CUCM vs Cisco Business Edition 7000

[gbljoba]

Hi, Im looking for some advice if that's ok. On a medium/high ive been involved with CUCM for some time and certainly all the historical deployments we have done in our company have either been CUCM or CUCME. We have a plan to move to continent based clusters and move all the CUCM clusters and CME into the main continent ones. Given the size and span of our company I always stayed away from business edition as it appeared to be limiting at the time. A partner we are working with has proposed business edition 7000 for one of the continental clusters and to me im trying to get my head round why they would do that. What have I missed on BE over the years? Regards Jon

[Chris Deren]

Business Edition is nothing different than CUCM, it is a marketing term for a bundle where you may get some better pricing.  BE6K or BE7K include the UCS server, ESXi licensing, and applications of choice which are no different from stand alone applications.  If you can fit in your environment into BE7K then by all means it is a good solution as you will get better pricing.

Chris

[Aman Soi]

[+5] to Chris and Jaime.

you can also refer the datasheet 

http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/collateral/unified-communications/business-edition-7000/data-sheet-c78-730649.html

regds,
aman

[Jaime Valencia · Accepted solution]

Just to add to Chris´s comments, 6K is limited in regards to number of users and devices, and it does include some licensing.

7K is just the server and ESXi, licenses for all apps have to be bought separately, BUT, has no limits in regards to what you can configure, it follows the same SRND rules as a regular CUCM deployment (same for all apps you can deploy on it).

http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/collateral/unified-communications/business-edition-6000/solution_overview_c22-727987.html

[gbljoba]

Thanks for both of your responses.

So to summarize in my brain. the difference is that CUCM is of course an application, the BE7000 bundles all the other applications like unity, presence on one box, preloaded and has a significantly smaller scope in the number of users it can support? Licensing they propose is still the same CUWL

i am suspicious because if i were to build an enterprise level continental cluster i would have expected a minimum of two UCS servers with instances of full call manager, unity connection etc.

/Jon

[Chris Deren]

Pretty much, except the applications are not preloaded, the ISOs are loaded in the datastore and ESXi is pre-installed, you still need to install the applications.

Chris

[gbljoba]

so why have them as separate products then? i swear from distant memory that if you had BE and moved to a big CUCM cluster you had to throw it out. I was told thats why Cisco hardly sold much BE.

[Chris Deren]

Right, that was BE6K which was before virtualization days and both CUCM and UCXN went on one physical server. With BE6K and BE7K the concept is different, as described before and in the product data sheet.

Chris

[Jaime Valencia]

Nope, actually the co-res install that started with CUCM 6.X and CUC 2.X on 7816 and 7828, was renamed BE 5K once we released the 6K option on 8.5(1) version, that one is tied to UC on UCS.

5K is still out there on some places, and it goes as far as 9.X release, still running on MCS 7828. This is the original Business Edition.

[mclean.danny]

Hi Jaime,

Is the BE6K and 7K still standalone like the 5K? Meaning they can no be clustered? Thanks in advance.

Danny

[Chris Deren]

No, BE7K just Like BE6K is a product bundle and each app i.e. CUCM can be clustered across same physical server or across multiple servers.

[mclean.danny]

Thanks for the quick answer Chris. The name BE was throwing me off.

[Jaime Valencia]

No, read again my reply: 

7K is just the server and ESXi, licenses for all apps have to be bought separately, BUT, has no limits in regards to what you can configure, it follows the same SRND rules as a regular CUCM deployment (same for all apps you can deploy on it).

[Ben Rodriguez]

Thanks Jaime. You always seem to have the answers.