Cisco Unified Communications Manager 7.0 Features

Cisco Unified Communications Manager 7.0 has added a number of new features that are worth discussing. This blog will be the first blog in a blog series that will introduce the new features introduced with CUCM 7.0. I have included a hyper-link to the Cisco Unified Communications Manager 7.x Solution Reference Network Design Guide (CUCM 7.x SRND) in the references section of this blog. The updated 7.x SRND includes a “What’s New” section at the beginning of each chapter so you can decide whether that section is worth reading. If you’ve been reading the Call Manager documentation as long as I have, you’re probably not interested in reading the same information for the Nth time, but you may be very interested in the new features of 7.x. In Memory Database (IMDB) Cisco has made enhanced the caching capabilities of the CUCM database. The caching enhancement is called the In Memory Database (IMDB). IMDB offers database cache in the DRAM of the CUCM server. The enhancement is internal to the CUCM database operation, but will result in faster boot time of the system and greater scalability. CUCM no longer has a limitation of 500 sites and 500 regions as a result of the database enhancements and the system consumes less DRAM. Local Route Group CUCM 7.0 introduces the local route group call routing construct. Call routing without the local route group option is a static paradigm in which calls are routed in the same manner regardless of the device’s proximity to the gateway. The local route group option allows calls from devices (phones) to be routed to a local PSTN gateway based on the device pool in which the device belongs. Device pool assignments are dynamically updated with the device mobility feature which was introduced in Call Manager 4.2 and Cisco Unified Communications Manager 6.0. Recall that most of the new features of Call Manager 4.2 are not included in Call Manager 5.x versions. The device mobility feature is supported on both Cisco Type A and Type B phones. Device mobility allows devices to receive device pool assignments based on the IP subnet in which the device is using when it registers to CUCM. Device mobility configuration is a requirement for using the local route group option. The use of local route groups increases the scalability of Cisco Unified Communications deployments. Let’s examine the call routing configuration of a centralized call processing deployment with 500 remote offices. Assuming each office will locally route calls to their local PSTN gateways, each site would need a PSTN dial plan consisting of multiple route patterns, a local calling search space, and local partitions. With the use of local route groups, each of the 500 remote locations would only need a local route list that used the local route group as the first call routing option. The same PSTN dial plan route patterns configured in Cisco Unified Communications Manager could be used for each site. In the next blog, we will discuss some more call routing enhancements that were introduced in Cisco Unified Communications Manager 7.0. These new features include the + sign support, calling party transformations, and called party transformations. REFERENCES Cisco Unified Communications Manager 7.x Solution Reference Network Design Guide http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/voice_ip_comm/cucm/srnd/7x/uc7_0.html