The University of Connecticut will transition away from the Cisco Webex platform for video conferencing, the Information Technology Services office announced in May. The software will be fully retired by the end of the 2026-27 school year.
Cisco Systems, the parent company and vendor of Webex, notified UConn in May that the cost of licensing would be “substantially higher,” according to ITS. The decision to move away from the software was attributed to the cost increase and “declining reliance” on the video meeting platform.
“The contributing departments jointly agreed that increasing investment in Webex is not sustainable, especially since Microsoft Teams and Blackboard Class Collaborate are available as viable alternatives,” ITS said in the announcement.
As part of the transition, which officially began on June 1, all users can still join and attend meetings, but undergraduate students and staff are no longer being granted licenses, leaving them unable to schedule meetings or use personal rooms on the platform. Faculty and graduate students now receive a “basic” Webex license, which restricts meetings to 40 minutes in duration and 100 allowable participants, with no access to create new recordings or transcriptions.
In an email to students and staff, Hartford ITS Director Josh Forest said that faculty may request an “enhanced” Webex license from ITS if they need more functionality or features.
According to ITS, UConn currently maintains 14 terabytes of Webex recordings, many of which they say “appear to be inactive or no longer needed.” Faculty are being encouraged to migrate to the Kaltura platform as part of the shutdown, with a deadline of Sept. 30 to download any recordings made through Webex and to upload them by Dec. 31.
“This transitional approach is intended to support faculty who currently rely on Webex for synchronous instruction while allowing the University time to migrate users,” ITS said.
At UConn, Webex licensing is currently funded through a cost-sharing arrangement among ITS and other university departments including the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning and certain schools and colleges. Cisco Systems, the vendor and parent company of Webex, also maintains a relationship with UConn for institutional networking equipment and telephone services.
“We are moving quickly to avoid escalating costs. You will see additional communications and support information over the coming months so that we can support the transition away from Webex,” Forest said in the email.
To help support staff and faculty, ITS and CETL are sponsoring a survey to better understand usage patterns and “feature gaps” between Webex and the recommended video conferencing software products, Microsoft Teams and Blackboard Class Collaborate.
ITS will also host and record webinars to help faculty transition to the recommended platforms.
“Those transitioning from Webex will find that many features of Teams directly mirror features in Webex, while some go by different names,” ITS’ article on transitioning from Webex to Teams states.
In the resource, ITS outlines Teams’ connection with the Outlook database to display your current availability, message and call others and “conduct impromptu and scheduled calls with up to 1,000 people.” Faculty can also use Blackboard (Husky CT) to schedule meetings and integrate with Office 365 software like OneDrive and OneNote.
They note, however, that the Webex concept of personal rooms is not present in Teams, but users can try the Bookings widget to create one-on-one scheduled meetings or establish a recurring meeting for classes or office hours.
The increased adoption and support of Teams follows UConn’s decision to migrate students from Google products to the Office 365 suite, which faculty were already using. At the time, the switch was described as a way to consolidate solutions whose “capabilities…overlap greatly” and a cost-saving measure due to increased costs from Google.
Like any large-scale change, that switch was met with negative reactions from some students, despite Microsoft products being generally regarded as default standards, since their “full-fat” desktop programs offer more features than online-only products. According to Business of Apps, a magazine for the mobile app industry, over 183,000 educational institutions use Microsoft Teams, with over 320 million monthly active users in 2024.
The decision to phase out Webex at UConn was primarily due to the “need to align enterprise services with long-term institutional budget planning” and “continued growth and maturity of Microsoft Teams adoption,” ITS’ announcement said.
ITS is providing resources to students and faculty as part of the discontinuation of Webex. More information can be found at https://kb.uconn.edu. Additional support for students is available at the ITS Technology Support Center, located on the first floor of the Homer Babbidge Library at UConn’s main campus.