Video Teleconferencing Systems

This notice announces that systems bought in 2009 for FSA state offices are no longer under warranty and may be repurposed or disposed of.  Apparently they've been replaced by Cisco systems.  That should tell me two things:

• video teleconferencing has been very productive.  I suspect, though I'm too lazy to check, I've expressed skepticism on the point in the past.  So I'm glad to hear I was wrong, because in theory I'm all for it.
• the Cisco system is a very big upgrade over the Microsoft system.  If not, what's the justification for replacement?  There may be a hint when the notice says that many of the Microsoft systems are still workable; maybe they weren't very durable.