Cisco Unity Connection for the small, medium, and enterprise-level business
After researching the various voicemail solutions, you then ask the question: “Which voicemail product should I go with?” This has been the question that many organizations have looked at, questioned, and revisited over and over before making a final decision. And, it is not a decision to be entered into flippantly!
I have worked with a number of customers that have pondered their decisions over a number of years while reviewing specific features, redundancy, high availability, and scalability before making a decision. Many of these organizations have either grown beyond the Unity Express platform, or required more features and scalability than what Cisco Unity can deliver. Organizations of all sizes, from small, medium, to enterprise-level have made the decision to go with Cisco Unity Connection.
Cisco Unity Connection (CUC) has been the most popular of the voice messaging products due its scalability and redundancy. CUC began as Windows-based product providing support for 1,500 users and 72 ports, with no redundancy. Today, the product has evolved into the current version installed using the Linux-based operating system, which can be configured in what is called an active-active cluster pair configuration. The cluster configuration is described as active-active using an two servers. Both servers are active, providing messaging services with increased port capacity.
And why do you care about this?
The important of aspect of this feature is double the amount of ports and complete redundancy and of the configuration database, directory, and message store. If you lose a server, the other server provides the necessary services. This cluster pair configuration provides redundancy for up to 20,000 users per cluster with 500 ports (250 ports/server), when using Cisco Unity Connection version 8.x software. This feature, along with the increased capacity of users and ports launches this product into the enterprise arena.
The other interesting thing to point out here is that in most cases the existing platform can be used for either the Cisco Unified Communications Manager or Cisco Unity Connection installation. The Cisco Unified Communications Manager Business Edition, Cisco Unified Communications Manager, and Cisco Unity Connection interfaces are very similar. This is important to many companies in that their administrators don’t have to re-learn a completely new interface, thereby reducing the user learning curve on each of these products.
Of course one of the main reasons that many organizations are moving to Cisco Unity Connection, is due to the increase in features. And there are some very interesting and unique features! In the next couple blogs, we will take a look at these features that have been introduced in the latest version of Cisco Unity Connection software.
