Webex Calling Migration: 5 Mistakes That IT Teams Only Discover Too Late

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“We didn’t realize analog still mattered.”

Fax machines, elevators, door phones, paging systems and alarms are still part of many environments, but their impact is often underestimated. During migration, these endpoints become the “forgotten edge” that suddenly turns into a major blocker.

💡 How to Avoid It

Conduct an early analog and legacy endpoint audit, including ownership and location. Verify what can be replaced, what must remain and how each device will connect in a cloud calling model (such as via gateways or analog adapters).

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“Network readiness isn’t just bandwidth.”

Many IT teams check bandwidth and call it a day. But voice quality depends on a whole host of factors, such as jitter, packet loss, Wi-Fi contention, QoS policies across WAN, VPN behavior for remote users and how voice traffic is treated by security stacks.

💡 How to Avoid It

Perform a full voice readiness assessment across sites and remote scenarios. Validate QoS end-to-end, not just in theory. Prioritize a plan for Wi-Fi voice performance where softphones are common.

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“Call routing and numbering plans get complicated fast.”

Numbering plans, extension ranges, DID mappings and call routing logic can become surprisingly complex when you move from legacy PBX rules to a cloud architecture, especially in multi-country and multi-site environments. Add mergers and acquisitions, regional regulations and operator dependencies, and the migration can quickly become a routing puzzle.

💡 How to Avoid It

Map your routing early and build a future-state dial plan rather than recreating every legacy behavior. Standardize where possible. Make sure global/local calling, internal extensions and emergency routing are all clearly defined and tested.

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“Compliance recording and retention are bigger than a checkbox.”

Industries like finance, healthcare, public sector and customer-facing environments often need call recording, legal hold, retention policies and audit controls. Many organizations only discover gaps when legal or compliance stakeholders ask questions like: Where is the voice data stored? How long is it retained? Who can access it? Can we search it?

💡 How to Avoid It

Bring compliance stakeholders into the project early. Document requirements for recording, retention, access control and data residency. Validate integrations with your compliance tools and confirm operational ownership after go-live.

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“Security is not automatic in cloud calling.”

Cloud calling reduces exposure in many ways but it doesn’t automatically solve voice security. Threats like toll fraud, robocalls, caller ID spoofing and social engineering still exist. And when voice is integrated into UC workflows, it becomes part of the enterprise identity and access landscape.

💡 How to Avoid It

Define a voice security posture. Consider session control and policy enforcement, call analytics and fraud protection. Make sure your organization has visibility into call behavior and the ability to act quickly when anomalies appear.