Is Anyone Using Provisioning Manager?

[luchtcm]

All,

We're rolling out several thousand Cisco IP phones over the next couple of years and, as we're doing so, we're finding that the MAC process is rather complex.  We've done a couple of things to help simplify the process and we utilize bulk administration for our initial definition process, but the process, overall, is still rather complex.

Provisioning Manager seems like it would help simplify some things for us, but we've got some concerns.  The product is somewhat expensive, the interface looks old, and, so far as we can tell, there aren't many people using it.

So, with all that said, is anyone actually using the product?  If so, what feedback do you have about it?

Thanks!

[cjoseph23]

I have used Provisioning Manager for a deployment some time ago and I found it to be more complex to use than just using BAT.  It was not easy to configure.  This was some time ago and I have read that the new versions are much more streamlined to deploy.

You might want to look into TAPS

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/voice_ip_comm/cucm/bat/8_5_1/t18taps.html

A globalknowledge article:

http://www.globalknowledge.com/training/generic.asp?pageid=2381&country=United+States

I have some large deployements coming up and am going to give this a try.  It requeires contact center (not sure if you have that in your enviroment) but if you don't then this won't work for you. 

I haven't looked into this completely but it does look like a nice option.

Regards,

cj