Cisco Hosted Collaboration Solution Overview

HCS System Overview

The Cisco Hosted Collaboration Solution (HCS) enables service providers to offer managed and hosted Unified Communications (UC) and collaboration services to multiple autonomous business customers by hosting UC applications in the cloud. Using this architecture, service providers can manage and deploy new highly reliable and scalable collaboration services to small- or medium-sized businesses and enterprises. This capability allows a service provider to offer differentiated services, as well as create new revenue possibilities.

Cisco HCS architecture enables the service provider to provide multiple cloud-based UC services to their customers, ranging in size from twenty to thousands of subscribers. Cisco HCS architecture also allows multicluster deployment of UC applications, allowing Large Enterprise Subscribers (LES) with tens of thousands of individuals to be serviced from the service provider cloud.

With Cisco HCS, service providers managed by Cisco have the opportunity to create “as a service” offers based on Cisco UC and collaboration applications. Service providers can monetize Cisco's broad portfolio of applications, streamline operations with a complete management system, optimize their capital investments in the data center through virtualization, and assure the highest quality of experience for their customers.

Cisco HCS enables service providers to offer voice, video, voicemail, instant messaging and presence, and mobility from the following product and service offerings:

  • Cisco Unified Communications Manager
  • Cisco Unity Connection
  • Cisco Unified Communications Manager IM and Presence Service

  • Cisco Unified Attendant Console

  • Cisco Unified Mobility and mobile Smartphone clients

  • Cisco Hosted Collaboration Solution for Contact Center

  • IP Multimedia Subsystem Integration service

  • Cisco WebEx

  • Cisco TelePresence

  • Cisco Emergency Responder

  • Cisco Paging Server

The figure that follows provides a high-level view of Cisco HCS showing key functions such as virtualization, management, data center and aggregation, and a variety of different deployment models.

Figure 1. Cisco HCS Architecture - Network View
Cisco HCS supports various deployment models in order to address various service provider and customer needs. The deployment models include:
  • Cisco HCS Pure Hosted

    A Cisco HCS Pure Hosted deployment model is used if all of the UC applications reside in the Service Provider Cisco HCS data center and endpoints are located at one or more remote customer sites. This deployment is typically the most common deployment for service providers because it is the simplest to deploy and manage as all the call control and management servers are in the Service Provider Cisco HCS data center.

    A typical customer is one who has Unified Communications applications on premises already and now wants to outsource the day-to-day operation to a service provider.

    Cisco Unified Communications Domain Manager is highly modular, customizable, and scalable and can grow based on service provider needs. Cisco Unified Communications Domain Manager lends itself to service provider processes and environments easily, because it has full feature parity with applications it manages and has the ability to synchronize changes made to applications from other tools.

    In Unified Communications Domain Manager 8.1(x), Unified Communications application data is maintained in Cisco Unified Communications Domain Manager which causes some potential out-of-sync and overwrite conditions when changes are made directly on the Unified Communications applications. In Cisco Unified Communications Domain Manager the application data for the UC applications is maintained in the applications themselves and not in Cisco Unified Communications Domain Manager and the data is pulled from the UC applications when needed. New settings on existing features and even new features can be added easily in Cisco Unified Communications Domain Manager.

    Cisco Unified Communications Domain Manager has simplified interfaces for onboarding and user management using Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP), Secure-Sign On (SSO), and orchestration capabilities that allow you to provision multiple applications and services for users with minimum steps. It also provides full API coverage northbound to service provider integration systems including application APIs, along with simplified aggregate, enriched APIs.

    Unified Communications Domain Manager 8.1(x) provides a fixed user interface hierarchy which cannot be changed whereas Cisco Unified Communications Domain Manager offers a flexible hierarchy. Cisco Unified Communications Domain Manager allows you to customize the branding, themes, and menu layouts for various users in the system using roles. You can determine the depth and names of elements in the hierarchy. Predefined dial plan workflows and provisioning templates in Unified Communications Domain Manager 8.1(x) can be customized and bundled in Cisco Unified Communications Domain Manager to meet customer requirements.

    Unified Communications Domain Manager 8.1(x) and Cisco Unified Communications Domain Manager can coexist in a single deployment with the following restrictions:

    • An individual customer can be managed by only a single Cisco Unified Communications Domain Manager version, either Unified Communications Domain Manager 8.1(x) or Cisco Unified Communications Domain Manager.

    • Customers previously onboarded or provisioned in Unified Communications Domain Manager 8.1(x) must be maintained in the 8.1(x) version. Cisco recommends that new customers be onboarded and provisioned with Cisco Unified Communications Domain Manager.

    • Customer names must be unique across both versions of Cisco Unified Communications Domain Manager. (The same name cannot be defined in both systems.)

    • Customers onboarded and provisioned on different Cisco Unified Communications Domain Manager versions cannot share UC applications.

    • Unified Communications Domain Manager 8.1(x) supports UC application versions from 8.x to current (10.x).

    • Cisco Unified Communications Domain Manager supports only UC application (10.x) versions.

  • Cisco HCS Remote Managed

    A Cisco HCS Remote Managed deployment is used if all Unified Communications applications are on premises, with Cisco HCS providing central breakout if necessary, and remote management through Hosted Collaboration Mediation Fulfillment and Cisco Unified Communications Domain Manager.

  • Cisco HCS Extender

    Cisco HCS Extender can have some or all of the Unified Communications applications on premises with some constraints on the server types, ESXi, C-series servers, and so on.

  • Cisco HCS Hosted Private Cloud (also known as Large Enterprise)

    A Cisco HCS Hosted Private Cloud deployment is typically for a customer who needs a standalone deployment. This model has its own license that cannot be shared with any other deployment models and must have its own management system dedicated to only one customer. This deployment shares common aggregation systems with Cisco HCS but the remaining parts are dedicated to one customer.

Cisco HCS Telephony, Design and Dial Plan Overview

Using Cisco Hosted Collaboration Solution (Cisco HCS) architecture you can configure Unified Communications Manager and other Cisco HCS elements (such as IOS devices, Cisco Unity Connection, and Cisco Unified Communications Manager IM and Presence Service) in a standard and repeatable way. Cisco HCS uses Cisco Unified Communications Domain Manager to provide automation and standardization to those configurations. Cisco Unified Communications Domain Manager employs bulk loaders to provision and onboard customers. Central to this goal, the routing architecture and associated element configuration meet in a configurable model that is used within Unified Communications Domain Manager. This model is often referred to as the Cisco HCS Dial Plan Model.

The main purpose of the Cisco HCS Dial Plan Model is to create a preintegrated baseline configuration of Unified Communications Manager applications. The Dial Plan Model can then be integrated into the platform and the service provider infrastructure with minimal effort. The Dial Plan Model configures not only the end customer equipment like Unified Communications Manager or on-premises routers, but also the interaction with aggregation layers using products such as Cisco Session Management Edition, or Session Border Controller for those functions. The Cisco HCS team provides these standard configurations, but the service providers must customize parts of the model for a particular environment.

For the end customers, the dial plan is designed to handle a significant portion of the corporate dialing schemes. The Cisco HCS Dial Plan includes a standardized model on how to handle intrasite, intersite, and PSTN calls, generally using a site + extension methodology. It also spans advanced routing requirements of elements like central versus local breakout for PSTN calls and also handles the different numbering requirements across multiple countries.

The intersection point between the dial plan and Unified Communications Domain Manager comes in the definition of standard telephony services that abstract Unified Communications Manager configurations into simpler choices that correspond to the feature plans a service provider wants to offer, and end customer to consume. For example, the partitions, calling search spaces, and translation patterns are predefined based on a choice of simple outbound, inbound, call forwarding, and time of day settings, which in Unified Communications Domain Manager are exposed as service types. These services are combined into feature packages and templates that define a user or lines telephony services.

Given the central role to the architecture and the provision workflow, this document outlines the key architectural elements that define the Cisco HCS Dial Plan Model, the mechanics of how the model is constructed, and the resulting service configurations in Unified Communications Domain Manager. In addition, the model can be customized to fit different infrastructure requirements and customized service types.

Dial Plan Model Overview

The Dial Plan Model was formalized for Cisco HCS in Releases 8.x and 9.x in order to facilitate a common basis for all the translation patterns, partitions, and calling search spaces, and provide consistent naming conventions. The model included G1 (Flat Dial Plan), G2 (Generic Dial Plan) and G3 (Shared Architecture Dial Plan) inter- and intra-site calling patterns. The model evolved to provide structure and consistency across deployments but was cumbersome to manage.

The Dial Plan Model in Cisco Unified Communications Domain Manager leverages templates and workflows in Cisco Unified Communications Domain Manager using json files to implement the model. The new model is more flexible and is designed to simplify dial plan management wherever possible.

The Dial Plan Model in Cisco Unified Communications Domain Manager consists of four basic, predefined call types:

  1. Directory Number = Site Location Code (SLC) + Extension, no Inter Site Prefix (ISP) in SLC
  2. Directory Number = SLC + Extension with ISP as part of SLC
  3. Directory Number = SLC + Extension and without ISP, can be with or without Extension Dialing Prefix (EDP)
  4. Directory Number = Flat Dial Plan (no SLC)

These four dial model types encompass all the functionality that was available on the previous Dial Plan Model, but in order to offer flexibility for service providers, the four types can be extended with custom schemas. Customization is managed through discrete, selectable elements in Cisco Unified Communications Domain Manager.

The Dial Plan Model provides flexible features such as:

  • Dynamic Class of Service
  • Country Dial Plans
  • Blocked / Non-blocked numbers
  • Call Manager groups
  • Flexible routing
  • PSTN prefix per country per customer. The first site of the country of the customer sets the PSTN prefix for all other sites of the country for that customer.

In Cisco Unified Communications Domain Manager, the administrator is asked at either the customer or site level to fill in a template which determines the Dial Plan Model that is delivered to the Cisco Unified Communications Manager and sites.

At the customer level, the Dial Plan Model is based on the following configuration elements:

  • Is SLC-based dial plan required?
  • Does the customer require inter-site prefix (ISP)?
  • Is inter-site prefix required as part of SLC?
  • Is the ISP part of the Directory Number?
  • Is the ISP included in the Voice Mail ID?

At the site level, the Dial Plan Model is based on the following configuration elements:

  • Site Name
  • External breakout number
  • SLC
  • Extension length
  • Extension Prefix required
  • Extension Prefix
  • Published number
  • Emergency number

High level work flows manage the following in Cisco Unified Communications Domain Manager:

  • Locations, Region and Device Pools per site
  • Call Manager Groups at the Provider/Reseller/Customer level
  • Local Route Groups Names at the cluster level
  • Default and custom Customer and Site level dial plan schemas
  • Voice Mail
  • Routing
  • Emergency Calling Line Identification
  • Inventory Management
  • Gateway Management