Update to the platform at the core of Cisco's collaboration portfolio enables third-party endpoints to join the Cisco UC environment!
As end-user demands for premium mobility and collaboration solutions continue to escalate, and businesses seek cost-effective ways to deliver the technology needed to meet those expectations, Cisco has announced a bevy of new services and capabilities for the Cisco® Unified Communications Manager platform. The services and capabilities are part of what's called Cisco Unified Communications (UC) Release 9.0 and directly address many of the key challenges IT managers are facing today as they seek to "collaboration-enable" their employees both in the office and on-the-go.
Cisco UC Release 9.0 is the foundation of a unified collaboration strategy and includes the following key advancements:
Support of third-party endpoints. A new Cisco Unified Communications Manager feature called Extend and Connect works with Cisco Jabber™ and is designed to bring any third-party phone-including phones at hotels, airports, convention centers, or even far-flung places like offshore oil rigs or cruise ships sailing half way around the world-into the Cisco UC environment.
Support of fixed mobile convergence
gives users of any type of mobile phone access to more desk-phone-like features, anywhere-without the need of a smartphone, a data plan, or a mobile client installed on the phone. Enterprise-grade telephony features such as unified inbox, message waiting, callback, conferencing and direct-extension dialing are now available via a new systems interface that ties Cisco Unified Communications Manager with the user's mobile service provider, providing transparency, intelligence and control beyond the realm of the user's office.
Video quality, security, and usability improvements.
Video is on the rise in the enterprise-which means IT departments need a way to address quality, security and usability. UC Release 9.0 delivers:
- better bandwidth management
- support for additional video endpoints
- next-generation "dial by email." Also known as "Uniform Resource Identifier" (URI) dialing, this feature allows users to reach any endpoint in the system by dialing a contact's email address in lieu of a traditional phone number.
Enhanced Customer Collaboration.
Cisco UC Release 9.0 contains many features that help businesses implement and manage contact center solutions. Key elements include:
- The introduction of Packaged Contact Center Enterprise, which provides an easy to install, pre-engineered, bounded, and packaged deployment model of Cisco's enterprise contact center software. Customers will be able to implement a contact-center solution more quickly and administer it more easily, helping to drive faster return on investment and lower total cost of ownership.
- Precision Routing for Cisco Unified Contact Center Enterprise. Precision Routing enables contact centers to drive complex call-routing decisions that better match customer desires with agent attributes and competencies, without the complexities typically found in skills-based routing solutions.
- Multiple enhancements to Cisco Unified Contact Center Express. With Cisco UC Release 9.0, Cisco adds historical reporting through Cisco Unified Intelligence to provide important metrics for managing the contact center. Cisco UC Release 9.0 also adds Web chat to Cisco Unified Contact Center Express, opening a new channel for customers to connect with a contact center. Plus, with this release, contact-center supervisors using mobile devices can perform key tasks such as managing agent skills to impact what types of calls are routed to a particular agent.
Additional features that enhance management and usability.
Cisco UC Release 9.0 also supports native call queuing, so in-bound callers and groups of callers can be automatically put on hold and properly routed into a queue and given custom greetings and announcements. One Button to Record is also a new feature, allowing users to start or stop call recording directly from an endpoint. Customers can configure One Button to Record to comply with local call-recording regulations (e.g., to notify all parties that call recording is in progress).
Licensing improvements.
In Cisco UC Release 9.0, Cisco introduces user-centric licensing throughout its entire collaboration portfolio. Now, businesses can purchase licenses based on four distinct types of workers: deskless (roaming) workers, desk-bound workers, occasionally mobile workers and road warriors. Additionally, Cisco is announcing Cisco Unified Workspace Licensing Premium Edition to address the growing mobile workforce by adding mobility solutions (like Cisco Jabber Mobile) to the collaboration mix. This builds on the Cisco Unified Workspace Licensing program launched four years ago and helps businesses purchase Cisco Unified Communications software licenses simply, flexibly and economically. The solutions have become widely adopted and have reached nearly 10 million users worldwide in May 2012.
TO LEARN MORE ABOUT CISCO UNIFIED COMMUNICATIONS, PLEASE CONTACT US at 304.881.2638 or sales@citynet.net.
