SOS Guide to cisco Unified communications Manager 6

Should you upgrade from Call Manager or Unity to UCM 6?

Mike Stewart, Business Practice Manager, Cisco Business Practice - SOS, Sacramento CA

SOS’ Cisco Solutions Business Practice Manager Mike Stewart review Unified Communications Manager 6

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To talk with members of the SOS Cisco consulting team, contact Michelle Wolting at 916-577-1711, M-F 8am-5pm PT or etips@team-sos.com

Summary
Cisco introduced Call Manager Version 5 in April 2006 and Unified Communications Manager Version 6 in April 2007. It plans to bring Version 7 to market in September 2008.

SOS clients such as Bloodsource and Greater Nevada Credit Union, each of which has 350-500+ phones, have upgraded from 4.1.3 to 6.1.1 in order to gain 6’s new features and technical advances – and to ensure Cisco support of their product for years to come. The typical cycle to refresh servers is three to five years, and the same guidelines apply to the servers that support Unified Communications Manager.

But why bother with 6, if 7 is right around the corner? Because it will take several months to work out issues in 7 – just as in 6, and 5, etc. Instead of adopting the newest version, you’ll receive the best return on investment from a version that has been out for at least 6 months. So we recommend thinking about an upgrade to 6 now; and thinking about the cost-benefits of 7 around June of 2009.

New features in 6
If your business is running earlier versions of Call Manager and Unity, you’re familiar with having one inbox for all your phone, email, fax, and text messages. Unified Communications Manager Version 6 (UCM 6) adds at least 6 new features.

Remote Destination and Desk Phone Pickup (aka “Hand In/Hand Off”) lets you pick up an in-progress desk phone call on a mobile device or vice-versa. Example: You’re on a call on your desk phone at 5:30pm. You want to head home. You pick up your cell phone, hang up your desk phone, and continue to talk while walking out the door.

Simultaneous Ring allows users to have up to four remote destination phones ring simultaneously. The first one to be answered is connected. Example: You tell UCM 6 to make any calls placed to your cell number, also ring to your desk phone number. If a contact calls your cell while you’re in the car, you answer there and talk. If you're at your desk, you answer there and talk – saving cell phone minutes.

Single Number Reach lets you give one number to all your contacts and remotely change where your business calls are sent. Example: You have a desk phone, cell, and home phone number but don’t want contacts to have to keep track of which to use when. You give out one number to use. When you're traveling, you set it so that all calls are sent to your cell phone.

Click to Dial lets you dial a phone number from the Outlook application. Example: You click on a phone number in someone's email signature. When the other party answers, you talk live.

Call Recording makes it simple to save copies of customer interactions, teleconferences, and discussions. Example: A representative enters an order while on a call. An invoice for the service becomes past due. On following up, the customer says she never requested the service. A supervisor replays the call with a few clicks, to checks the facts.

Unified Personal Communicator is desktop software that lets you manage voice, video, instant messaging, document sharing, voicemail playback, and directories from a single interface. UPC has been enhanced through integration capability with Microsoft OCS. Example: You need to chat with a colleague after interviewing a great candidate. Your colleague’s availability, which reflects his schedule and appointments saved in Outlook Calendar, changes at Noon to ‘available by IM now’. You ping him and agree about extending an offer, beating a recruiter to the punch.

Technical advances in 6

SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) ‘Line Side’ Support -- in addition to SIP trunking, you can now integrate any supported SIP phone.

LDAP integration – Unified Communication Manager can now integrate with Active Directory without Schema modifications. In versions 4.x or older, to integrate UCM with Active Directory, the schema extension would have to change. That’s considered a huge risk. In the past SOS would recommend against integrating with Active Directory due to the high level of risk tied to updating or changing the schema extension. In version 5.x and 6.x this is no longer the case.

Programmable Line Keys – Allows local customization of line key display and functionality. Buttons on the phone can be dedicated for hold, conference, etc. This expanded line appearance functionality truly solves business problems – now users can have up to 6 programmable soft keys such as speed dial and presence.

Partitioned system ensures fail-over version -- The system for UCM is partitioned to simultaneously maintain two versions, one active and one in reserve. When you run an upgrade, it updates the inactive portion, then switches the older version to backup status, so you always have a fail-over version.You can run many powerful applications on a Unified Communications platform – and, in some cases, manage multiple applications from a single client. With the applications we recommend, you are able to have “virtual” receptionists during a spike in calls rather than expensive overstaffing in case there is a spike.

Tips on migrating to 6

Run restore tests -- It’s important to run the migration script ahead of time, doing test restores on a spare or test server, which lets you validate that all 3 database conversions are successful prior to doing so in your production environment (If you’re going from version 5 to version 6, it’s a smaller database conversion as v5 is already running the Linux O/S and as such it’s more of a patch.)

Gather device licenses -- Make sure all your device licenses (phone licenses etc) are registered in the database before your conversion or you may need to purchase new device user licenses (DLUs) for existing phones.

Gather app upgrade disks -- Be prepared to upgrade the desktop applications that are currently in use. Attendant Console, Real Time Monitor Tool and other applications must be upgraded after the system upgrade.

Gather integration info -- Be careful to check for 3rd party integration. Cisco is a powerful and flexible call processing system with a lot of authorized integrators. You may be using 3rd party integration that will require an upgrade as well. Be sure to ask SOS to assist.

Note that, with Version 5, Cisco went from a Windows platform to a Linux platform. Technological issues prevented Cisco from offering an upgrade path to Version 5 from Version 4.2 and 4.3, but those customers can upgrade directly to Version 6 after they’ve purchased appropriate hardware or verified existing hardware meets requirements: HP 78XX Series servers or IBM X3XX servers with required processor(s), RAM & disk drives.

Cost-benefits of upgrading to 6
The cost to upgrade depends on the number of servers and phones, and how valuable the new features are to your business. New hardware is probably a consideration as well; you’ll need HP 78XX Series servers or IBM X3XX servers. Below, under ‘More Information,’ are links to more details.

SOS upgraded to Version 6.1.1 in Spring of 2007. We wanted the features in 6.x (the carrot) and can’t recommend a product until we’ve torn into it ourselves (the stick). SOS also has upgraded Bloodsource and Greater Nevada Credit Union, each of which has 350-500+ phones, from 4.1.3 to 6.1.1. These clients wanted the new features – and wanted to ensure Cisco support of their product for years to come. The typical cycle to refresh servers is three to five years, and the same guidelines apply to the servers that support Unified Communications Manager. So if you hang onto 4.2 or 4.3, pretty soon Cisco won’t support that version anymore.

Most of the new features are really about saving time by simplifying common tasks. Does convenience and time savings justify the cost to upgrade? The answer depends on how much your profit margins are affected by workers’ productivity. Industry surveys show that, on average, employees who automatically know the best time and way to reach coworkers save an average of 32 minutes a day. Quicker, simpler completion of many small tasks by many users each day can add up to big productivity gains.

Other features, like Remote Destination and Simultaneous Ring, can cut telecom bills as soon as they’re implemented. Or, if your business takes orders by phone, Call Recording can cost justify your upgrade. According to Rob Cate, Director of Contact Center Operations for VEGAS.com, this type of intelligence has helped significantly reduce agent errors. "Before CTI [Computer Telephony Integration], the customers' word was the end all be all,” he says. “If they said the agent booked the wrong date, we had no recourse. Now we can pull up the information immediately, see the interaction, and email an audio recording of the call to the customer. We've reduced our monthly agent errors by 80 percent."

Resources

UCM 6 demo

Hardware -- You’ll need HP 78XX Series servers or IBM X3XX servers.

Release dates and end-of-life dates -- Miercom Test Document
Upgrades have been very minimal between UCM 5.0 and 6.0. Cisco introduced Version 5 in April 2006, Version 6 around April 2007, and seems to be on track to release 7.0 in September 2008. With Version 5, Cisco went from a Windows platform to Linux, and did not offer an upgrade path from 4.2 and 4.3 to 5. Some 4.2 and 4.3 customers can switch straight to 6 using the HP and IBM-based MCS servers already in place to support their existing Call Manager and Unity applications. The typical cycle to refresh servers is three to five years, and the same guidelines apply to the servers that support Unified Communications Manager. So if you hang onto 4.2 or 4.3, pretty soon Cisco won’t support that version anymore.

Case studies

About the lead author
Learn more about Mike Stewart, Business Practice Manager, Cisco Solutions Business Practice, SOS

How can we help?
Since the release of Version 6 last year, SOS has performed several upgrades on systems with 500 phones or more. If you’re facing such an upgrade, we’re ready to help. We also support clients handling most of their upgrade in-house – and those who want to come down to our office to see us build or upgrade their system.

At www.team-sos.com you’ll find team members’ bios, whitepapers, slide decks, audio and video case studies and more.

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To talk with members of the SOS Cisco consulting team

Phone: contact Michelle Wolting at 916-577-1711, M-F 8am-5pm PT
Email: etips@team-sos.com