Dispelling the Myth 2) On-Premise has limited features and user experience

Some cloud video conferencing platforms offer more features than self-hosted (on-premise) video conferencing platforms.

However, having fewer features is not a weakness. This is by design.

Jon English

• 17 June 2025
• 8min read

Within this blog, we’ll discuss the topic of video conferencing platform feature sets from two perspectives:

1. Core features required for high-quality video conferencing
2. Additional features that enhance the user experience

Core Features For Self-hosted Video Conferencing

Let’s start here. Self-hosted video platforms offer a significant range of features and functions.

The list below includes some of the core features offered by CMS, Cisco’s on-premise video conferencing platform when managed by Cisco’s recommended management platform, VQ Conference Manager.

Types of Meetings Supported

• Scheduled Meetings – One-time and recurring meetings can be scheduled using a web portal, an Outlook plug-in, Outlook add-in, VQ Metro or a Jabber plug-in.
• Ad-Hoc Meetings – Meetings can be initiated  from a video system or client app (e.g. Jabber or Webex registered devices).
• VMRs (Virtual Meeting Rooms) – Persistent, always-available meeting spaces that users can join at any time. Think of VMRs as your organization’s digital conference rooms. CMS supports both shared and personal (user-specific) VMRs.

Types of Participants Supported

• Meeting Rooms/Video Systems – Includes participants using Cisco or third-party room video endpoints, such as Cisco Webex Room devices or other SIP -compatible systems, to connect seamlessly to CMS-hosted meetings.
• Desktop Users – Includes individuals using applications to join meetings from their desktops or laptops.
• Browser Users – Includes participants accessing meetings via WebRTC-compatible browsers, enabling them to join without installing additional software.

Security Features

• LDAP Synchronization – Allows integration with LDAP directories for user authentication and access control, ensuring secure and centralized user management.
• SSO – Can integrate with SAML 2.0 based SSO
• Lobby – Provides a virtual waiting area for participants, enabling hosts to control who enters the meeting and prevent unauthorized access.
• Invite-Only Meetings – Restricts meeting access to specific invitees, ensuring that only authorized participants can join the session.
• PIN Codes – Requires participants to enter a PIN to access meetings or spaces, adding an extra layer of security for sensitive discussions.
• Lock Meetings – Enables hosts to lock meetings after all participants have joined, preventing additional users from entering and enhancing privacy.
• Support for Air-Gapped Deployments (Private Networks) – Allows CMS and VQCM to operate in isolated environments disconnected from public networks, ideal for highly secure or classified deployments.
• Media Encryption – Encrypts video and audio streams using industry-standard protocols like Secure Real-Time Transport Protocol (SRTP), protecting media content during transmission.
• Control Data Encryption – Secures signaling and control data using TLS and SSL encryption, ensuring that administrative and operational communications are protected.
• End-to-End Encryption (E2EE) – Provides encryption for media streams directly between participants without intermediaries, ensuring maximum confidentiality.
• Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) – Implements granular permissions based on user roles, allowing administrators to restrict access to specific features or data based on organizational policies.
• Password Complexity Enforcement – Requires strong passwords with configurable complexity rules (e.g., uppercase letters, numbers) to protect user accounts from brute-force attacks.
• Audit Logging – Tracks user actions such as logging in, joining meetings, or muting participants, providing detailed logs for security monitoring and compliance

Meeting Experience Features

• One Button to Join  – Simplifies the meeting join process by allowing participants to connect with a single click or button press, eliminating the need to enter long dialing strings or SIP URIs.
• Custom Branding  – Allows customization of the web app and meeting interface, including background images, logos, text strings, and invitation templates. Branding files can be stored locally.
• Video Quality – Supports high-resolution video , enabling crystal-clear video quality. CMS also offers high-capacity video streaming and customizable layouts  for enhanced participant visibility and meeting aesthetics.
• Audio Quality – Intelligent noise reduction for devices reduces background noise, ensuring clearer communication during meetings.
• Content Sharing – Dual-screen capability optimizes screen real estate by allowing participants to see video on one display and content on a second display. AV1 codec support offers efficient, high-quality content sharing at up to 1080p resolution.
• Customizable Layouts – Allows users or administrators to create and apply custom screen layouts (arrangements of video windows on screen), offering flexibility to meet specific meeting needs. Layouts can be dynamically adjusted based on participant count or fixed for consistent viewing experiences.
• Meeting Controls and Management – Provides tools for real-time meeting management (concierge services) including monitoring live meetings, muting/unmuting participants, adding or removing attendees, adjusting video layouts, managing participant roles, and locking/unlocking meetings
• Lobby Management – Offers advanced lobby controls where hosts can admit participants individually, in bulk, or lock meetings to prevent unauthorized access. This feature ensures greater control over meeting participation.
• Simultaneous Multi-Language Interpretation – Supports live interpreters for simultaneous interpretation in multiple languages, enhancing accessibility for global audiences.
• Meeting Recording – Enables recording of meetings for later review or distribution. Recordings are stored securely.
• Meeting Streaming – Allows live streaming of meetings to external platforms or internal audiences, extending the reach of the meeting beyond direct participants.

Infrastructure / Scalability Features

• High Capacity (Per Meeting) – Supports up to 450 participants on a single call bridge or up to 2,600 participants across multiple call bridges within a cluster, ensuring scalability for large meetings.
• Scalability & Load Balancing (Multiple Servers) – Enables clustering of up to 24 call bridge nodes, with intelligent load balancing to distribute calls across servers based on proximity and server load, optimizing resource utilization and resilience.
• LDAP/AD Integration – Provides integration with Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) and Active Directory for centralized user authentication and management. CMS supports synchronization of up to 300,000 LDAP users across a 24-node cluster.
• Directory Services
  • Folder-Based Organization for Address Books – Enables hierarchical organization of address books for easier navigation and management.
  • Grouping Devices by Location – Allows devices to be grouped based on geographical locations for streamlined administration.
  • Up to Five Levels of Hierarchy – Supports multi-level hierarchical structures for organizing devices and users.
  • LDAP as Data Source for Directory Services
  • Custom Labels/Tags for Device Filtering and Grouping – Facilitates filtering and grouping devices using custom labels or tags.
  • Searchable Directories – Provides searchable directories to quickly locate users or devices within the system.

Monitoring & Management

• Service Configuration – Allows administrators to define meeting types, assign participant roles (e.g., host, guest), and configure PINs, passcodes, or role-based URIs to enhance call security and control access to meetings.
• Device Management – Supports auto-provisioning and configuration of devices and users, centralized device updates, and the use of device configuration templates for streamlined management.
• Integrated Analytics Dashboards
  • Meeting Performance Metrics – Provides detailed insights into meeting usage data, Call Detail Records (CDRs), participant bandwidth usage, packet loss, call quality, and other performance indicators.
  • Device Status Monitoring – Tracks device statuses (online, offline, in-call) with alerting capabilities to proactively identify issues.
• Meeting Monitoring – Displays live statistics for active meetings, including participant details, audio/video performance metrics, and content sharing status. Administrators can access this information to ensure smooth operations during meetings.
• Incident Reporting – Automatically generates reports on service disruptions or performance issues. These reports help administrators identify root causes and take corrective action.
  
  Yes. That’s a lot of features.
  
  Suffice to say that the features organizations  need to conduct high quality, secure video meetings are available within self-hosted platforms right out of the box.

Additional Features

Now that we’ve covered the basics, let’s look at the different priorities of cloud and self-hosted platforms, and the impact these differing priorities have on the release of additional features.

Cloud vs. Self-Hosted Video Platform Priorities

The table below highlights the different priorities of cloud (shared) and self-hosted (private) video conferencing platforms.

As shown above, both cloud and self-hosted platforms prioritize user experience, ease of use, and feature-set.

However, cloud video conferencing platforms prioritize accessibility and cost-efficient scalability above all else as these attributes make their offerings attractive to as many potential customers as possible.

Thus, when it comes to additional features, cloud providers work to make these features available as quickly as possible, to as many people as possible, at the lowest possible cost

For most cloud video providers, privacy, security, and data sovereignty compromises associated with additional features are considerations – but not deal breakers.

Whereas self-hosted platforms prioritize privacy, security, data sovereignty, and secure scalability as these attributes address the needs of organizations  requiring secure, large-scale video conferencing.

For most self-hosted platforms, features that compromise privacy and data sovereignty are unacceptable as they conflict with the number one priority of keeping customer data secure.

As a result, when additional features compromise security, these platforms will either choose not to offer those features to protect the virtual meeting data, or give customers the ability to deploy those features in a controlled and secure manner.

Perhaps the best way to highlight these different approaches to additional features is with a relevant example.

Feature Example – Meeting Summaries

Many cloud video conferencing platforms offer meeting summaries generated by either language models (LLMs) deployed in their cloud or public-facing AI / LLM providers.

This feature (and others such as meeting recording, transcriptions, translations, and more) requires customers’ virtual meeting data to be decrypted within the provider’s multi-customer cloud.

At  best, this is a security concern. At worst, it’s a disaster waiting to happen.

The Self-Hosted Platform Approach

Self-hosted platforms either offer these features securely or not at all.

For example, self-hosted platforms offer secure meeting recording by keeping all decrypted customer data within the customer’s private network.

To enable AI-powered features such as meeting summaries, self-hosted platforms give customers secure access to their virtual meeting data and allow them to use LLMs hosted within their private network.

For example, Cisco CMS gives customers access to their meeting recordings (which, of course, are stored securely on customer-owned, customer-controlled servers located within the customer’s private network).

The customer can then deploy their own AI / LLM models and create meeting transcriptions, summaries, and other deliverables (e.g., task lists, translations, etc.) using their own tools deployed within their own network to protect privacy, security, and data sovereignty.

Self-hosted video conferencing platforms offer a wide range of core features, including:

• Scheduled and ad-hoc meetings
• Easy meeting join
• Meeting room participants
• Desktop, laptop, mobile device and browser participants
• High quality video
• High quality audio
• High quality content sharing
• Robust meeting controls (concierge meetings)
• Strong reliability
• Exceptional security
• Massive scalability
• Meeting monitoring and management
• Device provisioning, monitoring, and management
• Reporting, analytics and alerts
• And much more

Furthermore, instead of rolling features that compromise the security of customer virtual meeting data, self-hosted platforms give customers secure access to their data and let them choose which features they want to deploy (and how to deploy them).

The net is that self-hosted platforms offer the features you need and the power to protect and control your data and user experience.