Cisco Unified
Communications Manager (formerly named as Cisco Unified Call Manager) serves as
the software-based call-processing component of the Cisco Unified
Communications family of products. A wide range of Cisco Media Convergence
Servers provides high-availability server platforms for Cisco Unified
Communications Manager call processing, services, and applications.
The Cisco Unified
Communications Manager system extends enterprise telephony features and
functions to packet telephony network devices such as IP phones, media
processing devices, voice-over-IP (VoIP) gateways, and multimedia applications.
Cisco Unified Communications Manager provides signaling and call control
services to Cisco integrated telephony applications as well as third-party
applications. Cisco Unified Communications Manager performs the following
primary functions:
- Call processing
- Signaling and device control
- Dial plan administration
- Phone feature administration
- Directory services
- Operations, administration,
maintenance, and provisioning (OAM&P)
- Programming interface to
external voice-processing applications such as Cisco IP Communicator, Cisco
Unified Customer Voice Portal (CVP).
The Cisco Unified
Communications Manager system includes a suite of integrated voice applications
that perform voice-conferencing and manual attendant console functions. This
suite of voice applications means that no need exists for special-purpose
voice-processing hardware. Supplementary and enhanced services such as hold,
transfer, forward, conference, multiple line appearances, automatic route
selection, speed dial, last-number redial, and other features extend to IP
phones and gateways. Because Cisco Unified Communications Manager is a software
application, enhancing its capabilities in production environments requires
only upgrading software on the server platform, thereby avoiding expensive
hardware upgrade costs.
Distribution of
Cisco Unified Communications Manager and all Cisco Unified IP Phones, gateways,
and applications across an IP network provides a distributed, virtual telephony
network. This architecture improves system availability and scalability. Call
admission control ensures that voice quality of service (QoS) is maintained
across constricted WAN link and automatically diverts calls to alternate public
switched telephone network (PSTN) routes when WAN bandwidth is not available.
A web-browse-able
interface to the configuration database provides the capability for remote
device and system configuration. This interface also provides access to
HTML-based online help for users and administrators.
Cisco Unified
Communications Manager, designed to work like an appliance, refers to the
following functions:
- Cisco Unified Communications
Manager servers can get pre-installed with software to ease customer and
partner deployment and automatically search for updates and notify
administrators when key security fixes and software upgrades are available for
their system. This process comprises Electronic Software Upgrade Notification.
- You can upgrade Cisco Unified
Communications Manager servers while they continue to process calls, so
upgrades take place with minimal downtime.
- Cisco Unified Communications
Manager supports the Asian and Middle Eastern markets by providing support for
Unicode on higher resolution phone displays.
- Cisco Unified Communications
Manager provides Fault, Configuration, Accounting, Performance, and Security
(FCAPS).