Thomas Crowe is a Senior Sales Engineer at 8x8. For over 15 years, Thomas has worked with many different on-premises (“on–prem”) and cloud-based phone systems and contact centers, including five years as an engineer at Cisco.

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For many organizations, the heyday of on-prem systems has passed. Maintaining such systems is not only costly and resource-intensive, but it also requires significant expertise and experience. Many organizations around the world are moving away from on-prem deployments and instead choosing modern cloud solutions that give them flexibility, scalability, and advanced capabilities at a fraction of the cost.

If you’re a Cisco customer, you know these challenges inside and out. Let’s take a look at a few of the most common pain points and explore how 8x8’s modern cloud solutions can solve them.

System management is hard

When it comes to administration, customers will see a massive difference between on-prem offerings of Cisco and modern cloud solutions. To start, Cisco on-prem systems typically require highly-specialized resources and niche skill sets. It takes VoIP engineers with countless hours of training and many years of experience to make even the simplest moves, adds, or changes to the system. Provisioning users can also be extremely complex.

Cisco offers a plethora of administrative options for its on-prem systems, but the simplified admin interface of an 8x8 modern cloud solution offers many of the same features in addition to being far easier to learn and use with no coding or special skills needed. With 8x8’s Admin Console, companies can manage their entire phone system from anywhere. It provides full access, from deployment to configuration to ongoing administration, ensuring that your IT teams can do more with their time and not rely on external vendors or expensive system experts.

System upgrades are lengthy and difficult

With Cisco’s on-prem infrastructure, a typical upgrade involves significant downtime and lengthy configuration timeframes. Upgrades are notoriously arduous, and seasoned engineers know better than to make any non-work plans for a scheduled upgrade weekend. When it’s time for a system upgrade, the updates are managed by the hosting partner but the downtime during an upgrade cycle is still the same.

Modern cloud platforms are fully managed SaaS solutions. This means that providers take care of all software upgrades, patches, and other infrastructure updates on the backend with no customer effort required, and without impacting end users. 8x8’s pure multi-tenant cloud environment can support a robust roadmap, allowing us to build the latest and greatest features, as well as roll out frequent upgrades, updates, and patches quickly, at no additional cost, and with little or no impact on our customers’ uptime.

Support and billing are fragmented

Support at Cisco is mostly partner-led, and a Cisco on-prem deployment includes support costs wrapped into the monthly total. These support costs tend to increase every year that a customer does not upgrade. In the end, customers actually end up signing two or three different contracts: one for the technology, one with an underlying telecom provider, and one for support. This often results in customers receiving multiple monthly bills, as well as the additional hassle and time needed to interact and manage all of these suppliers.

A cloud communications solution provides end-to-end business communications technology in addition to being the one-stop-shop for professional services and 24x7 support. 8x8’s global network of operations work together to provide 24/7/365 follow-the-sun-support via phone, chat, and web case, ready to support customers from deployment and beyond.

End-of-life and upgrade issues abound

Cisco’s release cycle for on-prem hardware is every 18 months (or longer), and the company ends support for any release that is two cycles behind the current release. This three-year obsolescence cycle creates headaches for many customers. Even hosted providers are slow to keep up with the latest releases because of the complexity associated with each upgrade.

A cloud platform, on the other hand, is continuously evolving as providers build new features and functionality on a regular basis. Using modern release methodologies like continuous delivery, providers can focus on innovation and deliver frequent updates without disrupting their customer’s service or experience.

Integration options are manual and complex

Integrating Cisco’s communications system with CRMs and other back office systems is both challenging and resource-intensive. For example, Cisco does not coexist easily with Microsoft Teams, and the Cisco direct routing solution is highly manual and difficult to set up. Microsoft Teams support requires a physical Session Border Controller (SBC) to be hosted somewhere, and IT administrators need to know the networking paths to the SBC.

By contrast, modern cloud platforms offer pre-built integrations with major business software that can be deployed quickly. For cases requiring custom integration, cloud providers offer robust APIs that make connecting systems quick and easy.

Migrate to the cloud with 8x8

For the 10th consecutive year, 8x8 is recognized as a leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Unified Communications as a Service. 8x8’s eXperience Communications Platform unifies contact center, voice, video, and chat into one, easy-to-use interface. 8x8 also provides easy integration with leading business platforms like Microsoft Teams and Salesforce, as well as a range of powerful communications APIs.

Because every business is different, 8x8 has developed a methodology to upgrade even the most complex Cisco on-prem installations to the 8x8 cloud. We collaborate with Cisco customers to develop a comprehensive, phased go-live approach that aligns with their long-term strategic plans. To learn more about making a safe and seamless move to the cloud, read the full brief on migrating from Cisco to 8x8 or contact us to discuss your specific needs.