To William (and Cisco,) Honestly, I like Cisco. I like their  "openess" (you can find documentation and help on almost anything  anywhere), the contribution they make to industry by their huge R&D  effort (more than all their competition combined....or so I've been  told...), the accessibility and responsiveness of some of their key  people in the distribution channel, and yes, I like the ecosystem in  terms of support, tons of free education and sales support for both  their SMB and classic enterprise solutions. Having said that, I thank God for people like William  Burnett, who I am sure opened the eyes of many partners about the things  that are horrendously wrong with some of the products in the SMB  portfolio, most notably the UC320. I think it is fair to say, that  William has effectively "killed" it (the UC320) in it's present  incarnation. That is, unless Cisco, decides to really rise to the  challenge and fix a product that at first seemed ideal for the small  enterprise, but which was poorly implemented in terms of QC and in some  cases design. We certainly are not going to be touching the UC320  with a 10ft pole now Nobody wants (or can afford to) get a bad name by  selling "trouble" to your Mom&Pop shops or to people whose trust you  worked hard to gain and who are really depending on you to deliver. Not  in this economy....not ever. Coming from a Nortel telephony background, its really  hard to accept that having to respond to trouble calls or complaints  continuously from customers when Nortel products worked so reliably. In  fact, Nortel Norstar is so reliable as a key system that people joke ,  that's why they went out of business, they couldn't generate enough  turnover in new sales on account of people holding on to their Norstar's  forever. As a seller/installer/user of Cisco voice (UC540) and CME there are a couple recommendations I would like to make to Cisco: 1)Private line emulation - inability to transfer or conference calls on a private line.  (using the TRUNK XX command) on the CME/UC500 platforms needs to be  significantly improved in order to keep up with the competition: for  one, when you select a private line and make a call you cannot transfer  that call. Every other system I have worked with allows you to do this.  This for me is a glaring "defect/design flaw". I spent a lot of time  trying to get this "fixed" as I couldnt believe that Cisco would just  omit such a basic function when all their competition  has it. (You dont  even think about this when dealing with other systems.) Its just  expected. 2)Private line emulation - Inability to reflect the dialed number in the Call Detail Records for calls made via a "private line". If you select a private line on the UC500 or  CME and make a call, the dialed number would not show up in the CDR. I  have programmed systems from Nortel (Norstar, BCM,CS1000), Avaya - (IP  Office 500, Partner Plus, and S8x00 Communication Servers) as well as  various systems from Mitel and Panasonic .  The CDR packages for these systems are very well implemented and  documented. Cisco's systems are well documented as well, but this is an  area of the implementation where Cisco falls behind the competition. I am sure this can be fixed, but for some reason, despite a number of requests, it hasnt. In  trying to understand why it is Cisco, with such a huge R&D budget,  can't seem to get some things working properly that the competiton has  long ago solved and moved on with, I have come to the conclusion that it  must be that Cisco propably didnt tap enough of the right (human)  resources when it was developing its voice portfolio, and the lack of  industry experience shows up in some random places. Sad to say, not  paying attention to some of these details, to real world usage  scenarios, makes what would be an otherwise super product, just good  enough. Cisco is the biggest networking vendor on  the planet. People have a right to have high exectations of Cisco. Their  marketing also conditions users and partners to expect more when using  their solutions. While we accept that no one is perfect, not even the  mighty Cisco, I think most of the complaints and dissapointment  expressed in this forum, on this particular thread, are justified  because there is a strong feeling that if Cisco can be such a  trailblazer with their enterprise portfolio, that they should have  understood the importance of ensuring and enforcing good quality control  in the design and manufacture of the SMB portfolio. I honestly hope  someone from "Corporate" or high enough to make a differnce, looks at  this thread started by William and uses it to inspire the will to fix  what needs to be fixed to redeem the UC320 in whatever incarnation, in  the eyes of its partners (even former ones....such as William)and  customers. This is beginning to look like a textbook case of how not to  do product development. ... View more