Does CUCM 9.x obsolete the VCS Control?

[John Faltys]

Does CUCM 9.x obsolete the VCS Control?  It has been recommended by Cisco up until recently, to use the VCS Control for local VC registrations, legacy registrations and even findme functionality.

Recently, one of my customers has said that their Cisco representative says that approach is no longer recommended.  That the traversal relationship will be with CUCM - VCS Express and that the endpoints can register to CUCM 9.x.  Although I believe technically this will work it this the best approach?

My concerns:

• Legacy endpoints
• Findme
• Protocol interop
• Scalability

Thanks

[Chris Deren]

No it does, even though you can register most of the Tandberg devices natively with CUCM, you cannot do that with 3rd party video devices, such as Polycom, you also need VCS for VCS Expressway external connections, etc.  If you have a simple Tanberg deployment with no external connections you can eliminate VCS.

HTH,

Chris

[Gaurav Purohit]

Spot on Chris,

the only reason why I think Cisco is moving towards consolidating the two platform is to simplify dial plans. Also in later versions of CUCM there is a provision for better bandwidth management which may prove worthwhile with other video enabled endpoints.