Cisco Meeting Server (discontinued) vs. MaestroConference

Cisco meeting Server can be used to host meeting for a small group 2 people and also can host meeting for hundreds of people. Even if the scalability increases no compromise in the call and consistent performance can be observed. The video quality is clear and there is no noticeable latency between audio and video. The recording feature is well placed and it helps a lot in rectifying and processing the important points that might have been left out during the meeting.

Incentivized

Key questions to ask might be: 1) Do I want to create a more "in-person" experience for my participants? 2) Do I want participants to be able to connect in smaller groups? 3) Will I be leading exercises that I want participants to actively engage in? 4) Would it be helpful for participants to be able to talk amongst themselves at any point during my presentation? 5) Do I want to be able to listen in on what participants share in the smaller groups?

Incentivized

• Picture and sound quality are excellent.
• Connection is strong and reliable.
• It allows people at home to feel apart of the meeting on site.

Incentivized

• The number one strength of Maestro Conference is the ability for the host to create "break out" groups where members of the call can interact with each other in smaller groups as if they were in an in-person conference.
• Another quality of Maestro Conference that I love is the fact that the host can then "weave in and out" of the different break out groups, listening in, providing support and getting feedback. It's an incredibly tool that Maestro offers.
• Lastly I think Maestro Conference has excellent customer service.

Incentivized

• Add some of the features which are currently only accessible by API, this will reduce intervention of support team and downtime.
• Bring some features to foreground. Some users find it difficult to navigate to certain buttons which are embedded in menus.
• Allow easy access to some of the controls.

Incentivized

• The call sound quality was often pretty poor, and we had a lot of trouble with calls being dropped. Over the years I would periodically throw in the towel and go back to Free Conferencing just to have reliable quality. But they only have 3 of 4 breakout rooms and I couldn't conduct the rooms easily. Then I try MC again to see if the engineering had improved. It was like a wave. Sometimes better, sometimes worse.
• The conductor interface has an annoying glitch wherein we could not change a persons attribute fields on the fly. I would interview my callers and assign them to one class or another based on their answers, and the partner up people into breakout rooms based on their answers. This meant editing the two attribute fields , and it just plain didn't work 75% of the time.
• Maestro Conference repositioned its business away from small educators like me, to large organizations like political action committees. The price became too high for me, and it just no longer made sense. I repositioned my product to work with less expensive and less complicated solutions.
• The add on features, like recording each conference room, were insanely expensive.
• VOIP and MC didn't mix. The MC dialer never worked. Neither did Skype. This meant that my international callers were out of luck. This was FRUSTRATING to say the least. Now I just use Skype. A picture is worth a thousand words.

Incentivized

because we're satisfied of the product

Incentivized

Too much money for what I get. I have reworked my product to use fewer breakout rooms, or to work in other ways

Incentivized

very easy to use and quick to learn

Incentivized

I never used Support

Incentivized

Apart from Cisco Meeting Server, only Poly offers full fledged on-premise meeting server. Their solution is called Polycom RealPresence
Collaboration Server. But there solutions are mostly outdated. Even though they have recently changes to subscription via Poly Clarity but servers are still very old. Whereas Cisco Meeting Server was recently updated and integrates well with WebEx and Cisco's other products.

Incentivized

Maestro has everything that GoToMeeting and WebEx has. The primary thing that sold us on Maestroconference was the ability to incorporate breakout groups for small group discussions and explorations. It also is very easy to access and does not require a type of download onto a users' computer for the interactive conference calls. The interface is very intuitive and easy to use and the call quality is high and access is reliable.

Incentivized

• Definitely cost effective if you use most of the services and are a partner
• They are very supportive with any issues the business faces and offers great solutions
• I would like to see a more user-friendly website

Incentivized

• increased engagement
• increased collaboration among departments
• better assessment of field needs
• increased productivity
• reduce cost of delivering training and conducting meetings

Incentivized