In 2025, Cisco continued to innovate to meet the needs of organizations of every size, work style, and geography. As businesses adapt to changing workforce models and regulatory environments, the ability to deliver reliable, secure calling—anywhere in the world—has never been more important.
Throughout the year, we delivered innovations across premises, cloud, and hybrid deployment models. As the only vendor supporting all three, Cisco gives customers the flexibility to design a future-proof calling strategy that aligns with their business, regulatory, and technical requirements. This year, we introduced meaningful enhancements across each deployment model, expanded our global reach, and delivered new AI-powered capabilities designed to improve productivity, enhance customer interactions, and simplify operations.
In this blog, we’ll take a look back at the highlights from 2025—and share how these innovations are shaping what’s next for enterprise calling.
Webex Calling – Enterprise-grade, AI-powered Cloud Calling
Webex Calling reached new heights in 2025, now serving more than 18 million users. We also extended our globally availability to over 195 markets worldwide, which cumulatively represent over 95% of the world’s gross domestic product – where business is getting done, Webex Calling is available. This year, we introduced a range of new capabilities designed to boost employee productivity, enhance customer interactions, and expand access to secure, modern calling for even more users around the world.
AI Receptionist for Webex Calling
One of our goals with artificial intelligence is to remove the bottlenecks that create friction for customers and slow down employees. AI Receptionist for Webex Calling delivers on this mission by streamlining the front-desk experience. This 24/7 virtual receptionist answers calls, responds to questions, and handles tasks like scheduling appointments, transferring calls, and capturing customer information. By taking care of simple tasks, AI Receptionist ensures that every caller is greeted instantly and empowers employees to focus on the high-value, human interactions that truly drive customer satisfaction. AI Receptionist will be available in early 2026.
Webex Calling Customer Assist
Interacting with customers is one of the most impactful use cases for calling—it drives revenue, strengthens satisfaction, and helps to resolve customer issues quickly. In 2025, we introduced Webex Calling Customer Assist, a reimagined solution that brings customer engagement tools directly into the Webex app.
With Customer Assist, agents can easily join queues, monitor real-time queue activity, and ensure callers aren’t left waiting. Managers gain powerful insight with features agent and queue monitoring, and analytics that reveal why customers are calling and how teams are performing. Together, these insights help organizations continuously optimize service quality and deliver exceptional customer experiences. Customer Assist is now available to Webex Calling users globally.
AI-Powered Tools That Transform Every Call
In 2025, we announced several AI-driven capabilities designed to help employees have more efficient and more informed conversations with customers. These features reduce friction on both sides of the call and allow employees to focus on delivering meaningful support—not hunting for information.
Caller Intent makes every call more productive before it even begins. When a call comes in, employees see a quick preview of why the customer is calling, giving them valuable context before they answer. Caller Intent can surface insights based on the caller’s previous interactions—either with the same employee or with colleagues who transferred the call—so employees start each conversation prepared.
Suggested Responses take in-call productivity even further. As the customer speaks, AI analyzes the conversation and surfaces recommended replies pulled from your organization’s knowledgebase. Instead of pausing to search for answers or documentation, employees get instant guidance, helping them respond faster and more accurately. This reduces call length, minimizes caller frustration, and frees employees to stay focused on delivering great service.
Together, these AI-powered innovations streamline conversations, elevate customer satisfaction, and boost employee efficiency. Both features will be available in early 2026.
Cisco Call for Microsoft Teams
Voice communication is mission critical, and businesses need a calling solution that delivers enterprise-grade reliability, features, and scale. While Microsoft Teams is a popular collaboration platform, Teams Phone often falls short for organizations that require robust calling capabilities. Cisco Call for Microsoft Teams fills that gap by bringing the full Webex Calling experience directly into Teams.
In 2025, we continued to improve the Cisco Call for Teams experience with AI-driven enhancements like call recording summaries, integrated customer assistance tools, and power-calling tools like the multi-call window. These new capabilities are available now for Cisco UCM, Dedicated Instance, and Webex Calling users globally.
Expanded Global Availability
Our customers rely on Cisco to deliver reliable, compliant, and secure calling for mission critical applications globally. We continue to strengthen that reach with investments in regional availability as well as PSTN flexibility.
In India, we’ve steadily expanded our capabilities to support both domestic enterprises and multinational organizations. After introducing Local Gateway support in 2022, we added cloud PSTN through Webex Calling by Tata Communications in 2024. In 2025, we expanded our presence in India with a second data center to power Webex Calling and Webex Calling Customer Assist, with Webex Contact Center coming next year.
This solution enables businesses, including domestic companies and multinational organizations, to meet India’s strict regulatory and compliance requirements by storing call recordings, voicemail, CDRs, and audit logs locally. Customers can connect through Local Gateway or Cloud Connect for Webex Calling via trusted partners including Airtel and Tata Communications—ensuring secure, flexible, and compliant cloud collaboration.
We’re also pleased to announce that AT&T Business is the first Certified Calling Provider for Webex Calling for Government, our FedRAMP Authorized solution. This partnership gives U.S. government agencies the flexibility to simplify deployments and reduce on-premises infrastructure with AT&T’s cloud PSTN.
Cisco UCM – Ongoing innovation with the marketing lead premises calling platform
Cisco Unified Communications Manager (UCM) is the industry’s leading premises calling platform that delivers mission-critical communication to more than 30 million users worldwide. Backed by over 25 years of proven market leadership, UCM has earned a reputation for unmatched reliability, scale, and security in the world’s most demanding environments.
We’ve continued to invest heavily in the platform with the release of Cisco UCM 15, which delivers 125+ security updates, 300+ product enhancements, and over 400,000 hours of engineering development. Our commitment to UCM’s future is unwavering, with UCM 16 on the horizon and more than a decade of planned innovation to ensure customers have a secure, modern, and resilient calling foundation for years to come.
Learn more about Cisco UCM 15 and beyond in this on-demand webinar:
UCM Hypervisor Flexibility
As part of our ongoing investment in UCM, we remain focused on giving customers the flexibility and confidence they need to plan for the long term. Due to changes in Broadcom’s licensing model for VMware, a top request from customers has been expanded hypervisor support. In response, we announced two new hypervisor options for UCM: Cisco NFVIS-for-UC and Nutanix AHV.
NFVIS-for-UC is targeted for beta in Q4 CY2025 with general availability in Q1 CY2026, and support for Nutanix AHV is planned for calendar year 2026. These additions provide customers with greater choice, operational control, and a more resilient path forward as they modernize their on-premises collaboration environments.
Learn more about our expanded hypervisor options for UCM in the on-demand webinar below:
Webex Calling Hybrid – Cloud Innovation, Premises Confidence
In 2025, we introduced a major advancement for organizations that depend on Cisco UCM as the backbone of their mission-critical communications environments. Many customers retain on-premises calling infrastructure to meet stringent security, compliance, and data-sovereignty requirements. At the same time, these organizations are seeking a controlled, predictable way to benefit from cloud innovation without compromising operational stability.
To address these needs, we introduced Webex Calling Hybrid, an industry-first solution that enables UCM customers to maintain their on-premises deployment while selectively adopting cloud-based capabilities from Webex Calling. This model provides a flexible path to modernization, allowing cloud services to be introduced where permitted and appropriate, while preserving the reliability, governance, and performance of an on-prem communications environment.
Cloud PSTN is available today for Webex Calling Hybrid. This solution gives customers access to cloud-based PSTN services from more than 40 world-class service providers. Looking ahead, Webex Calling Hybrid will add support for our latest AI-powered features—including Cisco AI Assistant, Customer Assist, and AI Receptionist—bringing modern automation and AI innovation to on-prem environments.
Webex Calling Hybrid will also enhance the administrator experience, with improvements to Cloud Connected UC that streamline management, richer analytics, upgraded E911 capabilities, and deeper Alert Center integration. And this is just the beginning—new Webex Calling Hybrid innovations will continue to roll out throughout calendar year 2026, ensuring customers have a secure, future-ready path forward.
Learn more about Webex Calling Hybrid in the on-demand webinar below:
Looking Ahead: Building What’s Next in 2026 and Beyond
Our innovations introduced in 2025 reflect a clear direction: giving organizations reliable, secure calling solutions that adapt to their operational, regulatory, and architectural realities. Whether customers are deploying cloud, premises, or hybrid environments, Cisco Calling continues to evolve to support how and where work gets done—without forcing tradeoffs between innovation and control.
As we move into 2026, our focus remains on extending these capabilities even further. Customers can expect continued investment in AI-powered calling experiences, broader global availability, deeper integration across deployment models, and expanded administrative and compliance tooling. From new AI capabilities in Webex Calling and Webex Calling Hybrid to increased flexibility for UCM deployments, our roadmap is centered on helping organizations modernize at their own pace while maintaining the reliability and trust they depend on.
2025 laid the foundation. In 2026, we’ll continue building on it—delivering practical innovation that helps customers stay secure, connected, and ready for what’s next.
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AI Receptionist for Webex Calling
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