HCL Sametime (formerly IBM Lotus Sametime, acquired by HCL Technologies from IBM in 2018) is an enterprise-level unified communications and VoIP platform. It includes features such as instant messaging, web conferencing, voice and video integration, telephony capabilities, and presence information.
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Microsoft Teams
Score 7.9 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft Teams combines video conferencing software with team collaboration tools. The communications platform allows MS Office users to conduct conference calls and share files via SharePoint, and join or initiate a group chat.
$4.80
per month per user
Pricing
HCL Sametime
Microsoft Teams
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Microsoft Teams Essentials
$4.80
per month per user
Microsoft Teams Enterprise
$5.25
per month (paid yearly) per user
Microsoft Teams Enterprise
$5.25
per month per user
Microsoft 365 Business Basic
$7.20
per month per user
Microsoft 365 Business Standard
$15
per month per user
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
HCL Sametime
Microsoft Teams
Free Trial
No
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
No
Yes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
No setup fee
Additional Details
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Discounts are available for non profit organizations.
Cisco Jabber and Teams are the competitors for HCL Sametime but the thing that makes Sametime better is the cost. Cisco and Microsoft are big players and have [higher license cost than] HCL Sametime has.
For a small and medium size companies HCL can be a recommended if they want …
Sametime is very similar to the other chats I have used, with some better features, such as the screenshot feature and file sharing, which demonstrates to be faster than the others.
We use Jabber globally in our company and Symphony (no relevant app in able list) in some of the teams as well. All these are instant messenger tools, but Sametime is the easiest one to be used and its chat history is easy to be searched. Sametime can be used to contact almost …
Slack is the best messaging app that I have used for work communication. Slack is actually so easy to use, and offers such a good mobile app, that I use it on my own for personal conversations. Slack offers many features that Sametime either doesn't or doesn't do well. We …
Text chat is text chat. It's not a technically hard problem to solve. It's when you try and move out of text chat into more fully featured applications that allow for audio or video calling, transcripts, etc, it becomes apparent that the developers on Sametime gave up a long …
Workplace is honestly much better than Sametime and is what our company is moving towards using. Workplace lets you do group chats, calls, videos, and is very similar to regular Facebook so it's easy for alot of people to pick up. Even if the user hasn't used Facebook before, …
Sametime's flexibility with regards to the options available is quite a compelling reason. For an on-premises solution, Sametime is great. One of the major benefits for current IBM Notes customers with the IBM Cloud option when compared to something like Skype is the seamless …
IBM's Sametime solution did not require that third party users have their own account, which was a big win over Skype at the time we reviewed that solution. Additionally we found users were frustrated with GoToMeeting and WebEx (the two big names at the time) because plugins …
Microsoft Teams is a complementary tool I used in my software panel. So it can cover many cases where partners are not using the same tools as the ones used in my firm. It is a complementary tool with other ones like Miro, Slack, and Jira, for example, in order to facilitate …
I suppose on some level I selected Microsoft Teams because my company has it installed on the computers automatically, but having used other programs I find the Microsoft Teams interface to be very user-friendly and you aren't forced into harder to use features unless you …
With Microsoft Teams you can better check each one's agenda. The background when in a meeting is better. Microsoft Teams also have more options for integrations in place. It's also easier and more intuitive. It also offers more options of communicating and not only video …
I had the priviledge to work with Microsoft Teams Rooms both in bring your own device mode and also connecting a device via Azure monitor. This helped a lot when we needed to do local meetings with a lot of people with external partners. This helped a lot since we were able to …
We are in the Microsoft Eco-system, so Teams integrates well with our other tools. We also integrated our company website and IT website to contact me or our IT team. Without a second doubt, Teams is the application we choose among others and we will continue to use Teams as our …
I prefer using Slack for text and quick video/audio calls. It is easy and has features like GIFs and other integrations built in. It's a nice one button way to communicate. We use Zoom for our more structured meetings and I use Zoom for my training sessions because I can plug …
We chose primarily because of the promised integration with the Microsoft Business Suite - which it mostly delivers on. That does give Teams an obvious advantage over competitors. IMHO Teams has a richer, more mature feature set, and the experience is more reliable and stable. …
The Office 365 suit contains everything needed for daily use such as document editing, spreadsheet, email client. The onedrive is a great addition to that. Microsoft Teams allows the editing and access to files saved in onedrive if ther are shared to you. Therefore, Microsoft …
Teams is the best of the company message tools that I have used so far because it integrates so many functionalities. Teams goes way beyond the instant messaging or video calls features with screen-sharing. It integrated with your calendar, enables you to do task tracking (e.g. …
While we mostly use Monday.com for our CRM needs, we still use Teams for our communication needs all day every day. We couldn't function as a team without Teams! The chat and meeting setup/scheduling function is so useful and easy to use. We have found that having meetings is …
Microsoft Teams is a centralized application and integrates to all O365 application suite, this allows any company to have everything at reach, applications, data stored, sharepoint and so on. You can set up meetings and record them which is an advantage because you dont need …
The most noticeable thing that Microsoft Teams offers and Zoom lacks is providing the history of meeting chats. If you join a Zoom meeting late, you don't get any of the chat info (e.g. shared messages, files, contact info, weblinks) that were sent prior to you joining. With …
For our particular use case, which is collaboration across teams sitting in different geographies in a fast-paced sales organization, Microsoft Teams is just the perfect platform to bring everyone together. Teams helps you keep the dialogue strictly professional which is good …
User experience is of a higher level and integrates well into Outlook. Using the tool to facilitate user testing with participants outside the company is a breeze too.
Microsoft Team is one of Microsoft's newest applications. Looking at the evolution of the Office suite, I can only imagine what Team will become with the next updates. It's a product that fills a need and has a lot of possibilities to evolve well. I would put it right in the …
Overall, Sametime is a great feature for global teams to communicate, since you can chat quickly and efficiently with Sametime. Also, the file transfer is really fast and it downloads to any folder you choose. The chat history is easy to use and it is easy to find keywords. The feature of creating "emoticons" sometimes can jeopardize the team's efficiency.
Microsoft Teams is ideal for organizations where employees regularly collaborate by sharing files, working on the same documents, updating the progress, etc. This is because different file formats are supported for online editing and collaboration with the help of Microsoft Teams. Additionally, for every file which is shared among the team members, emails are not sent again and again which helps in easily managing and organizing files. It is less appropriate where the team members have to instantly reply to an urgent task as sometimes the notifications are not sent properly which may lead to a delay in the work.
The license cost is comparatively low so almost all staff have it installed in our company. We can use it to contact all internal staff.
It’s light and fast with almost no downtime. It also provides easy to use APIs for the user to build automation process on it. We have an internally built robot running on Sametime to answer frequently asked questions and do some repetitive tasks.
Chat history can be saved as per user’s preference and it is easy to be searched.
Video calls are great with Microsoft Teams. They've made big improvements over the last year and I rarely have issue with getting on. It's nice when things just work.
The most used functionality is, of course, the chat feature. It does what it's supposed to do and you can create chat groups from whoever you'd like. We use it a lot when there is a special project and a team from various groups get together for a short period of time to get things done.
An overlooked function is the ability to search anything within Microsoft Teams. Any photo, document, or chat can be searched and found pretty easily. I can't tell you how many times this has saved me from having to rewrite something or start over.
The mobile app is not that great for anything outside of straight up messaging.
We tried video chatting within Sametime without any real success. There were connection issues and the app would crash quite often. We switched to another product and had no problems.
IBM Sametime just looks outdated. The menus and contact list are not up to date from a UX perspective compared to many other popular chat apps.
Sametime is now an embedded experience for our users. They know it, they like it, they use it, and they expect it to be wherever they are. Because it is pretty easy to use and NEVER goes down, users know they can rely on it and won't be frustrated by it. Sametime is right up with there with Microsoft Office in terms of user adoption and appreciation.
Microsoft Teams is included with our Office 365 subscription and we have no intention of migrating off of Office 365 and Microsoft products. Since Microsoft Teams is included for free with our Office 365 subscription, and since we enjoy all the features, benefits, and functionality, there is no question that our team will continue to use the product
Just about everything works the way you expect it would and it's relatively easy for users to figure out. Sametime was one of those things that we started with only a few people as a "test" and before the test period was done we discovered a few hundred people had figured out how to log in and most got it working all on their own. Many of our users want to use Sametime and do so regularly; we do not have to create policies enforcing its usage. Users find it practical to use Sametime to do things like chat, transfer files, share their screen, and so forth.
The overall functionality of the product is incredible in that it provides a one-stop solution for organization and communication. The product is also very well integrated into Microsoft Outlook and other Office apps. Visually pleasing and very easy to use interface. New features are constantly being added to enhance the user experience.
Typically if Sametime is not available, it's because Windows Updates were done on the servers and they were not rebooted. However, that's not a problem with Sametime -- in fact, if you have Linux you could probably run Sametime for years without any hiccups whatsoever. We have no internal Linux expertise.
Generally very good. Occasionally AV or screen-sharing will stutter and every now and then I hear of it dropping out altogether, but in all cases it was easy to re-establish
I have to use support for many customers. However, support is generally quite responsive and continues to see an issue through to resolution and I would recommend using their knowledgeable and well-trained staff.
I think Microsoft Team is overall good application for communication, track Project work inter the teams and also intra teams. I have 7 out of 10 because it needs improvements in certain features like video sharing call, call drop, audio quality and connecting problems even after having good internet connection.
Text chat is text chat. It's not a technically hard problem to solve. It's when you try and move out of text chat into more fully featured applications that allow for audio or video calling, transcripts, etc, it becomes apparent that the developers on Sametime gave up a long time ago. In my organization, Slack has nearly completely replaced Sametime for any and all purposes that Sametime used to fulfill.
We chose primarily because of the promised integration with the Microsoft Business Suite - which it mostly delivers on. That does give Teams an obvious advantage over competitors. IMHO Teams has a richer, more mature feature set, and the experience is more reliable and stable. Although like any of there there is room for imporvement.
Sametime is rock solid. It runs on WebSphere, DB2 and other related IBM technologies. This does mean the back-end is highly complex and very difficult to learn and get comfortable with, however.
User experience has been much better than the previous Skype for Business app. It has an easy-to-use interface with persistent chats. The search feature is very fast and useful.
MS Teams has mostly focused on Collaboration and team building features which are very useful for organisational communications. This in turn has a positive impact on the overall business outcome.
Scheduling meetings have never been so easy in the past. We can schedule meetings on the go without any hassles
Since Teams is accessible from multiple platforms like Laptop, Desktop, Mobile phones, etc it has been very convenient from a Mobility perspective.
