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Cisco Unified Communications Manager (Call Manager)

Cisco Unified Communications Manager (Call Manager)

Overview

What is Cisco Unified Communications Manager (Call Manager)?

Call Manager is a unified call control center from Cisco that supports enterprise collaboration functions across the spectrum of IP telephony, video & web conferencing, and messaging. Features include call forwarding, call back, call transfer, ad hoc conferencing, and call…

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Recent Reviews
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Awards

Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards

Popular Features

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  • Audio conferencing (39)
    8.9
    89%
  • User templates (38)
    8.2
    82%
  • Directory of employee names (38)
    8.0
    80%
  • Answering rules (41)
    7.8
    78%

Reviewer Pros & Cons

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Pricing

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What is Cisco Unified Communications Manager (Call Manager)?

Call Manager is a unified call control center from Cisco that supports enterprise collaboration functions across the spectrum of IP telephony, video & web conferencing, and messaging. Features include call forwarding, call back, call transfer, ad hoc conferencing, and call park.

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee

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  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services

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What is Broadvoice?

Broadvoice is a provider of hosted voice, UCaaS, CCaaS, and CX solutions for small and mid-market enterprises and BPOs. Broadvoice solutions offer enterprise-class features to simplify communications and streamline operations.

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Features

Cloud PBX

A cloud PBX system is based on cloud computing technology where data is stored and transferred over the intenet without any need for on-site PBX equipment

7.4
Avg 8.2

Call Management

Customized phone system settings

7.3
Avg 8.4

VoIP system collaboration

Team collaboration via cloud phone system

7.6
Avg 8.3

Mobile apps

Apps are compatible with mobile devices.

8.7
Avg 8.3
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Product Details

What is Cisco Unified Communications Manager (Call Manager)?

Call Manager is a unified call control center from Cisco that supports enterprise collaboration functions across the spectrum of IP telephony, video & web conferencing, and messaging. Features include call forwarding, call back, call transfer, ad hoc conferencing, and call park.

Unified communications
Call Manager can consolidate communications infrastructures and enable individual users and teams to communicate within its interface. The solution features IP telephony, video, unified messaging, instant messaging, and networking. It also has various features to support mobile and remote workers.

Integrations
Cisco Unified (CM) supports industry communications standards, a range of gateways, and an ecosystem of third-party integrations and solutions plus partners.

Security
Cisco Unified (CM) supports the industry authentication, encryption, and communication protocols. It complies with industry certifications, and secures data and communications for customers in financial services, manufacturing, retail, and governments internationally.


Cisco Unified Communications Manager (Call Manager) Integrations

Cisco Unified Communications Manager (Call Manager) Competitors

Cisco Unified Communications Manager (Call Manager) Technical Details

Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo

Frequently Asked Questions

Call Manager is a unified call control center from Cisco that supports enterprise collaboration functions across the spectrum of IP telephony, video & web conferencing, and messaging. Features include call forwarding, call back, call transfer, ad hoc conferencing, and call park.

RingEX are common alternatives for Cisco Unified Communications Manager (Call Manager).

Reviewers rate Hosted PBX highest, with a score of 9.9.

The most common users of Cisco Unified Communications Manager (Call Manager) are from Enterprises (1,001+ employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(170)

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-25 of 44)
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Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I actively use Cisco Unified Communications Manager for 6 years in my own company and also deployed it more than 20 times. It is used mainly for registering cisco phones mgcps and also 3rd party sip phones. Ip telephony is very common in whole world and CUCM provides best experience in this sphere.
  • Variety of sip registrations
  • Possibility of using h323 sip and mgsp gateways
  • Easy of use
  • User friendly interface
  • We have to press "find" button after every menu)))
  • Installation process can be more simple instead of being very old fashioned
  • CDR must be improved.
Cisco Unified Communications Manager has very easy interface for configuring. I have deployed Cisco Unified Communications Manager from zero more than 20times across the companies in my country and I can confirm that in all cases it was very well suited. For the companies with call center it is very useful to use it next to UCCX
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We have around 5000 registered endpoints. It is used to register the softphones for both contact center users, office users.
  • For call routing, dividing the different departments through Device pools.
  • Calling controls through CSS and Partitions.
  • Provisioning through Super copy.
  • Easy integration with the other third party components.
  • Simplified procedure for the bulk provisioning.
  • Easy grouping of endpoints.
  • List of items 500/1000 instead of max limit of 250.
It is very easy for single components provisioning but for the bulk provisioning. Improvement on auto population at different integration functions
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Reseller
When trying to address a Unified Communications solution with a dynamic platform, there aren't too many options available, and Overall Satisfaction with Cisco Unified Communications Manager (Call Manager) is probably the best choice. In our company, we use it for on-site and remote users, for internal and external communications and in conjuntion with Webex for video and meeting services. Besides, as technology integrators, we can use it as testing ground for new products and integration with other vendors.
  • Dynamic routing
  • Scalability
  • High Availability
  • Easy administration
  • Consolidated integration with networking equipment and other platforms
  • Classic Telephony features not implemented or done differently/indirectly
  • Licensing schemes changed several times through the years, not being so transparently transfered between versions
Overall Satisfaction with Cisco Unified Communications Manager (Call Manager) is excellent for any company that has multiple branches and wants to keep a single platform for all communications, particularly if the branches are distributed in distant geographical regions or accross different time zones, since it can maintain a uniform and dynamic administration, adaptative call routing and easy network integration, great scalability and high availability, specially if the networking equipment is also Cisco.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Problems?? Nooo, This is a very robust and stable solution, the problems are very minimal.
  • Integrated voice applications.
  • No need exists for special purpose voice processing hardware.
  • Production environments, requires only upgrading software on the server platform.
  • So, in each update Call manager is improving for be better.
Cisco Unified, is a software application, enhancing its capabilities in production environments only requires upgrading software on the server platform, thereby avoiding expensive hardware upgrade costs. Less appropriate could be it's a litter expensive.
RAJESH VENGILOT | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Since we are service provided, we support the various customers in deployment and support for Cisco Unified Communications Manager (CUCM). We also use CUCM for our internal environment as well. Below are a few business problems that this product addresses. 1. Lower the cost of calling within the organization through IP calling. 2. Ease of management and configuration. 3. Improved voice quality. 4. Integration with other 3rd party vendors \ equipments.
  • Smooth IP based calling on LAN / WAN
  • Integration with other Cisco UC components to provide enhanced features
  • Jabber registration for ease for calling from mobile devices
  • Does not have good reporting functinality. Most of the reports are pretty raw
  • CUCM still have many open bugs which needs to be fixed
  • Some of the configuration could be very complex and tough to implement
  • User guides could be made more user friendly and intuituve
The Cisco Unified Communications Manager platform would be most suited for the below scenarios.
1. An organization with very restricted policies and compliance where can't move to cloud-based solutions for data security. They can install the CUCM on-premises.
2. An organization that is still on a legacy phone system could adopt CUCM to save costs and have better services.
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Cisco Unified Communications Manager (Call Manager) is our primary voice platform being used across our organization. We use Cisco Unified Communications Manager (Call Manager) for every possible business use case related to Enterprise Telephony imaginable. Cisco Unified Communications Manager (Call Manager) is also used presently for all our voice-related compliance requirements and hence is fully integrated with many other collaboration platforms in order to meet those unique business requirements. Our main objective of sticking with Cisco Unified Communications Manager (Call Manager) as a hardware-based solution is to address specific business use cases that are regulatory and compliance requirements given that we are a large financial institution. We have moved away from Cisco Unified Communications Manager (Call Manager) for key use cases which do not have dependencies on compliance that Cisco Unified Communications Manager (Call Manager) solves.
  • Integrated well with other Cisco platforms
  • Recent code versions have better compatibility with third-party solutions
  • Biggest bottleneck with most of Cisco's hardware-based collaboration platforms is code management
  • If Cisco can figure out the number of bugs that constantly keep appearing for these platforms, it could face lesser challenges competing with challengers
The product in general (in my humble opinion) has plateaued with regards to features and functionalities that it can provide in comparison to most cloud-based solutions available in the marketplace today. Plus, directionally and strategically, Cisco has realized, albeit a bit too late, that cloud is where the future is. COVID exposed the lack of scalability and the ability to quickly adapt. Cloud is the future. Cisco Unified Communications Manager (Call Manager) will exist for use cases that do not cater to large enterprise telephony requirements but rather to address more unique nuances like hardware-based storage for compliance, etc.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Cisco Unified Communications Manager is being used by the whole organization. It's currently being used as an enterprise phone system, with every staff that uses a phone is connected with the system. It's also being used in conference phones, as well. It addresses the business problem of need for communications and calls.
  • Customizability - The program allows for a lot of specific features and ways to use the program.
  • Traditional - The system is a very traditional phone system, with everything you would expect and need from an enterprise phone system.
  • Expandable - The system allows from a small amount of users to a large amount, with no upper limit.
  • Remote working - CUCM really struggles when it comes to remote work. In order to access the system remotely, a VPN or DirectAccess must be used.
  • Extreme complexity - While CUCM does have more settings for flexibility, this also means there's more chances to mess up a setting and render a phone or line unusable, and there's much, much more to know about the system.
  • No cloud solution - CUCM requires on site servers. Currently, Cisco does not have a cloud solution for their call manager.
CUCM is very well suited for large offices with a need for traditional phone systems, especially offices where people will want traditional desk phones.
CUCM is less appropriate in a situation where large amount of remote working is needed, or in situations where it needs to have 100% uptime, especially because of the need for physical servers. It's also not as good if staff prefers soft phones over physical phones.
May 24, 2021

Call it CUCM

Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Cisco Unified Communication Manager is being used by our whole organization across all of our sites. This is the main medium of communication used within the company. It sometimes has delays but I don't think that this is the problem for CUCM, but the configuration of your entire network and how traffic is being transported.
  • End to end communication
  • Call forwarding
  • Call waiting
  • Programmability
  • Conference call
It is suited for a medium to large company that needs communication with the entire organization. It is reliable and configurable in many ways. As a Network Engineer at our organization, we use this as our main communication line for it is reliable, easy to use, and to understand.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We are currently utilizing the Cisco Unified Communications Manager solution across all lines of our business. We have been using this application for about 6-7 years and it provides us with extremely reliable call handling/management capabilities. We also provides us with a very useful voicemail-to-email functionality, which ensures we stay connected with our team.
  • This solution is extremely stable and has been running in our environment for several years without (unscheduled) downtime.
  • The ability to have voicemails automatically sent as an email message is extremely helpful in helping us to keep in touch while away from the desk.
  • The Call Manager provides us very granular settings to route our calls as we want.
  • As with most Cisco products, they come with a higher price point than some of their competitors.
  • Due to the level of granularity that it provides, there is a somewhat steep learning curve to administrators who are new to the platform.
  • Navigation within the application can be difficult/cumbersome at time because there are so many different areas. I think perhaps a more simplified GUI would be an improvement.
If you have a medium to large organization, the Cisco Unified Communications Manager solution is well suited for your needs. It may be a little "overkill" for an organization with just a few dozen people though. As mentioned previously, it isn't a "cheap" product, but I feel the costs are justified by the functionality, reliability, and professional support that come with Cisco products.
Javier Alejandro Denacimiento | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I have used Cisco Call Manager since 2004 when I joined IBM in Latin America and then when I moved to Symantec in Ireland.
We used it as a call control agent and for corporate telephony in my honest opinion you can get better than this.
On the call centre environment is not the best but its amongst the best, but I believe their core business is corporate telephony.
  • SIP Trunking
  • Phone Registration
  • User Management
  • CallCenter features
Corporate telephony is what Cisco UCM is built for, it is its bread and butter.
We have used it worldwide in my last company with multi-cluster split across regions supporting 20k phones.
Leonardo Gonzalez | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Our organization is using Cisco Unified Communications Manager (Call Manager) across the whole of it and this is the official IP telephony tool for all staff users in Latin America. Currently, the call manager is running in a redundancy cluster design distributed along with two data centers which enable a balanced distribution of the devices over the primary and backup servers. This design avoids some type of issues because all user devices are distributed on multiple servers, which provide faster response time under call processing load or loss of any of the servers scenarios. Since Cisco Unified Communications Manager (Call Manager) is a robust and reliable product, business problems are not common.
  • Device failover and fallback. Because all devices ( IP phones, gateways, trunks, etc.) are distributed across all active servers, they are able to register with other active servers in case the current becomes unavailable. In this way, you can reduce the impact of any server becoming unavailable.
  • Virtualization. Call Manager appliance can run under virtualized environments.
  • Several features such as Survivable Remote Site Telephony makes Call Manager the best IP telephony solution in the market.
  • Wide quantity and variety of end-user devices, including the most newest and modern ones in the market that can fit any budget and need.
  • Call Manager is intended to be integrated with the newest collaboration tools like Webex and Jabber for call processing purposes.
  • Great customer support services from the Vendor. The Technical Assistance Center is fantastic, experienced engineers are ready to help quickly out with any request.
  • Administration web page is little bit hard to understand at the beginning specially if you are not familiar with naming convention and GU Interfaces.
  • Call Detail Record interface is fine but would be desirable to include more options that fit organization needs in terms of reporting purposes.
  • Self Care Portal interface could be more useful to the end user if it includes options to manage some features without administrators involving.
Cisco Unified Communications Manager (Call Manager) is well suited for organizations that need secure communications in a strong and stable solution and not affecting business continuity operations even under risk scenarios and deployments. It is less appropriate for organizations that handle a low financial budget because of the devices and licensing costs and the need to provide services for a small number of users.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Cisco Unified Communications Manager (Call Manager) is used in multiple clusters across our entire organization. Call Manager provides the call control and management properties to control our mix of SIP and legacy PRI technologies. We also leverage inter cluster lookup between the environments to provide calling between our global offices to provide regional services with the same structure.
  • Redundancy
  • Flexibility
  • Features
  • Upgrade process
  • Patching
  • Lacks reporting features
I would strongly recommend the Cisco Unified Communications Manager (Call Manager) to others. For large enterprise companies where there is a broad range of requirements and a need for on-prem services, Cisco Unified Communications Manager offers a complete solution with features to tackle nearly any use case within the organization. It is probably less friendly to a small company in terms of setup and maintaining the environment, as well as cost of license.
Benjamín Marrón Rojas | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Cisco Unified Communications Manager servers to control all our telephony devices like iPhones, telepresence rooms, desktop video devices, analog phones, etc. We use it in our company and in new implementations with our customers. This specific server in the Cisco Collaboration portfolio is the one that controls all the calls and call routing, and it has a lot of custom features to make IP telephony more robust. The business problems that it solves are the lack of communication with all your partners, keeping them all together.
  • Unified administration of all your telephony devices
  • Integration with third-party devices and applications
  • Integration with voicemail, instant messaging and contact center
  • Support of all Cisco IP phones and third-party SIP devices.
  • Good troubleshooting tools for voice calls
  • The interface is a little bit old. They need to update the look of the web page.
  • There are a lot of menus--it should be better organized.
  • When updating a device package you have to reboot.
The Cisco Unified Communications Manager (Call Manager) is better for implementations with large companies, where many phones are needed since this server has a lot of capacity in a single node. Besides that, if it is necessary to scale the number of phones just add another server to increase the capacity. You can have up to eight servers running at the same time and assign several processes or services per server. Up to four nodes can work at the same time to take calls and register phones. The others would be used for other services such as TFTP, Music on Hold, Annunciator, etc. The Cisco Call Manager is the best call control server on the market for its capacity, flexibility, and reliability.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Cisco Unified Communications Manager (Call Manager) across our whole agency to manage all of our VoIP phones, users and gateways. We also use it to integrate with our paging systems and attendant console solution. It has enabled us to centrally manage all of this, which was previously managed individually at every location, and to allow phone number mobility between locations and also with users' mobile devices.
  • Extremely broad industry support and resources available
  • Scales up well, and the new licensing is much more straightforward than before
  • Cisco has changed their CUCM licensing model four times since we started using it
  • With all of the power and features, it can be overwhelming to new users
For medium to large scale deployments where there will be a dedicated VoIP administrator Call Manager, this is a great choice. It provides all of the growth, flexibility and features you could want. For smaller, more straightforward deployments or ones where there won't be a dedicated administrator, a simpler product may be a better choice.
Steve Davis | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
ResellerIncentivized
Cisco Unified Communications Manager (Call Manager) (CUCM) was used by our company internally, as well as solutions provided to our customers. It addressed the issue of all communications, including our telephone calls, company wide chat functionality both inside and outside the company. It provides, phone, video, voicemail, automated attendant, toll bypass, desktop chat, and mobile chat.
  • Extensive call routing functionality
  • In depth auto attendant capability
  • Requires skilled and knowledgeable engineers to deploy.
  • A lot of moving parts to get full system running
CUCM is a great system that has a full feature set that will provide all features you would want for any size system. It may not be suited for small businesses that are less than 15 users due to cost. The BE6000 provides good cost for medium sized companies (up to 1,000 users) and the full size Call Manager system can grow as large as you need it to.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Cisco Unified Communication Manager ( Call Manager ) is being used across our whole organization to handle the collaboration between employees and each other. We used it as a call manager for our Cisco iPhones and using it for instant messaging, presence, and Jabber communication. Also, it's responsible for communication between our branches.
  • Managing Cisco iPhones.
  • Managing Jabber application communication.
  • Ease of iPhone and user management.
  • Integration with Microsoft Skype for business.
  • Needs easier GUI.
  • Licenses are costly.
Cisco Unified Communications Manager (Call Manager) is well suited when using VOIP solution to manage our communications between employees in the same campus or between HQ and other branches even across different countries as we also used it to register iPhones located in other county using IPsec tunnel between branch firewall and our firewall.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Cisco Unified Communications Manager (Call Manager) is the heart of our telecommunications for our organization. We use Call Manager for our voice, messaging and contact centers. Across all departments, nearly every staff has a phone assigned. We use Call Manager as our primary platform for making and receiving calls. We also use Finesse as the software choice for our contact center.
  • Powerful feature set out of the box.
  • Mature platform and vast support direct from Cisco and from the community.
  • Integrations available to many APIs, other platforms.
  • We would like to have rules based call routing.
  • We would like to see licensing easier to manager.
  • A unified GUI will help with the multiple software packages.
Cisco Unified Communications Manager (Call Manager) has worked well for our large organization. We have multiple locations and mobile staff. Our deployment is relatively straight out of the box. Once we begin to push out more features, we will probably see more of the ROI.

Call Manager is best for:
  1. Large scale enterprise deployments.
  2. Mature platform needs.
  3. Contact Center.
Call Manager is not suited for:
  1. Small SMBs.
Juan Ignacio Zappacosta | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I used CUCM until some months ago in a strategic consultancy firm and with many customers within Chile, Argentina, and Bolivia. I was being used by all external consultants and the operative teams within the customers. There were very few business problems and we were very happy with this solution. We faced some delays and latency in some calls but the issues were always related to connectivity or network. It is not a "cheap" solution and the quality of the product was more than satisfactory. If the meeting has more than 199 attendees you will not be able to attend the call.
  • It is a secure solution. There are no severity 5s vulnerabilities associated with this solution.
  • The quality of the sound is excellent. There are very few solutions with such good quality in terms of latency, quality and delay/response.
  • It is highly scalable and easy to use.
  • It should have a free or beta version.
  • More than 199 should be allowed to attend the meetings.
  • During the meetings, the users should read the reasons why they are facing issues (connectivity issues, network, latency, poor quality/only sound, etc).
Cisco Unified Communications Manager is a good solution for large and medium companies since big companies don't face many connectivity issues. It has everything you need, you can bring people together anytime, anywhere and on any device. Small companies and families are not under the scope of this application since is not that cheap and it has no beta or free version. I highly recommend to work on some enhancements of the look and feel and if it is possible in the integration to other apps.
October 03, 2019

Cisco Call Manager

Lee Weers | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Call Manager is being used by all of the employees of the college. We have just over 500 handsets on campus. We have about 100 active users of Jabber. Facilities will use Jabber on their smartphones, where they do not have cell coverage, but they can get a wifi signal to make support calls.
  • Voicemail to email
  • Jabber provides some great flexibility
  • There are a lot of options
  • Can be easier to configure
  • Conflict between single number reach and jabber answering a call on a mobile device
  • Video integration
  • Implementing public trusted certificates.
I think it works well for larger environments. I would not use it in small office settings. It can require some dedicated staff. We have not found a great outbound calling capability that is suited for a size of 15 callers.
Jane Updegraff | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 3 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use CUCM on-premise as our voice over IP (VoIP) solution, sometimes others will refer to it as a "PBX" or "voice services" software. CUCM is one of several components that work together to provide telephony across the entire enterprise. CUCM ties into and controls, at least in part, all of the other communications components that we use, such as our voicemail, emergency call handling, audio conferencing, teleconferencing and video calling, paging systems and PBX operator, which of which work together with CUCM being the "conductor". It enables us to make phone calls to each other and the rest of the world, just like an analog phone, except that voip calls can include extra stuff other than sound, such as video.
  • CUCM provides excellent call quality
  • CUCM gives visibility into call handling and call records
  • CUCM allows us to control everything about our voice communications
  • CUCM is overly complex and requires a very capable engineer to maintain it. Similarly, implementing anything new requires a great deal of specialized knowledge of CUCM.
  • CUCM is difficult to troubleshoot because of it's complexity.
  • CUCM is expensive licensing and they nickel and dime you with a plethora of tiny little license charges for every little feature. They have the most convoluted licensing models, ever, for their CU products in general.
CUCM is probably only very well-suited for the enterprise that must have complete, total control over everything about their communications system, wants to host their phone servers on-premise and wants to have every telephony and communications capability that exists. If you don't have these three needs, you should be looking at cloud hosted communications instead. That's because CUCM takes a great deal of specialized skill and plenty of engineer time to configure, maintain and operate. The server platform used by CUCM (and those of all of the other CU components) is not user-friendly, with interface designs that have not been updated for the 25 years that I've been setting up and maintaining them. That said, it's extremely customizable and inter-operable with just about any other communications component, as long as you have the skill to customize it or connect it. It's also very expensive and the licensing is literally incomprehensible.
Brian Munn | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Cisco Unified Communications Manager across our entire organization. This includes 30+ sites and about 1,200 phones and users. This allows for easy four digit dialing between offices and provides organization wide voicemail and instant messaging and presents. The system also allows us to receive calls originating from location and answer from another to provide better coverage between departments and regions.
  • The first strength is this is a VoIP system allowing voice to travel across a data IP network. This makes cabling for phones very easy as the phone will utilize the same network cable that your PC would. This also means less infrastructure to support voice. No need for large PBX systems and closets that hide cabling nightmares.
  • Cisco Unified Communications Manager is a very flexible product. It can be custom configured to best suit your business needs and locations. It can be used as a single tenant or multi tenant system. Each site or office location can be configured separately from others for greater control.
  • Cisco offers a wide range of phone models for various needs and supports many third party SIP phones. There are also multiple ways to integrate with legacy systems during a system migration or when integrating a new company or office.
  • Licensing can be difficult to understand. Cisco has changed licensing models multiple times over the years and determining what modes is best suited for your company can be difficult.
  • Systems backups need some work. If you are in a multi server geographically separated environment backups can be a problem. All servers are included in a backup session and if servers are across a WAN connection all that data is being pulled across the WAN. I would like to see cloud backup or multi location backup options.
  • When phones move between sites/subnets it would be nice to have a feature that could automatically move the phone configuration from one device pool to another so that location specific options are set for the moved phone.
For larger companies that need a VoIP solution, Cisco Unified Communications Manager is hands down the best solution. It will grow with your company and provide many features your users currently need or will ask for. There are options for smaller companies but with these options, there are features that are left out. For some, this may not be an issue but for others, it could be.

September 27, 2019

Cisco IP Phone System

Christina O'Steen | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Cisco Unified Communications Manager is easy to use, and the phone also connects with my computer. When I am listening to music on my computer when the phone rings, my music is automatically muted. Also, I like the message system. Not only will you have the messages on your phone, but you will also get them in an email. Display is also updated to have your personal information and can be customized to ring through the computer and with different ring tones. I like this system, great for any size business.
  • It is versatile and it is intergraded into other systems, like our emergency system.
  • Easy to set up and use.
  • Reliable.
  • None
It is well suited in the university system. Easy to set up and use from the user standpoint. Versatile and very reliable, communications are vital for any business, you need to have a system that is reliable. This system is versatile and can be personalized for each person. Great product all around.
September 25, 2019

Cisco IP Phone

Amanda Carpenter | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Cisco is used throughout the entire organization. I believe it was about 5 years (maybe more) when they changed to Cisco and we got new phones. It's nice to be able to log into your voicemail (or even your extension) from a different phone if you need to move. I also like how it's connected to Jabber so I can get to my voicemail or make calls from my computer if I'm away from a phone set. It's pretty easy to use, has a nice display. For our adjunct faculty, it is nice that they can log into the phone and then log off when they are gone, since they use shared space and share phones with one another.
  • Good for sharing phones. Has the ability to log into a phone to get voicemails and receive calls. Then another person can use the same phone later.
  • Like the connection to Jabber on the computer. Great for when you are at a computer but not by the actual phone.
  • The voicemail settings are great. I love that I can set my vacation voicemail to expire at a certain date and time, so I don't have to remember to change my voicemail back when I return.
  • One thing I have trouble with is changing my name for the standard greeting. I changed it for internal calls, but I couldn't get it to change overall.
  • I think for the future a touchscreen would be nice.
It's great for in the office use. If you're dialing into a meeting you have the ability to listen but mute yourself. You have speaker and headset options, which is nice. The different voicemail features are particularly helpful when you are traveling or out of the office for different reasons. You can even save some of your away voicemails for future use.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We are using the tool across our entire organization. We have all our branches setup with 5 digits dialing from every desk set. It takes care of branch to branch voice calling. Also, we have all of our phone lines connected to the system so that we can manage call flow.
  • Multiple calls coming in at the same time to different locations.
  • System is easily customizable. We can make the system operate differently from one location to the other.
  • The system is robust and the hunt groups are able to be set up ad hoc which is great.
  • The online interface has not been updated for a couple of years. This could be worthwhile.
  • Ability to log in to the system via mobile devices and access and update as required.
This system is well suited for multiple location environments and organizations that would otherwise have long-distance surcharges. We can easily scale up the system and add multiple phones and additional routers without issue which makes the deployment of even temporary offices great. We can connect the routers and assign the 5 digit dialing setup the dial peers and we are good to go.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Cisco Unified Communications Manager is possibly the most widely used IT infrastructure solution across our company by far. We started deploying it modestly, in 2004, for a small portion of our users in one department, and for some IT users. Since then, we started to increase the adoption, mostly when we had new departments or office layout changes, where it was easier and cheaper to deploy. At some port, we also started to deploy it in remote sites, across the globe. That movement allowed us to have a seamless phone experience and allowed our users to communicate across the globe. The US office could easily call HQ in Brazil without any cost per minute. That was a game-changer and allowed us to promote more with fast communication between offices. At some point, we decided to replace all the old TDM PBXs and that bunch of cables for the small and simple UCS servers. Besides the fact that it saved a lot of real estate in our datacenter also saved us time by letting us administer on a single console. Those were some of the business problems we solved during these past 15 years with Cisco.
  • The solution is probably one of the most robust IT solutions we have today. Although it works 24/7, it never required a reset "just because it needs to free memory" for example. In our deployment, the servers never went down due to a bug or software/hardware problem. We only reboot when we need to update or install some software fix.
  • Compared to other platforms on the market, Cisco Unified Communications Manager is the most complete and flexible one. You can manage not only Cisco endpoints but 3rd party too. Also, you can run on bare metal appliances or even in virtualized environments, which gives you more freedom of choice. Considering the amount of model of endpoints available, you can have several options for any use case, from the simplest no display desk phone to a wireless, LCD display, full-featured phone. That also gives you the freedom to select what works best in each environment.
  • If you consider both statements above, you'll see that Cisco Unified Communications Manager as the best ROI on the market. As an example, I can say that we're running instances (both hardware and software) of CUCM for the last 5 years. That's a huge advantage if you compare how short the lifecycle of digital platforms are these days. No upgrades, no parts replacement, no support tickets, no TAC calls, nothing.
  • Although once you learn how to use the management interface you can do things easily, the look and feel of the management interface has been the same for several years. It's not as modern as the other Cisco platforms and doesn't follow the latest design language we see in other systems. Seems like it got stuck in the past.
  • In our architecture, we use the same CUCM servers for both local and remote deployment because Cisco doesn't offer a version for branch offices that is small enough to fit both in our infrastructure and budget. I know they offer CUCM Express, which is a simpler and more affordable version, but it's not the same as the CUCM. You can't use it as a node for a distributed architecture. It only runs as a standalone system. From a management perspective, it takes a little more to support those kinds of mixed environments.
  • For large deployments, when you need to replace thousands of analog desk phones for new IP Phones, as our company did in the past, it can be very expensive. That's why it took several years until we reached a point where we could afford to replace more than half of our desk phones at once. The investment needed had to be substantial and sometimes it's not easy to justify that kind of investment if you're only updating the technology. As a manufacturing company, I can tell you that for the person who uses the phone on the floor, it doesn't matter if the phone is analog or IP. It must work and that's it. Although Cisco offers some affordable models, they're limited.
Cisco Unified Communications Manager is well suited for companies who rely on phone communication across several locations. You can deploy a distributed architecture that could support thousands of extensions in multiple sites and manage all of them in just one single pane of glass. Because the investment needed to create this infrastructure is considerably high, it may be not suitable for small businesses, especially in developing countries.
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