Why replace MSE 8510 MCU 4.4 with Telepresence Server (3.1)

[Douglas Baggett]

We have an MSE 8510 with MCU 4.4. Looking at software avaialble it looks like I could replace the software with Telepresence server software instead.

Why would I do this? What do I gain (and lose) by doing it? I don't have any old CTS systems, just Jabber, C series and MXP systems. Is the Telepresence Server software what is being actively developed while the old MCU sofware is not?

thanks

[Douglas Baggett]

Done! thanks for the reminder!

[josem_155]

Paulo have read all your response about this topic and all of them are very clear. I have only one question:

What happen if I have a greenflied opportunity where my customer will have video phones ( not sure iuf ex60, ex90 or the new one cisco just released), customer joining from outside of the company using tablets or smartphones ( not sure here either if using Jabber or webex) and third party customer to a video call?? what should I choose? MCU +TMS ot TS+Conductor+ TMS?

I mean i want to know in term of cons/pros as well as cost what should I choose?

Thanks

[Nick Halbert-Lillyman]

I'll just add my 2 cents here - my biggest network has 8 x 8710 blades and 2 x 8510 blades (no conductor yet).  We use the 8710s as the default scheduling option from TMS, then we use the 8510's for Ad-Hoc conferences or if there's some kind of non-standard requirement that requires different layouts etc.

Active speaker switching with the film strip is the best layout in my opinion, so this way users get the "best" experience by default, but when we require it we can still use the 8510s.  If you end up finding that you never use the 8510s, you can always change them into 8710s later for free.

The other thing about 8710s is that because of their limited options, they are "easier" to administer as there are less things you can do wrong .  This is useful if you have low level helpdesk staff etc administering conferences.

[Paulo Souza · Accepted solution]

What happen if I have a greenflied opportunity where my customer will have video phones ( not sure iuf ex60, ex90 or the new one cisco just released), customer joining from outside of the company using tablets or smartphones ( not sure here either if using Jabber or webex) and third party customer to a video call?? what should I choose? MCU +TMS ot TS+Conductor+ TMS?

I cannot address your need by simply posting some tips on this forum. I strongly recommend you to contact your local Cisco representative in order to have a deeper analysis of your environment and then suggest the best solution for you and your customer.

Well, but there are some good points that I can share with you when comparing both possibilities:

• TS and MCU have almost the same compatibility level regarding third party endpoints, but TS has support for TIP protocol, therefore you can join imersive telepresence from Cisco and from another manufactures as well.
• TS + Conductor is the best option when you have multiple endpoints using different quality definition (HD, SD, nHD). Using the resource optimization feature, you can take more advantage of your resources. For example, if you have a MCU with 24 HD ports, a SD participant will take a whole HD port, although it is not using this much of resource. But using Conductor + TS, a HD participant would take a whole video port, whereas a SD participant would take only 1/3 of a video port. Therefore you can take more advantage of your resources.
• Using Conductor + TMS, you can schedule conferences using custom conference aliases. Without Conductor you just have a static range of numeric IDs which are attributed to each scheduled conference dinamicly.
• Conductor is the best option if you need to have Adhoc conference creation and Multiway support
• If you have just one TS, you don't need to buy Conductor, you can get a trial version of Conductor that supports only one single conference bridge and doesn't support cluster. But all the other features will work normally.
• MCU has many features that TS doesn't have, such as Auto Attendant, Web conferencing, custom conference layouts, advanced conference control via web or TMS.
• In both cases VCS will be required if using TMS for scheduling

Regarding costs, I don't have any idea about what suggest, that's why I am technician and not seller. I know how to put the technical details over the table, but I don't know anything about cost. That's why strongly suggest to contact your Cisco representative.

I hope this help.

Paulo Souza

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[Tom Leinos]

Hi, has there been any development on cisco regarding auto-attendant for TPS?

Does anyone know of any other product/software than IPGW that could work as auto attendant for TPS?

br. Tom

[Douglas Baggett]

I told our account manager as well that this is definitely something that needs to be addressed. I've not heard anything though.