cisco voip vs microsoft UCC

[akhanwaterloo]

Hello All

We have few sites with cisco CME for our voip installations  and now someone suggested to move towards Microsoft Lync 2010 solution for unified communications ,

so I would like if experts can porvide some pros and cons or a comparsion between the two products which would help us in analyzing it with microsoft UCC.

Thanks

AK

[Marwan ALshawi]

Hi Asif

This really depends on the budget and environment you have and business requirements

With cisco iptel you can get software and hardware devices for voice and video over ip

You can get web conferencing and collaboration using cisco meeting place or webex integrated with your UC system

You can get presence and also if you have lync or moc softwares you can integrate it with cisco UC to control the phones or use it as a softphne too

You can use cisco unity for voice mail or you can use exchange server as your voice mail system integrated with cisco UC called unified messaging

Not to mention if your network infrastructure is cisco cisco UC fit easily and smoothly in terms of QoS and quality

Hope this help

[odaijeriss]

after a deep look and analysis for lync i can provide you with the following:

Pros:

lync can provide users with the approximate the full unified communication experience with less number of servers than the solution provided by Cisco for full unified communciation experience.

however lync has the below cons:

1- Supports only one extension per user/phone and a second private line with very limited featurs (incomming calls only).

2- Does not support H323 protocol.

3- Does not support G729 for RTP.

4- Does not support standard video coding.

5- If i want to have two front servers for the same pool separated by WAN then TTL should be less than 15 ms.

6- Phones do not support IM.

7- CX-700 (the highest end phone for lync solution was manufactured for OCS) does not work with all the features supported by Lync.

8- Not all the phones have MWI.

9- Expensive phones.

10- Not all the phones have a PC switch port.

11- Some phones will not work without a PC directly attached to it.

12- Support for phones, Gateways, and SBA will be provided by third party companies as it is not Microsoft products and this will cause to have multiple contracts and will require more managment.

13- Gateways certified by Lync can have analog or digital ports but not both at the same time.

14- Phones do not support video at all.

15- Limited number of end points.

16- Does not support third party SIP phones.

17- Could not be integrated with any IPCC for interprise deployments, and Microsoft has no plans at all to produce IPCC now nor in the future.

18- No continous presence in video calls.

19- Back up system is needed to back up Lync

20- Hardware balancer is needed to blance overload between fronend servers

21- Does not provide solutions for small branches and SMB (e.g UC500 series, CME or CUE)

!!!!!!!!Can you trust a system with BSoD !!!!!!!!

Hope the above will help you in deciding which product to proceed with.

Best Regards,

Odai Jeriss

[Marwan ALshawi]

very nice Odai

also if you have any plan to add contact center solution Cisco the way you go

in addition to the variety of Video end points and capabilities available with CUCM with the current versions

if you worried about number of servers, all Cisco UC now can be installed on vitalized environment using VMware VI

HTH

[Leo Laohoo]

Read this:

http://www.gartner.com/technology/streamReprints.do?id=1-1728DMD&ct=110823&st=sb

And go to the Microsoft section.