Cisco Unity Connection Version 12.0 Data Sheet

Product Overview

Cisco^® collaboration solutions facilitate rich interactions between your distributed and mobile users to enhance team performance, encourage innovation, improve productivity, and accelerate the decision-making process. Cisco Unity^® Connection is a robust unified messaging and voicemail solution that accelerates collaboration by providing you with flexible message access options and the IT department with management simplicity.

Accelerate Collaboration with Message Access from all Devices

Access and manage messages from your email inbox, web browser, Cisco Jabber^®, Cisco IP phone, smartphone, or tablet with Cisco Unity Connection. Easily prioritize messages and respond quickly to colleagues, partners, and customers. If you are en route or simply prefer to do so, you can use the speech-activated tools for hands-free message retrieval.

For IT, Cisco Unity Connection is an “integrated by design” extension of Cisco Unified Communications Manager. It is easy to manage using Cisco Prime^® Collaboration, our single application for unified management of the entire voice and video deployment. Cisco Prime Collaboration simplifies deployment, provisioning, monitoring, and system management.

Cisco Unity Connection is robust and secure and is designed for complex distributed global deployments with support for high availability, redundancy, and branch-office survivability. It is fully virtualized and runs on the Cisco Unified Computing System^™ (Cisco UCS^®) or on hardware that meets minimum specifications such as servers and blades manufactured by IBM and HP.

Cisco Unity Connection boasts a robust feature set that provides the following:

●   Fast, flexible user access to messages: You save time and increase productivity with quick and efficient access to your messages from the devices and applications you use, delivered in the format you want.

●   Simple and cost-effective administration and management: Cisco Unity Connection is virtualized, flexible, and easily integrated into diverse network and application environments. You can manage it—including provisioning, service activation, monitoring, performance analysis and reporting, upgrade and migration management, and license management—with Cisco Prime Collaboration, the same application that manages the rest of Cisco’s voice and video deployment.

●   Secure, scalable, and compliant: Flexible in size and scale, Cisco Unity Connection is the unified messaging solution consistently selected by medium-sized businesses as well as global corporations, government agencies, and the security conscious since 2005.

Features and Benefits

Fast, Flexible User Access to Messages

●   Message format flexibility: Cisco Unity Connection supports audio messaging and speech-to-text message transcription, as well as video greetings, video automated attendants, and phone-to-phone video messaging.

●   Access from the devices and applications you use regularly: Access your Cisco Unity Connection voice messages from the devices and applications you use regularly, including your IP phone, mobile phone, tablet, web browser, email client, or desktop client such as Cisco Jabber.

●   Delivery format flexibility: Choose how to receive your message notifications, via either indicator lights, emails, IM notifications, SMS notifications, or tones.

●   Aligned with the corporate network for simpler access: For greater simplicity when accessing your voicemail via network applications such as Cisco Jabber, you can use your corporate credentials, so no additional passwords must be remembered or used. This is enabled with Single Sign-On (SSO), which is supported with OpenAM or Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML), including support for the Open Authorization (OAuth) capability in SAML.

The synchronization of user information is supported using Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) with Microsoft Active Directory, Sun One, Sun iPlanet, OpenLDAP, and ADAM/LDS.

●   Localized: Localized in 30 languages (see Table 1 for a full list).

Simple, Cost-Effective Administration and Management

●   Manage with Cisco Prime Collaboration: Cisco Prime Collaboration provides simplified, unified provisioning, management, and analytics for Cisco Unified Communications and Cisco TelePresence^® deployments. It reduces management complexity and provides automated, accelerated provisioning; real-time monitoring; proactive troubleshooting; upgrade and migration management; long-term trending and analytics; and centralized license management across Cisco Unified Communications and collaboration solutions.

●   Additional management capabilities: Additional capabilities are available via standalone, custom, and Cisco Unified Communications Manager tools.

●   Flexible deployment options: Deliver unified messaging (voicemail fully integrated into your unified communications), integrated messaging (voicemail appears as a separate folder in an email or IMAP client), or voicemail only (call or use a web client to retrieve voicemail), or any combination of these options to one or any number of subscribers.

●   Virtualized: Cisco Unity Connection runs on a virtualized server and supports virtualization on Fibre Channel, Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE), SCSI over IP (iSCSI), and Network File Storage (NFS) SANs.

●   Runs on Cisco UCS or spec-based hardware: Cisco Unity Connection can be deployed on Cisco UCS or on hardware that meets minimum specifications such as servers and blades manufactured by IBM and HP.

Secure, Scalable, and Compliant

●   Support for large, distributed data center deployments and high availability: Scalable to 250 ports and 20,000 users per server. Achieve high availability through active-active redundancy configuration, and implement geospatial separation by separating active-active pairs across data centers.

●   Remote site survivability: Cisco Survivable Remote Site Voicemail (SRSV) helps ensure that voice messaging and automated-attendant functions are available to branch offices that use a centralized voice deployment, even when the WAN is disrupted. Cisco SRSV supports up to 35 branch or remote offices per Cisco Unity Connection server or cluster, and up to 500 users per branch or remote office.

●   Supports Cisco traditional, third-party, and mixed messaging and IP telephony environments:

◦     Integrated by design with Cisco Unified Communications Manager and Unified Communications Manager – Session Management Edition (SME), and can easily integrate with leading traditional telephone systems, even simultaneously.

◦     Integrates with QSIG-enabled Private Branch Exchanges (PBXs) through either Cisco Unified Communications Manager, Unified Communications Manager – SME, or a Cisco Integrated Services Router (ISR).

◦     Supports analog, digital, and T1 PBX media gateway integration.

◦     Supports integration with any phone system that provides a serial data link to the primary PBX IP Media Gateway (PIMG) unit.

◦     Third-party phone system support for Avaya, NEC, Nortel, Siemens, and others; can be transparently networked to traditional and third-party voicemail solutions, including Cisco Unity, Cisco Unity Express, and Voice Profile for Internet Mail (VPIM)-compliant third-party voicemail systems.

●   Flexible development and integration tools: Representational State Transfer (REST)-based APIs provide easy integration into existing provisioning, messaging, telephony, and notification systems, allowing integration with existing corporate tools, clients, and workflows or the creation of custom end-user applications.

Third-party solutions developed and available include:

◦     Donoma Software – Unify 8.x for Gmail, Lotus Notes, and GroupWise

◦     EsnaTech – Office LinX

◦     OpenText – RightFax

◦     Sagemcom – xMedius Fax

◦     Unimax – 2^nd Nature

●   Secure:

◦     Security-Enhanced Linux (SELinux) access-control policies are used to provide a secure system.

◦     Secure Real-Time Transport Protocol (SRTP) and signaling encryption provide secure communication between Cisco Unity Connection and Cisco Unified Communications Manager.

◦     Support for HTTPS provides secure web access to Cisco Unity Connection and allows playback of secure messages within Microsoft Outlook.

◦     Secure messaging helps ensure that voice messages remain on the Cisco Unity Connection appliance with no chance of forwarding.

◦     Password and PIN security policy options to enforce expiration, complexity, reuse, and lockout are supported.

●   Compliant:

◦     Supports tracking and audit of configuration changes.

◦     Supports legal hold.

◦     Supports message-aging policy for secure messages, automatically deleting all secure messages that are older than the specified number of days.

◦     Supports secure delete and voice message shredding.

◦     Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) compliant (certified versions 10.5(1) and 11.5(1)) and Joint Interoperability Test Command (JITC) certified (versions 10.5(2) and 11.5(1)).

Table 1.       Localization Languages

Licensing

Cisco Unity Connection user and interoperability functions are offered under a single, low-cost Basic user license that you can use for all core functionality (voicemail, unified messaging, or integrated messaging). An Enhanced user license provides all the user and interoperability functions available with the Basic license plus the Cisco Survivable Remote Site Voicemail capability for branch-office users. Enhanced licensing provides a second standby mailbox at the branch office for remote users. Both Basic and Enhanced capabilities are provided with Cisco Unified Workspace Licensing (UWL) and Cisco UC Enterprise Agreement Licensing.

Cisco SpeechView (transcription services) is an additional per-subscriber subscription-based license providing speech-to-text capability. For more information on Cisco SpeechView, visit https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/collateral/unified-communications/unity-connection/data_sheet_c78-609206.html.

Cisco Unity Connection 12.0 and later supports Cisco Smart Software Licensing. For more information on Cisco Smart Software Licensing, or on migrating to Cisco Smart Software Licensing, visit: https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/buy/smart-accounts/software-licensing.html.

System Requirements

The Cisco Unity Connection system runs as a virtual machine on the Cisco UCS or spec-based hardware. Please refer to the Cisco Unity Connection Supported Platform List for hardware configuration and scalability requirements: https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/voice_ip_comm/connection/12x/supported_platform/12xcucspl.html.

For a full, updated list of supported email clients, web browsers, and desktop operating systems for use with Cisco Unity Connection, visit https://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps6509/products_device_support_tables_list.html.

Ordering Information

To place an order, visit the Cisco Ordering homepage at https://www.cisco.com/en/US/ordering/index.shtml and refer to Table 2. To download software, visit the Cisco Software Center at https://software.cisco.com/download/navigator.html.

Table 2.       Ordering Information

Please refer to the Cisco Unity Connection Ordering Guide for detailed information about part numbers, descriptions, and packaging options (Cisco partner access required): https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/collateral/unified-communications/unity-connection/guide-c07-734922.html?cachemode=refresh.

This product is a part of Cisco Unified Workspace Licensing. Please visit https://www.cisco.com/go/workspace_licensing for more information and to determine whether Cisco Unified Workspace Licensing is appropriate for your customer.

Cisco Services

Cisco Unified Communications Services allow you to accelerate cost savings and productivity gains associated with deploying secure, resilient Cisco Unified Communications solutions. Delivered by Cisco and our certified partners, our portfolio of services is based on proven methodologies for unifying voice, video, data, and mobile applications on fixed and mobile networks. Our unique lifestyle approach to services can enhance your technology experience to accelerate true business advantage.

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For More Information

For more information, please visit the Cisco Unity Connection product page at: https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/unified-communications/unity-connection/index.html.