Cisco’s Webex Training Center end-of-life announcement has left many teams wondering what comes next.
If your labs, VILT sessions, or onboarding programs depend on it, the pressure to plan a replacement is real, but it doesn’t have to be stressful.
Thankfully, there’s a clear, reliable path forward with solutions that support hands-on labs, modern VILT delivery, and the flexibility Webex Training Center never had. CloudShare gives you a way to preserve your existing work, rebuild nothing, and keep your training running without disruption.
In this guide, we’ll break down what the end-of-life announcement means, what your best replacement option looks like, and how to approach your Webex Training Center migration with confidence.
End-of-Sale And End-of-Life Announcement For Webex Training Center
Cisco has formally set the retirement timeline for Webex Training Center, and the key dates are now confirmed. These dates outline when you can last purchase, renew, or receive support for the platform:
End-of-Life Announcement Date: September 15, 2025 Cisco publicly announced that Webex Training Center is being retired and will no longer be part of the Webex suite.
End-of-Sale Date: September 15, 2025 This is the final date customers can purchase the product through Cisco’s point-of-sale channels.
End of Change/Renewal Date: March 31, 2026 After this point, you can no longer renew or modify an existing subscription, and your current term will simply run out.
Last Date of Support: March 31, 2026 This is the final date Cisco provides service or technical support. After this, the product is considered obsolete.
These dates give you a clear window to plan your migration, avoid service disruption, and protect the training workflows currently running on Webex Training Center. The good news is that moving off the platform doesn’t have to be hard, especially with a modern alternative like CloudShare that’s built for hands-on labs and scalable virtual training.
Why CloudShare Is the Best Webex Training Center Replacement
When a platform as widely used as Webex Training Center reaches end-of-life, the natural fear is that your training program will be disrupted. CloudShare removes that uncertainty by giving you a modern, cloud-native foundation built specifically for delivering hands-on labs, technical training, and scalable VILT programs.
CloudShare isn’t a general-purpose meeting tool, but rather a feature-rich training environment designed for real work, practice, and infrastructure. That difference matters when your labs are complex, students need guidance, and instructors rely on consistent environments every time.
Here’s where CloudShare stands out as the best Webex Training Center alternative:
Browser-Based Labs With Zero Setup: Students join from any device without plugins or client installs. Everything runs in the browser, which eliminates the compatibility problems that slowed Webex Training Center down.
Fast, On-Demand Environments: CloudShare provisions complete labs instantly. Environments scale automatically with class size, suspend when idle, and clean up on their own. No hardware, no manual resets, no bottlenecks.
Persistent, Cloneable Blueprints: Every lab starts from a perfect “golden image.” Instructors can reuse these blueprints for VILT, self-paced courses, or multi-day workshops without environment drift or rebuilds.
Real Instructor Visibility: CloudShare’s over-the-shoulder views let instructors see exactly what students are doing. They can spot issues early, step in privately, and keep the class moving without interruptions.
Video and Labs in One Unified Workspace: Learners don’t juggle windows. Video conferencing and the live environment sit side by side, making sessions feel natural and helping students stay focused.
Safe, Isolated Practice: Every learner gets a sandboxed environment with strict network isolation. They can explore, break things, and learn safely, which is ideal for cybersecurity, sales enablement, and software training.
Smooth Lab Migration: If you’ve already created VMs outside of Webex, CloudShare lets you import them directly using OVF or OVA formats. This preserves your course design and accelerates your transition.
Deep Analytics and Reporting: CloudShare gives you visibility into engagement, activity, resource use, and completion trends. Training leaders can refine content, manage budgets, and prove program value with real data.
CloudShare moves your training program onto a stronger, more scalable foundation and delivers capabilities that go far beyond what Training Center was built to handle.
Best Practices For Webex Training Center To CloudShare Migration
A smooth migration comes down to preparation, clarity, and choosing the right starting point. You’re moving off a single-use system, so the goal is to rebuild your training foundation in a way that strengthens your program long-term, not just replaces what you had before.
These best practices keep your transition controlled, predictable, and disruption-free.
Build Your New Baseline Environments
Webex Training Center wasn’t built to save or carry over full lab environments, so your migration starts by creating your core environments directly in CloudShare. These become your reusable, ready-to-launch templates for every class. And if you already have VMs built outside Webex, you can bring them in through standard OVF or OVA imports to speed up the setup.
Validate Your Machines And Optimize For Cloud Delivery
Once your environments are in CloudShare, run automated validation checks to confirm compatibility. This ensures networking, drivers, and system settings work as intended in the cloud. It’s also a good time to remove unused software, tighten configurations, and streamline the user experience.
Standardize Your Blueprints
Turn your validated environments into standardized blueprints. These become repeatable templates you can use for VILT classes, self-paced learning, multi-day workshops, or internal training. Standardization prevents environment drift and gives instructors a consistent starting point for every session.
Configure Connectivity To Internal Systems (If Needed)
If your labs rely on internal license servers, domain controllers, or other on-prem systems, set up a secure connection between your CloudShare environments and your corporate network. This keeps your current workflows intact while giving you the advantages of cloud-based delivery.
Pilot Your First Classes
Run a small set of early sessions to verify instructor visibility, over-the-shoulder support, video integration, and environment behavior at scale. Pilots help your instructors get comfortable with their new workflow and give you room to fine-tune autosuspend rules, naming conventions, and resource usage.
Migrate In Phases
Start with a set of high-value or simpler classes and move the rest in waves. This phased approach keeps your training program stable while ensuring instructors, admins, and learners adapt smoothly. It also gives you consistent checkpoints to confirm everything is working as expected.
Lean On CloudShare Expertise
If you want a fully guided experience, CloudShare’s migration experts can walk you through setup, environment design, networking, and blueprint creation. This eliminates guesswork and gives you a reliable onboarding path, especially if your current production schedule is busy.
Start Your Webex Training Center Migration With Confidence
The Webex Training Center end-of-life deadline is approaching fast, and every team running hands-on labs or VILT sessions needs to start planning. Waiting increases the chance of instability, rushed decision-making, and the loss of a platform your training program relies on.
CloudShare gives you a clear path forward with a modern, cloud-native environment built for hands-on labs, stronger instructor tools, and scalable training delivery. Even better, we’ve made the switch easy and seamless.
CloudShare is offering free migrations from Webex Training Center so you can move your VMs and rebuild your training foundation without any heavy lifting. It’s the easiest way to ensure continuity and upgrade to a platform that supports you long after Webex Training Center is gone.
What are the risks if I don’t migrate off Webex Training Center?
Once Webex Training Center reaches end-of-life, the platform will no longer receive updates, fixes, or long-term support. Over time, this increases the chance of compatibility issues, unstable sessions, and security exposure as surrounding systems continue to evolve. Training teams may also struggle to maintain reliable labs, which can disrupt schedules and make it harder to deliver consistent hands-on learning.
Will I lose my existing training labs if I switch?
You don’t need to rebuild your labs from scratch. Modern virtual training platforms support importing standard OVF or OVA images, letting you bring your existing machines over as-is. This preserves the configurations, scenarios, and course design you’ve already invested in. Once imported, these environments can be turned into reusable templates for instructor-led, self-paced, or multi-day training.
What types of teams benefit most from switching to CloudShare?
Any team delivering hands-on, lab-based training gains value from a cloud-native platform. Customer education programs get more reliable onboarding labs, technical instructors gain real-time visibility into student work, and IT teams reduce the burden of maintaining hardware. It’s also ideal for cybersecurity, software, and networking training where learners need safe, isolated environments to explore, test, and practice without risking production systems.
