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In the Prepare phase, you evaluate Cisco technologies that address your business needs. Gather information about your business and technical environment that will feed into the high-level design. Then, create a business case for the IP telephony system that provides the best return on your investment.
Understand the features and functions of IP telephony applications. Start with the high-level information in the Cisco Collaboration Systems Description and Collaboration Overview, and then proceed to the more detailed and Collaboration release-specific information in the System Release Notes.
You have defined and created the following:
Cisco Collaboration Systems offer many features and solutions that allow people to collaborate effectively. It offers a coherent experience that connects people with people in familiar, intuitive, natural, simple ways using any media or device, at any time, while integrated with business processes. This integrated collaboration architecture with a converged voice, video and data network includes many products from Cisco’s Collaboration portfolio.
Enterprise, mid-market or small and medium businesses can implement various system deployment models such as single site, multiple sites or cloud. Cisco Collaboration Systems Release 10.6(1) is backwards compatible with Collaboration Systems Release 10.5(1).
The Cisco IP telephony system includes a wide array of hardware and software components, such as call processing products, communications endpoints (Unified IP phones and video devices), and special applications, all deployed over a converged network infrastructure. The network infrastructure for Cisco IP telephony includes PSTN gateways, analog phone support, and digital signal processor (DSP) farms.
Cisco provides Unified Communications solutions for small businesses through large enterprise networks. For more information on applying Unified Communications solutions to different size markets, see the following:
IP telephony system components are grouped in the following categories:
Call control components, such as Cisco Unified Communications Manager, Cisco Unified Communications Manager Express, Cisco Unified Survivable Remote Site Telephony (Unified SRST), Cisco TelePesence Video Communication Server, Cisco Business Edition 7000 and Cisco Business Edition 6000.
Server applications, such as Cisco Unified Communications Manager IM and Presence Service, Cisco Emergency Responder, Cisco Paging Server, Cisco Unified Attendant Console Standard, and Cisco Unified Attendant Console Advanced.
Conferencing components, such as Cisco TelePresence Server, Cisco TelePresence MCU, Cisco TelePresence Conductor, Cisco WebEx Meetings Server, and Cisco TelePresence Management Suite.
Voicemail and unified messaging components, such as Cisco Unity Connection.
Devices (endpoints) and clients, such as Cisco IP Phone 7821, 7841, 7861, Cisco Unified IP Phones 6900, 7800, 7900, 8900, and 9900 Series, Cisco TelePresence SpeakerTrack 60, Cisco Desktop Collaboration Experience DX650, Cisco TelePresence SX10, and Cisco TelePresence MX200 G2.
Client applications such as Cisco Jabber for Android, Cisco Jabber for Mac, Cisco Jabber for iOS, and Cisco Jabber for Windows.
Network Management devices, such as Cisco Prime Collaboration Provisioning, Cisco Prime Collaboration Assurance, and Cisco Prime Collaboration Deployment.
Communications infrastructure devices, such as Cisco IOS Extended Maintenance Deployment, Cisco 4451-X Integrated Services Router (ISR), nd Cisco SRE 910 Service Module.
The Cisco Collaboration System supports the deployment models in the following table.
Deployment Models |
Description |
Single-Site Model | This model is designed for autonomous offices in which most or all employees are IPC users. This model can support up to 30,000 users. |
Multisite Centralized Call Processing Model | This model is designed for distributed operations with a large central or headquarters site and multiple remote or branch sites. This model can support up to a total of 30,000 phones distributed among up to a maximum of 1000 sites. Based upon the bandwidth available, each site can support any number of users up to the overall total of 30,000 phones. |
Multisite Distributed Call Processing Model | This model is designed for organizations with large user populations or large numbers of geographically distributed sites resulting in the need for more than a single call processing entity. This model is suited for deployments that require multiple Cisco Unified Communications Manager clusters or Cisco Unified Communications Manager Express platforms. Each call processing entity in this model is configured as a single-site model or multisite centralized call processing model and each has a common dial plan and feature set. |
Clustering Over IP WAN Call Processing Model | This model is designed for organizations with large user populations across multiple sites that are connected by an IP WAN with the QoS features enabled. It supports the Local Failover Deployment Model and the Remote Failover Deployment Model. |
Cisco Collaboration Systems integrate telephony, conferencing, messaging, and security products for IP customers who have a variety of deployment models. For detailed Cisco IP telephony feature information, see the System Release Notes: Cisco Collaboration Systems, Release 10.6.1.