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Cisco voice / video products feel like they're designed to look good on a product comparison chart rather than to provide a robust user experience. It's so har

Cisco voice / video products feel like they're designed to look good on a product comparison chart rather than to provide a robust user experience. It's so hard to explain to senior decision makers about why the cisco product should be replaced because on the surface it looks like cisco does everything that the competitors do. And large companies can't easily compare KPIs for a product they already have against the unknown third order effects of a competitor's product. Cisco knows that so they keep doing the bare minimum.

kazen44 6y ago
tot be fair. WebEx seemed to work just as fine as most of the alternatives.
zapt02 6y ago
We use WebEx as our VC of choice where I work. Turns out the only reason people used it was that there was no alternative when using the VC in the office. When we switched to WFH people dropped WebEx immediately in favor of Google Meet. Now I hear that GMeet will be available in our physical office when we return. One lost customer for Cisco. It's hard to explain the problem with WebEx other than GMeet (Or Zoom, or really any other platform) just works and feels better.
- goatinaboat 6y ago
  When we switched to WFH people dropped WebEx immediately in favor of Google Meet Out of curiosity did they "just do it" or was this an official decision? The "new normal" has really turned a lot of stuff on its head and brought "shadow IT" into the mainstream like never before. It's one thing to replace a video calling app but I wonder if we will ever see employees self-organise to boot out incumbents like SAP as well, that like Webex and Teams are sold on the golf course.
  - zapt02 6y ago
    It was informal. No doubt it relly helped that we are G-Suite users and adding Google Meet to a calendar event is a one-click operation (although it is possible to add other providers now). Compared to the ultra clunky WebEx client, buggy web version and no native integration with GCal at the time, it just faded out of existence for us.
ludamad 6y ago
I think the Cisco attitude (my experience) is more focus on value-driving features rather than "maintenance". Unfortunately, robust user experience ends up being more expensive than starting over sometimes with that attitude
- xnyan 6y ago
  COVID was the first time that someone in our c-suite really had to use the our video chat platform at the time, Webex. Within two weeks we got Zoom plus MS Teams as a backup. I notice that Webex is really being developed now, and I’m sure the devs are perfectly fine people but Cisco is absolutely mercenary with their resources and the second they think reallocating dev resources will make them more money, they will again leave Webex to rot and die.
deleted 6y ago
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Spooky23 6y ago
Webex gets more abuse than deserved imo. If you like Zoom you should be ok with Webex. I’ve worked with it for years, and while Cisco is glacial with improvements, it’s probably the most secure enterprise platform and is better than the Microsoft and Google alternatives. Zoom has better UX, but the security story isn’t as good and their future depends on how they can pivot into more lucrative business. It’s a fast moving target though, and if they don’t get their shit together, Microsoft and Zoom will close the security gap.
- pschw 6y ago
  > If you like Zoom you should be ok with Webex. Webex lacks a native Linux client, and the browser-based version has limited features and in my experience has had some recurring issues with audio and screensharing. So, purely from a user experience point of view, the shift from Zoom to Webex hasn't been painless.
  - pcl 6y ago
    FYI we're actively working on native Linux support. It will be rolled out in phases, but we're targeting parity with the Mac and Windows platforms. The first release is planned for this April. The client is in early field trials right now. I don't think we have public links to the client as yet. Also, we're still fighting the "which distros" battle. We'll start with Ubuntu and CentOS / RedHat, with more to follow. Here's our announcement about it from a few months back: https://blog.webex.com/team-collaboration/webex-community-members-bring-linux-support-for-webex-to-life/ https://blog.webex.com/team-collaboration/webex-community-me...
    - OakNinja 6y ago
      Cool, thanks for sharing!
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
- cgh 6y ago
  Yeah, I am on Webex much of the day and it's generally great, even over a slow vpn with many attendees and video feeds. But I use the native client on MacOS. I wonder if a lot of the complaints are coming because of the browser-based version. For sure, the security story is the best around.
tw04 6y ago
I'm not following where you're going with this. Over the last decade Webex has been far and away the most reliable voice/video product I've used outside of a small window at the very beginning of COVID. They also haven't been caught repeatedly lying about their security practices and silently sending meetings through China. Do you have some examples of Cisco "doing the bare minimum"? Or things they can't do that competitors do? Literally my only complaint over the years with the service is around the storage of recorded meetings and that may just be an issue with how my company manages it.
- pcurve 6y ago
  Webex was a big step up from adobe connect. I wonder if Webex issues people are experiencing had to do with VPN capacity issues while working from home
- sitzkrieg 6y ago
  just got off a webex meeting, the audio delay is still over a second for phone participants, this causes a lot of problems. fun issue to have in 2021
- haswell 6y ago
  My employer switched to Zoom long before COVID. We formerly used Webex. From a quality-of-life perspective, the contrast is stark. Things I used to struggle with in Webex: - Multiple versions of the Webex client - UI so slow I couldn't start/stop sharing quickly in many meetings - Extremely high CPU/RAM consumption (Zoom suffers from this, too, but generally doesn't completely lock up my computer) - Email client plugins that only occasionally work I'm a remote product manager (even before COVID), and spend most of my days on virtual meetings. The reduction of daily/hourly friction by moving to Zoom cannot be overstated (in my case, anyway). I'm unhappy with Zoom for philosophical reasons, but would choose Zoom over Webex 10 times out of 10 from a UX/quality of life perspective.
  - newman314 6y ago
    The one thing that I find superior in WebEx over Zoom is how the calendar events are presented. In Zoom, it often is unclear and I have to hunt for the event that I want to join, whereas in WebEx, it was always right where I needed it to be.
tenacious_tuna 6y ago
Disclaimer: current/new Cisco employee, though I don't work anywhere near Webex. Webex is... amusing, from an internal perspective. Partially because of the namespace collisions: Webex Teams, Webex Meetings, or Webex Trainings? I've run into all three, and all three are different. As far as I can tell, Teams is supposed to be our Slack-adjacent/competitor. It works... fine. My previous corp had switched from Flowdock to Microsoft Teams, and M-Teams was truly, truly awful as a chat client. At least W-Teams behaves how I would expect a chat client to. (Though I dearly miss the full emoji reaction selection.) The media viewing behavior, or the group creation behavior (I can't just make an ad-hoc group chat between people, I have to create a 'space'--Why?!) Webex Meetings seeeeeemmmsss to be just the realtime video component? The Zoom-adjacent/competitor? Teams integrates this on its own, so it's hard to tell sometimes. Broadly I think the Webex UI for calls looks/feels/behaves better than the Zoom equiv, and I have felt that the AV/screenshare quality is notably better than Zoom or Hangouts. But on Zoom I'd always bumble through the menus, or feel like I had a zillion buttons in front of me and didn't know what they did, or be annoyed with how to even create a meeting. (This last one is really counfounded for me, 'cuz the calls are integrated into Teams, so I never have to leave the chat client to make a call, which is likely not the case for other Webex users.) Webex Training is... Hillariously frustrating. It feels like it hasn't been updated since inception (which looks like it was 2004). There are so many terrible, terrible UX decisions that the Cisco meeting facillitators call out every time they run up against. ("We're going to play a video, so everyone make sure you've muted yourself so the audio doesn't leak and that your laptop speakers are on so you can hear the video," or "We're going to forcibly unmute all of you so you can have control over your own mute/unmute <unintelligble hash of insane noise from all participants>", the mute/unmute/reaction buttons being impossible to find and CHANGING POSITION DEPENDING ON ROOM AUGH) Anyway. Point is, I've felt similarly to the above, but only within specific Webex domains. I've really been meaning to find a Webex engineer to sit down and ask why this stuff hasn't been fixed, but I suspect I already know and the answer is the same as at my previous corp: Maintenance was de-prioritized, and now minor issues have become egregious, but it would require massive engineering effort to even begin solving them.... and those resources would be better spent on $Successor to get it fully up to spec to replace the aging/ailing incumbent. Meanwhile, the "modern" versions of Webex (Teams, Meetings?) seem to work well enough within the corporate boundaries that we don't feel the pressure. Doubly so because Cisco employees don't get the opportunity to see what life is like "on the other side of the fence" with Zoom/Slack/Flowdock/whatever--which, yay, dogfooding, but boo, lack of contrast.
xnyan 6y ago
One of the upsides to COVID is that it has forced more exceutvtiv

kazen44 6y ago

tot be fair. WebEx seemed to work just as fine as most of the alternatives.

zapt02 6y ago

We use WebEx as our VC of choice where I work. Turns out the only reason people used it was that there was no alternative when using the VC in the office. When we switched to WFH people dropped WebEx immediately in favor of Google Meet. Now I hear that GMeet will be available in our physical office when we return. One lost customer for Cisco. It's hard to explain the problem with WebEx other than GMeet (Or Zoom, or really any other platform) just works and feels better.

goatinaboat 6y ago
When we switched to WFH people dropped WebEx immediately in favor of Google Meet Out of curiosity did they "just do it" or was this an official decision? The "new normal" has really turned a lot of stuff on its head and brought "shadow IT" into the mainstream like never before. It's one thing to replace a video calling app but I wonder if we will ever see employees self-organise to boot out incumbents like SAP as well, that like Webex and Teams are sold on the golf course.
- zapt02 6y ago
  It was informal. No doubt it relly helped that we are G-Suite users and adding Google Meet to a calendar event is a one-click operation (although it is possible to add other providers now). Compared to the ultra clunky WebEx client, buggy web version and no native integration with GCal at the time, it just faded out of existence for us.

ludamad 6y ago

I think the Cisco attitude (my experience) is more focus on value-driving features rather than "maintenance". Unfortunately, robust user experience ends up being more expensive than starting over sometimes with that attitude

xnyan 6y ago
COVID was the first time that someone in our c-suite really had to use the our video chat platform at the time, Webex. Within two weeks we got Zoom plus MS Teams as a backup. I notice that Webex is really being developed now, and I’m sure the devs are perfectly fine people but Cisco is absolutely mercenary with their resources and the second they think reallocating dev resources will make them more money, they will again leave Webex to rot and die.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

Spooky23 6y ago

Webex gets more abuse than deserved imo. If you like Zoom you should be ok with Webex. I’ve worked with it for years, and while Cisco is glacial with improvements, it’s probably the most secure enterprise platform and is better than the Microsoft and Google alternatives. Zoom has better UX, but the security story isn’t as good and their future depends on how they can pivot into more lucrative business. It’s a fast moving target though, and if they don’t get their shit together, Microsoft and Zoom will close the security gap.

pschw 6y ago
> If you like Zoom you should be ok with Webex. Webex lacks a native Linux client, and the browser-based version has limited features and in my experience has had some recurring issues with audio and screensharing. So, purely from a user experience point of view, the shift from Zoom to Webex hasn't been painless.
- pcl 6y ago
  FYI we're actively working on native Linux support. It will be rolled out in phases, but we're targeting parity with the Mac and Windows platforms. The first release is planned for this April. The client is in early field trials right now. I don't think we have public links to the client as yet. Also, we're still fighting the "which distros" battle. We'll start with Ubuntu and CentOS / RedHat, with more to follow. Here's our announcement about it from a few months back: https://blog.webex.com/team-collaboration/webex-community-members-bring-linux-support-for-webex-to-life/ https://blog.webex.com/team-collaboration/webex-community-me...
  - OakNinja 6y ago
    Cool, thanks for sharing!
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
cgh 6y ago
Yeah, I am on Webex much of the day and it's generally great, even over a slow vpn with many attendees and video feeds. But I use the native client on MacOS. I wonder if a lot of the complaints are coming because of the browser-based version. For sure, the security story is the best around.

tw04 6y ago

I'm not following where you're going with this. Over the last decade Webex has been far and away the most reliable voice/video product I've used outside of a small window at the very beginning of COVID. They also haven't been caught repeatedly lying about their security practices and silently sending meetings through China. Do you have some examples of Cisco "doing the bare minimum"? Or things they can't do that competitors do? Literally my only complaint over the years with the service is around the storage of recorded meetings and that may just be an issue with how my company manages it.

pcurve 6y ago
Webex was a big step up from adobe connect. I wonder if Webex issues people are experiencing had to do with VPN capacity issues while working from home
sitzkrieg 6y ago
just got off a webex meeting, the audio delay is still over a second for phone participants, this causes a lot of problems. fun issue to have in 2021
haswell 6y ago
My employer switched to Zoom long before COVID. We formerly used Webex. From a quality-of-life perspective, the contrast is stark. Things I used to struggle with in Webex: - Multiple versions of the Webex client - UI so slow I couldn't start/stop sharing quickly in many meetings - Extremely high CPU/RAM consumption (Zoom suffers from this, too, but generally doesn't completely lock up my computer) - Email client plugins that only occasionally work I'm a remote product manager (even before COVID), and spend most of my days on virtual meetings. The reduction of daily/hourly friction by moving to Zoom cannot be overstated (in my case, anyway). I'm unhappy with Zoom for philosophical reasons, but would choose Zoom over Webex 10 times out of 10 from a UX/quality of life perspective.
- newman314 6y ago
  The one thing that I find superior in WebEx over Zoom is how the calendar events are presented. In Zoom, it often is unclear and I have to hunt for the event that I want to join, whereas in WebEx, it was always right where I needed it to be.

tenacious_tuna 6y ago

Disclaimer: current/new Cisco employee, though I don't work anywhere near Webex. Webex is... amusing, from an internal perspective. Partially because of the namespace collisions: Webex Teams, Webex Meetings, or Webex Trainings? I've run into all three, and all three are different. As far as I can tell, Teams is supposed to be our Slack-adjacent/competitor. It works... fine. My previous corp had switched from Flowdock to Microsoft Teams, and M-Teams was truly, truly awful as a chat client. At least W-Teams behaves how I would expect a chat client to. (Though I dearly miss the full emoji reaction selection.) The media viewing behavior, or the group creation behavior (I can't just make an ad-hoc group chat between people, I have to create a 'space'--Why?!) Webex Meetings seeeeeemmmsss to be just the realtime video component? The Zoom-adjacent/competitor? Teams integrates this on its own, so it's hard to tell sometimes. Broadly I think the Webex UI for calls looks/feels/behaves better than the Zoom equiv, and I have felt that the AV/screenshare quality is notably better than Zoom or Hangouts. But on Zoom I'd always bumble through the menus, or feel like I had a zillion buttons in front of me and didn't know what they did, or be annoyed with how to even create a meeting. (This last one is really counfounded for me, 'cuz the calls are integrated into Teams, so I never have to leave the chat client to make a call, which is likely not the case for other Webex users.) Webex Training is... Hillariously frustrating. It feels like it hasn't been updated since inception (which looks like it was 2004). There are so many terrible, terrible UX decisions that the Cisco meeting facillitators call out every time they run up against. ("We're going to play a video, so everyone make sure you've muted yourself so the audio doesn't leak and that your laptop speakers are on so you can hear the video," or "We're going to forcibly unmute all of you so you can have control over your own mute/unmute <unintelligble hash of insane noise from all participants>", the mute/unmute/reaction buttons being impossible to find and CHANGING POSITION DEPENDING ON ROOM AUGH) Anyway. Point is, I've felt similarly to the above, but only within specific Webex domains. I've really been meaning to find a Webex engineer to sit down and ask why this stuff hasn't been fixed, but I suspect I already know and the answer is the same as at my previous corp: Maintenance was de-prioritized, and now minor issues have become egregious, but it would require massive engineering effort to even begin solving them.... and those resources would be better spent on $Successor to get it fully up to spec to replace the aging/ailing incumbent. Meanwhile, the "modern" versions of Webex (Teams, Meetings?) seem to work well enough within the corporate boundaries that we don't feel the pressure. Doubly so because Cisco employees don't get the opportunity to see what life is like "on the other side of the fence" with Zoom/Slack/Flowdock/whatever--which, yay, dogfooding, but boo, lack of contrast.

xnyan 6y ago

One of the upsides to COVID is that it has forced more exceutvtiv