I have client asking what’s a good telecom and/or teleconferencing software package. Location US. Might be used globally. I haven’t been doing much of this lately and want to give him good advice.
Thank you all!
Does he/she have any specific requirements?
- Video/Audio
- Screen sharing
- Branch office(s)
- PSTN connectivity
- Bandwidth
- File/Media Collaboration
- VoIP phones
- Video conferencing cameras
This is a broad category to most of us.
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Company I used to work for used Webex and it worked pretty well. Users can either call in on a phone or connect using the browser extension - supports audio, video, screen sharing, remote control and file transfer. It was a multinational company based in US so I frequently used it with colleagues in the US from here in Australia.
I don’t know what the cost is though.
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I’ve got a “phone” interview tomorrow, and they asked if we could use Google Duo. Part of me almost instead on using Hangouts, but… Whatever works. 
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Maybe there is some ideas of what’s popular/current here:
Also, Leo used to advertise for Ring Central, but I think that’s just a cloud hosted PBX
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Thank you for the quick responses. All good! Since many will be working from home for the next several months it will be nice to have a leg-up on work solutions.
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Nobody’s been asked to work from home here yet, but I’m going to take my laptop home tonight and make sure the VPN into work actually works just in case.
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Zoom.us is the least worst option I have used. It works well enough, and has a generous free tier.
WebEX is nothing but pain. Google Hangouts requires explaining what version of hangouts you want to use (the old legacy version, or the new one available to G Suite users) and sometimes refuses to work.
For 1 to 1, regular Skype (not Skype for Business) works well.
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Hi I have been working from home for a while and have participated in online meeting for hours on end, sometimes 6+ hours per day.
I have used webex, zoom, slack, appear.in, bluejeans and skype.
Most of these tools would work in your case. Most of them have a free tier that allow you to use them, but with locked down features. For example in some cases you can do voice only, or can not share your screen.
The one with the smoothest experience was zoom. It can cover most enterprise level use cases, you can join using a computer, smartphone app, or just dial into a meeting. It works smoothly in all platforms, Windows, Mac, Linux and via a browser. You can record your meeting and the recording is stored in mp4 and not some obscure proprietary format that require a special player (webex I am looking at you).
One negative about zoom is that at some point they had rolled out an update that included a web server that zoom could use to call back to your own system. They did not inform people about this and if I remember correctly it was a chore to disable this feature. When the story leaked, it really damaged the trust lots of people had for zoom.
I hope the above are helpful
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We are a manufacturing concern. about 2% of our workers could work from home.
I could, theoretically work from home, but have to do things like change backup tapes or install new kit, repair things etc. ad-hoc, so it isn’t a long-term thing.
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I work for the state government and 99% of what I do can be done from home via a VPN. I have good fibre connectivity so it’s almost like being in the office - the Cisco VPN worked well when I tried it.
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FWIW I will say that my wife uses webex via corporate VPN and it’s somewhat finicky. She says there are often issues with camera or other things. Recently added new webcam and 2 days later webex wouldn’t recognize cam. YMMV. (I am not involved in her company IT configuration!)
On the other hand, I’ve used Zoom with some success. Pretty easy. Like @nickapos said, most of the products would work well enough. But #COVID19 offers are all over many of these tools now, so you can probably get some more advanced features at “trial” level.
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