Cisco Business Edition 7000 (discontinued) vs. HCL Notes

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Cisco Business Edition 7000 (discontinued)
Score 9.0 out of 10
N/A
Cisco Business Edition 7000 was a collaboration and universal communication, VOIP / telephony, conferencing and messaging platform for enterprises of 1000 to 5000 employees. It has been discontinued, and is superseded by functionality found in Webex Calling.N/A
HCL Notes
Score 3.5 out of 10
N/A
Notes from HCL (formerly from IBM, acquired by HCL in late 2018) is a collaboration platform based on the Lotus platform.N/A
Pricing
Cisco Business Edition 7000 (discontinued)HCL Notes
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Cisco Business Edition 7000 (discontinued)HCL Notes
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Cisco Business Edition 7000 (discontinued)HCL Notes
Considered Both Products
Cisco Business Edition 7000 (discontinued)
Chose Cisco Business Edition 7000 (discontinued)
Cisco Business edition are very comfortable and got great functioning. This name is a brand in market and the support from their side is very good. The life support of phones is very good. They have embedded with good security features and algorithm so interception become …
Chose Cisco Business Edition 7000 (discontinued)
It worked much the way that Cisco Business Edition 7000 works. I cannot say what the differences are.
Chose Cisco Business Edition 7000 (discontinued)
Looking at the feature sets and customer experience overall it's a good investment to make. It provides insights and also gives needed reports and statistics.
Chose Cisco Business Edition 7000 (discontinued)
It is more scalable and has more applications. However, that also depends on the customer environment and requirements.
Chose Cisco Business Edition 7000 (discontinued)
I've used 220s and 240s too, but it takes a lot of time to set them up, a lot of time to download the iso files, and set up of datastores. 7k saves the engineer a lot of pre-build assessment and evaluation time. Gets a lot done in a lot less time, returns are a happy engineer …
Chose Cisco Business Edition 7000 (discontinued)
Before Cisco Business Edition 7000, the installation was done on UCS servers. In them, I had to install everything from scratch, because it did not have VMware installed.
Chose Cisco Business Edition 7000 (discontinued)
We choose Cisco Business Edition 7000 over the other vendors as the relationship between us and Cisco was very good. Regarding support, in implementation and support after implementation, we faced some issues but found great support in troubleshooting and fixing all problems. …
Chose Cisco Business Edition 7000 (discontinued)
  • Simplified infrastructure.
  • All in one services.
  • Excellent support.
Chose Cisco Business Edition 7000 (discontinued)
Mitel, ShoreTel, Avaya. Cisco is a leader and continues to put up a great product with no fear of going out of business or being bought out.
HCL Notes
Chose HCL Notes
It helps in organizing work by just speaking to it, and you don't have to specifically type in the data and use it. It has a better UI and also is faster.
Chose HCL Notes
Outlook has been considered for years as a replacement platform. Pricing and support staff made it prohibitive. Our long-time use of Microsoft Office productivity suite naturally led us to consider the adoption of Office365. A recent investigation told us that Azure Cloud …
Chose HCL Notes
It had a simple user interface. It can be altered and modified to any database.
Chose HCL Notes
Our organization used IBM Notes before I started working there and is a legacy system that some teams still use. Many others in our company have switched to Slack and Google Hangouts as well as Google calendar. Slack and Google Hangouts offer a much better chat experience that …
Chose HCL Notes
As I stated previously, mail is mail. Notes is a fantastic option as a frontend for mail. On top of that, a business can be built from the custom applications that can be developed in it. We do have gmail as an option, but the vast majority of users are on Notes. We also choose …
Chose HCL Notes
I've already answered this question in the previous questions however to sum it up IBM Notes stacks up VERY WELL! It has a LOT of really good business/enterprise features like enterprise-grade Dropbox-like storage, synced email/calendar/contacts, it supports a LOT of …
Chose HCL Notes
Exchange is too resource hungry and cumbersome to restore granular. It requires several other Microsoft Servers to integrate just to meet IBM Notes in terms of features. As someone once described, doing an apple to apple [comparison] is difficult. If Exchange were taken as an …
Chose HCL Notes
We've looked at Exchange a few times. However, for more costly licensing and about the same amount of administrative support required, Exchange only does mail, calendar and contacts.

We do all that with Notes already, plus dozens of custom applications, and for less costly …
Chose HCL Notes
We originally selected Notes for it's ease of use, and ability to be customized. As the industry has progressed we have had to move on to a more progressive path.
Chose HCL Notes
I selected IBM Notes, because of its security features.
Chose HCL Notes
We are a small IT team and always had to deal with very high expectation, faster turn around time from users. Every application we've developed has very short turn around time and less resources. In the past 15 years, we can provide more application and doing it faster than …
Chose HCL Notes
Database development capabilities. Document management orientation.
Features
Cisco Business Edition 7000 (discontinued)HCL Notes
Project Management
Comparison of Project Management features of Product A and Product B
Cisco Business Edition 7000 (discontinued)
7.1
Ratings
9% below category average
HCL Notes
6.9
Ratings
11% below category average
Task Management7.60 Ratings7.00 Ratings
Gantt Charts7.00 Ratings6.00 Ratings
Scheduling6.70 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Workflow Automation7.90 Ratings5.00 Ratings
Mobile Access7.30 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Search6.30 Ratings6.00 Ratings
Visual planning tools6.90 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Communication
Comparison of Communication features of Product A and Product B
Cisco Business Edition 7000 (discontinued)
6.9
Ratings
14% below category average
HCL Notes
9.2
Ratings
15% above category average
Chat5.90 Ratings6.00 Ratings
Notifications7.10 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Discussions7.10 Ratings9.50 Ratings
Surveys8.30 Ratings9.10 Ratings
Internal knowledgebase7.10 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Integrates with GoToMeeting6.90 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Integrates with Gmail and Google Hangouts6.50 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Integrates with Outlook5.90 Ratings10.00 Ratings
File Sharing & Management
Comparison of File Sharing & Management features of Product A and Product B
Cisco Business Edition 7000 (discontinued)
7.4
Ratings
6% below category average
HCL Notes
7.6
Ratings
4% below category average
Versioning6.30 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Video files9.80 Ratings6.00 Ratings
Audio files7.90 Ratings6.00 Ratings
Document collaboration6.30 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Access control7.10 Ratings6.00 Ratings
Advanced security features8.40 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Integrates with Google Drive8.90 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Device sync4.30 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Cisco Business Edition 7000 (discontinued)HCL Notes
Small Businesses
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Score 9.0 out of 10
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Score 9.0 out of 10
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Troop Messenger
Troop Messenger
Score 9.8 out of 10
Troop Messenger
Troop Messenger
Score 9.8 out of 10
Enterprises
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Score 9.0 out of 10
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Score 9.0 out of 10
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User Ratings
Cisco Business Edition 7000 (discontinued)HCL Notes
Likelihood to Recommend
8.4
(0 ratings)
7.0
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
1.7
(0 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(0 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Cisco Business Edition 7000 (discontinued)HCL Notes
Likelihood to Recommend
The platform is perfectly suited for collaboration involving everything related to integrated voice and video systems. It is easily installed on physical servers and virtualized and can be accessed remotely. The BE 7000 modernized the infrastructure with voice-over IP and generates complete reports on the telephone and video usage of users in all the company's regions for internal control and auditing. The solution can be recommended for medium and large scenarios from 1000 users up to a limit of 5000 users.
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I often work with teams from other country and regions, hence HCL Notes is a very useful platform for internal company management operations. It standardized organisational work standards in most of the offices worldwide. HCL Notes also enables chat with other team around the world that I find very helpful when initiating conversation or just want to have a quick update rather than sending emails and waiting for replies. However, HCL Notes is not very efficient in web browsing and user still need to use other internet service providers.
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Pros
  • Voicemail message are retained for a lengthy period of time.
  • It efficiently allows for users to phone colleagues in other departments by the extension number.
  • Headset usage comes in handy.
  • Speaker phone capability works well.
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  • Data sharing via small database format is valuable as they are quickly deployed, easily managed and distributed on backend email servers.
  • Integrated messaging allows quick communications between geographical sites reducing long distance costs.
  • Policy documents for registering new users, setting initial security levels, assigning default database access is managed easily with the admin client.
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Cons
  • The User interface of phone could be better and it can be more interactive. The options are complex.
  • The configuration part is tough as we need to select them manually through buttons which make it a difficult task.
  • If the bandwidth of network is low we may face some noise disturbance and jitter in voice.
  • There should be proper documentation available for configuration part so that anyone with good knowledge can do it.
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  • The simple user experience can be touted as a positive, but it is also a negative in some ways. Compared to other calendars, email and chat tools, IBM Notes looks like it is from the 90s.
  • We have constant issues with chat crashing. This is the main reason so many people in our organization chose to switch away from Notes.
  • There aren't a lot of integrations with IBM Notes and other applications we regularly use. Notes seems to have been left behind by many.
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Likelihood to Renew
No answers on this topic
Since companies started to moved their email systems to the Exchange platform and the cloud, we are unable to find any new projects with IBM Notes, the marketing share and software price is another issue, so we have to move to another platform.
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Usability
No answers on this topic
Easy to use for the user, most of the apps we developed, there is not much need for user training. Most of the times, we just do a demo to the users group and they can pick up from there.
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Support Rating
No answers on this topic
I've been using the production for a very long time and very happy with it. Also, all the online resources and forums for notes is very friendly and easy/quick for getting help. I found out that compared to Microsoft or Oracle or any other platforms, IBM Notes online forum is the best I have seen.
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Implementation Rating
No answers on this topic
Implementation is easy and smooth if the requirement is well gathered/documented. Notes is a RAD platform, all projects in Notes is simple in the implementation step.
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Alternatives Considered
Cisco Business edition are very comfortable and got great functioning. This name is a brand in market and the support from their side is very good. The life support of phones is very good. They have embedded with good security features and algorithm so interception become difficult by anyone. They are very reliable and has got great voice quality which makes it a best for every type of businesses. The support from Cisco is very good which I like the best.
Read full review
I've already answered this question in the previous questions however to sum it up IBM Notes stacks up VERY WELL! It has a LOT of really good business/enterprise features like enterprise-grade Dropbox-like storage, synced email/calendar/contacts, it supports a LOT of third-party add-ins, easy-to-use and friendly, very strong and robust, and most importantly it's a LOT more secure in my opinion than the competition.
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Return on Investment
  • High ROI, the communication platform provides all the necessary that is required employees to be always connected wherever they are. This improves companies overall performance and certainly income.
  • Simplified maintenance and user friendly interfaces. The platform has all the admin tool to make support easy and efficient.
  • Employees are enabled with all the Unified Communication services and they are more productive which again improves overall company's performance.
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  • ROI for us has been extreme. In the late 1990's we automated dozens and dozens of paper-based processes and created workflows for activities that had never been formalized before. Additionally all those forms with their comments, etc. have been captured in a central place to serve as audit trails.
  • Whenever we need faster access to data (mail or otherwise), it's quick and easy to deploy a new Domino server somewhere, setup replication of appropriate databases, and get the local Notes clients pointed to those resources. So that to me is positive ROI because it represents time savings based on user need.
  • Tech. Support would claim a negative ROI in terms of supporting the Notes client, Notes updates, peculiar Notes issues, and users who complain about Notes. That is certainly true to a point. The Notes client is a much more complex piece of software than, say, Outlook. But we have to remember that Notes deployments are not just for Mail but many, many applications as well. In the end I'd say we might have 1 or 2 user complaints per month, typically around Calendar issues more than anything else.
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ScreenShots