UC500 vs CME

[mymite060708]

Does anyone have information on where these two products are most suited? from what I can see they have very similar features

for example if I have a site with 20 phones a BRI connection to the pstn and voicemail, which one is best , which is cheaper?

thanks

[Jonathan Schulenberg]

The UC500 series product is a bundle of other products cramed into a single chassis. CME is one of these features as is CUE, VPN, firewall, and PSTN gateway functionality. I won't speak to pricing here; this is something that you should work out with your Cisco partner/reseller.

The main deciding factor should be scalability. What will your needs be in the next X years that you expect the equipment to last? Craming everything into one box tends to impose lower scalability limits.

[Brandon Svec]

Jonathan makes good points.  Particularly about scalability.  If you are looking at a single small office or a handful of small offices I think either product would be OK and basically equivalent (compare prices).

The other consideration is support.  UC500 is not handled by regular TAC and SmartNet.  They have their own small business support group.