog, Dave Citron, director of product for Google Workspace, says organizations need to close the gaps between people, teams and within offices to thrive in hybrid work.

“These innovations by Google and our partners can help further break down the barriers between video conferencing platforms and give greater choice and flexibility for our customers,” Citron says.

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