Cisco vs. Microsoft: Integrate or Choose One?Cisco vs. Microsoft: Integrate or Choose One?

A lot of organizations feel the need to decide between Cisco and Microsoft for UC&C, but perhaps they don't really need to make that choice.

Many organizations continue to face the Cisco vs. Microsoft decision dilemma as they strategize on communications and collaboration. At issue is whether to extend the relationship they have with Cisco in networking or Microsoft on the software side, or mix and match UC&C products from the two.

Considering that Cisco holds 70% to 75% of the enterprise network market while Microsoft Lync accounts for 60% to 65% of the instant messaging (IM) and presence market plus a dominant share of the office productivity suite business, the challenge is widespread. Clearly many organizations have both Cisco switches and Microsoft software.

Aggressive adjacency marketing campaigns exacerbate the challenge, as each company aims to sell its entire UC stack by displacing the competitor. Cisco has used its data networking position to gain No. 1 share in VoIP, while Microsoft is using its enterprise software foothold to seed the market with Lync (Skype for Business) licenses.

Choosing between them can be very difficult, in part because the networking people are so passionate about Cisco and likewise for the enterprise software team and Microsoft. Each camp comprises articulate, educated, well-meaning employees whose vendor preferences often lead to a showdown on voice and collaboration.

In this post, we take opposing views on how to solve the problem -- but we're not arguing Cisco over Microsoft or vice versa. Rather, we're debating whether or not you even need to make a choice between the two. In "You Really Need to Decide... Now," on Page 2, read Phil's take on why choosing one or the other is the best option. On page 3, read "Have Your Cake & Eat It Too... Integrate," for Brent's positioning on why coexistence is a viable option. Then, join us at Enterprise Connect 2015 next week in Orlando, where we'll be going head to head live and in person during the session, "Microsoft vs. Cisco: Compare, Contrast - or Coexist?" The session will take place on Tuesday, March 17, at 2:45 p.m.

But first, to better understand the options of this complex choice, take a look at the four deployment options below. Two of these are elimination strategies, and two are coexistence strategies.

Four deployment choices for resolving the Cisco vs. Microsoft dilemma

In more detail, they are:

Click to the next page to read Phil's take, "You Really Need to Decide... Now"

You Really Need to Decide... Now
By Phil Edholm

The reality is, everyone wants you to make an either-or decision. This is why Microsoft and Cisco have each avoided working diligently on interoperability. For example, if you choose Option 3 and have some of your users on Lync and some on Cisco, you have no easy, viable path for federation, short of using a third-party product -- and that's hard to justify for connecting internal groups together. Similarly, in Option 4, while a Lync shop can find integrations for Cisco, such solutions often involve separate clients or apps, can be complex, and are always fraught with the challenge of keeping up to date as the vendors change underlying products and APIs. Brent may extol the value of such solutions, but I feel they are not ideal.

Choosing a single UC&C vendor comes with a variety of benefits. For example, it:

To understand the potential ongoing conflicts, consider the adoption cycle for Lync below.

Lync migration steps

While a typical organization might initially bring Lync in for simple IM and presence, the Enterprise client access license (CAL) opens the door to using Lync for peer-to-peer voice and video calling, easily integrated into the user's desktop apps. More doors open when considering the question of which platform to use for conferencing and/or federation. So, the decision to use Cisco for telephony and Microsoft for the advanced UC often results in a mix of usage and, eventually, leads users to ask for PSTN telephony on Lync clients. This is why companies like AudioCodes push the use of their gateways/session border controllers (SBCs) as dual ringing to the PBX and Lync. Eventually you'll face the question of why you're having the organization pay for and support two platforms.

Similarly, Cisco is pushing a complete UC solution that will reduce the integrated communications value of Lync in the Microsoft Office suite and license. With Squared and new offers, Cisco emphasizes its focus on a complete offer, essentially eliminating the need for Lync components. For Microsoft, the focus of the last nine years on Lync and its predecessors is, in part, to solidify the value of Office as the premier productivity software suite. Reducing that value opens the door to competitors like Google Apps. Not winning the enterprise reduces the value of Skype integration as well, another keystone of the Microsoft strategy going forward.

Yes, you can make Lync and Jabber interoperate, but that is the easy way out, not providing leadership and making the tough decision your organization needs. Moving forward with a dual-vendor strategy will only open the door to ever-increasing complexity, increasing cost, and ongoing departmental bickering and perpetuation of decision elements. The vendors will continue to push for incremental adoption, and each step will be another battle and decision, often incurring cost and new rancor.

Making a firm, single vendor decision will enable your team to focus on improving the adoption rate and increasing UC's value. To help with this, PKE Consulting has developed a second generation of Cisco/Microsoft Quantitative Decision Tool that I'll review and make available to session attendees.

So, in the end, my best advice is: Bite the bullet, decide on your strategic UC vendor, and drive adoption and innovation with your business on the platform of your choice. Don't get caught midway to the right solution for your organization.

Click to the next page for Brent's take, "Have Your Cake & Eat It Too... Integrate"

Have Your Cake & Eat It Too... Integrate
By Brent Kelly

Phil provided some good arguments for why an organization should choose either Cisco or Microsoft, and move on. But, choosing one over the other is easier said than done. The reality is that most organizations have invested a lot of time and money in infrastructure and throwing part of that investment away, whether it be Cisco or Microsoft, is not realistic. Furthermore, it is likely that a segment of the IT staff will feel disenfranchised if an executive simply says, "This is how it is, and we are going with Cisco [or Microsoft]."

I'd also like to point out that many organizations have successfully and, may I say, profitably, deployed hybrid solutions. Usually the hybrid, or co-existence, solution involves some type of conferencing element to defray costs, but it also may rely on Lync Enterprise Voice in certain locations as a cost-savings element as compared to Cisco Unified Communications Manager.

I have many examples of this, but as a case in point, a large global manufacturer had deployed Lync on all of its desktops for IM and presence. It also had deployed Cisco for its enterprise voice solution. It used a third-party conferencing provider for audio and Web conferencing. This particular company had a number of Lync users asking if they could deploy integrated conferencing, just as Phil indicated would happen with Lync.

The company looked at the economics of deploying several Lync pools with AudioCodes gateways/SBCs in various geographies to provide audio, video, and Web conferencing and then offsetting the deployment costs by reducing reliance on the third-party conferencing provider. This scenario allows people to use Lync to join a conference, and if they wish, they can still dial in from their Cisco phones. It gives users the exact same connection model if they still wish to use their phone (as in a WebEx meeting in which people will often dial in and use a Web browser for the content).

Furthermore, the company discovered that if only 50% of its conferences moved to Lync, it would actually save more than $2 million per year on conferencing costs -- and this is after the costs of deploying and maintaining Lync pools and the gateways.

The lesson here is that there is no need to be dogmatic in stating that an organization needs to choose one vendor or another: Sometimes, using both vendors makes sense for both the users and the CFO!

While I grant Phil's argument that theoretically maintaining two systems is more difficult than supporting a single-vendor environment, the reality is that the Cisco group within an organization is pretty good at managing the Cisco stuff, and the Microsoft people are already pretty good at managing the Microsoft stuff. And, large organizations will have the IT resources to do both.

By the way, I can personally document only one company, a large pharmaceutical, that has made the move entirely to Cisco. In doing so, however, it did not compute total cost of ownership but rather the IT group noted that it already had Cisco switches, Cisco telephony, and Cisco telepresence units. So, it figured that it would be better for it as an organization to go with Cisco WebEx and Jabber, and ripped out any Lync infrastructure.

I am aware of many companies that have gone with Lync voice, but I don't know personally of any large organizations that have abandoned their PBX entirely. It seems that Lync is a great solution for many people in the enterprise, but not for all. Gartner calls Lync "the 70% solution."

Based on what I see in the market, I know a lot of companies are making the hybrid approach work for them. They may not have a fully unified communications environment, but they have not felt that the supposed productivity gains by standardizing on a single vendor are worth the investment in terms of both money and retraining users.

Thus, I rest my case on what I am actually seeing being done in the market, and that is more often than not hybrid Cisco and Microsoft solutions.

Note: Phil and I are not really at opposing opinions on this topic; we simply took these positions for the sake of exploring each side. Come to our Enterprise Connect session on Tuesday, March 17, to hear and see more details on our respective arguments.