Cisco Unified Communications Manager

Call Manager - Good for medium and large companies

Commentaires : In general I liked it.
I stayed in version 11.5 and it works very well, it still has support and I can upgrade phone firmwares without problem.
I think I will stick with this version for a bit longer before migrating to a subscription scheme with the new licensing.

Avantages :

The versatility of the tool is what we like the most. It supports all protocols and is easy to integrate with third parties. Policies can be created very easily and user control is simplified with the integration to LDAP.

Inconvénients :

Being able to upgrade software and IOS is no longer so simple. The new version 12 and 14 no longer support perpetual licensing. I think this is something that will affect small clients and will be very limited in the future.

More than just VoIP - A Powerful UC and Collaboration Suite

Avantages :

Cisco Unified Communications Manager and its associated products (Unity Connection voicemail, Contact Center Express, etc.) provide a full suite of unified communications and collaboration capabilities. The solution can scale to from SMB to large enterprise and is highly flexible, allowing it to accommodate a wide range of business needs. The latest versions transition both voice and video communication onto a unified platform to drive the ubiquity of video adoption and impact the speed of business. Support for a wide range of endpoints, including PC, tablet, and mobile devices, allows for the adoption of collaboration tools by remote and mobile workers. The product is powerful and lends itself easily to fulfilling business goals.

Inconvénients :

One of the primary negatives about Cisco UCM would be the cost, especially at smaller scales and when competing against a legacy TDM solution. Even for businesses that are driven primarily by cost though, the additional benefits such as integrated instant messaging, point to point video, and mobile device integration may prove to be enough of a differentiator to justify the extra expense. Organizations that are interested in managing their own solution will typically need to hire or have on staff a fairly high level engineer, though most IT people would be capable of learning how to handle at least basic moves, adds, and changes. The importance of solid solution architecture and maintenance can not be overstated enough.

Robust product set with strong functionality but a lot to learn

Commentaires : Great way to monitor and manage on-premise phone systems without paying a substantial fee to a consultant/product provider for management. Allows for a very robust amount of phone service management and integrate with several other third-party products for additional tools (have their own quirks and requirements for management and account permissions). All around great, and very matured, product for voice systems management.

Avantages :

- Extremely robust feature set with depth in configuration and customization. - Diversified technology with a strong security interface. - Configuration rich interfaces with strong delineation of permission sets and redirects. - Administrative overhead easily reduced by account permissions sets

Inconvénients :

- So robust can feel a bit overwhelming (version specific) - Deployment time frames can be long from purchase to full production implementation (good support though) - More hardware specific as far as integration than some other agnostic products.

Enterprise Banking VoIP Solution

Commentaires : We have a very complex design of 4 clusters implementing 10 digit dialing scheme for everything nationwide. We were able to accomplish this with CUCM and it's extremely granular configuration ability.

Avantages :

I have been administering Unified Communications Manager for almost 10 years . The stability of CUCM is unrivaled. The uptime of our voice environment in the last 4 years has been over 99.99% with the only downtime being due to patch/security updates and maintenance. I sleep well at night knowing that our environment is stable.

Inconvénients :

The only complaints that I've had about CUCM have all been addressed in newer versions. The complexity of licensing was addressed with Enterprise License Manager. The difficulty of upgrades was addressed with Prime Collaboration Deployment. It's very difficult to find any cons with the current version of CUCM.

A very reliable and stable solution which we are have been using for years

Commentaires : I like that the solution is fully featured, we currently use this solution and have been for years and must say it is very reliable and stable. CM is fully featured and is a flexible IP telephony solution. We have it across multiple sites, with publisher and subscriber the solution provides full redundancy in the event of a disaster. The phone deployment is quick and simple, and bulk imports make large scale deployment of telephony endpoints quick and seamless. It is helpful to consult with another organization to construct a plan and design prior to implementation.

Inconvénients :

It takes some training and continuous use to fully master CM as it is not very simple at first. It is helpful to consult with another organization to construct a plan and design prior to implementation. Once you have been using CM for sometime you become more comfortable with the solution and deployment. The licensing model can become costly and upgrade can at times get complicated.