In 2004, Cisco had developed a compelling business case for migrating its global Avaya Octel voice messaging system to a Cisco Unity voice and desktop messaging solution across the global Cisco network. The strategy reflected Cisco’s long-term commitment to converge the network delivery of voice, video, and data with IP telephony to form a complete IP Communications solution. As proposed the project would be the largest Cisco Unity deployment ever undertaken, affecting over 35,000 employees.

With many Octel systems distributed globally, it would take time to migrate users from the older system in distributed locations to the Cisco Unity system in the centralized data centers. In addition, the migration strategy would have to allow messages to be sent between Cisco Unity and Octel subscribers that minimized disruption to senior staff and other employees who frequently used network voice messaging.

Because a “flash-cut” approach was not deemed feasible, the team used the Cisco Unity Bridge during the three phases of migration.

• Phase one: Migrate 75% of Cisco users
• Phase two: Migrate all sites outside the United States.
• Phase three. Migrate remaining sites in the United States.

Global implementation of Cisco Unity® Voice Messaging began in June 2004 and was completed in July of 2005. Cisco employees worldwide now access one message center for all their messages.

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Cisco Unity Voicemail Migration Case Study