Story by Sandra Gittlen, Search Unified Communications
As these industry giants wrestle for dominance in UC, their fight moves to the cloud. But as their offerings increasingly overlap, how do you decide which best fits your business?
When Cisco and Microsoft came out with plans to strengthen their respective collaboration abilities in the cloud last December, you could empathize with enterprises struggling to figure out the differences between them.
After all, Microsoft’s newly released Office 365 Enterprise E5 and Cisco’s Spark both claim to focus on the core functions of meet, message and call for small to midsized businesses. Both tap the benefits of the cloud to avoid the hassles and upfront costs of on-premises equipment. And while Office 365 Enterprise E5 includes collaborative conferencing tools like Skype for Business Online, Spark has always-on messaging and file sharing and offers video meetings with screen sharing. What’s a buyer to do?
