Cisco Business Edition 3000 - anyone using it? - any good?

[andyhibbert]

Anyone got anything good or bad to say about the Cisco Business Edition 3000 system?

I'm thinking of deploying one for a 150 seat system.

All comments welcome.

Thanks.

[paolo bevilacqua]

Have you considered CME/CUE? they do all what typical system need to do, on a simpler, compact router platform that you need to buy anyway.

[andyhibbert]

Hi.

Yes, that's what I would normally use for a site of this size but I'm looking to standardise on CUCM.

I was looking at the 3000 as a cheap(?) way of achieving this.

Being able to AD integrate users, and have extension mobility across clusters are a couple of reasons to go the CUCM route. or can I do this with CME?

I have a mistrust of anything that has a single hard drive so was hoping someone else had experience with reliability / functionality of these devices

Thanks

[paolo bevilacqua · Accepted solution]

That's the point - CME has no drive and all config is a single file plus CUE backup. And, you can have it redundant with the money saved from CM.

It does AD integration (I have an xml app for that) and EM with no problems. You will have to configure each system individually but you can definitely have same extension going different places. Has also inter-site presence, and other features not even listed in data sheet..

[Edson Vuma]

i, Paolo, could you please tell me if BE3K is only commercialized in certain countries only?

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Regards
Edson Vuma

[Chandramouli Kancharala]

HI Paolo

  Yes, Currently  BE3K is being sold in BRIC countries(Brezil, Russia, India, China), Mexico, Australia, US and UK. Planning to enter into Indonesia shortly.

Thanks

Chandra Mouli

[Edson Vuma]

Thanks for your reply.

What about the BE5K and BE6K?

Are those on the same condition?

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Regards
Edson Vuma

[Andrew Hickman]

Hi Edson,

End of Sale has now been annonced for the Business Edition 5000.

The Business Edition 6000 is available globally and has a very active roadmap. 

The Business Edition 6000, like the 5000 is based around the full Unified Communications Manager product, but based on a UCS platform that uses virtualisation to run up to five applications on the same chassis.

Be sure to check out the Midmarket Collaboration Promotion in your region if you are considering the Business Edition 6000!

Regards,

Andy

[James Hawkins]

Hi,

I have not used (or even seen) a 3000 yet so I too would be interested in any feedback as well.

One odd thing is the phone support -see below

• Cisco Unified IP Phone models 3905, 6901, 6911, 6921, 6941, 6945, 6961, 7925G, 8941, 8945, and 8961 (with KEM) models.
• Cisco Unified IP Conference Station 7937
• Cisco Unified IP Wireless IP Phone 7925G

So no 79xx other than the conference and wireless phones. I guess this makes sense as these will mainly be going in to green field sites (from a Cisco UC perspective) but I guess it will catch a few people out.

[paolo bevilacqua]

Wow no 79xx ??? Yuck.

[James Hawkins · Accepted solution]

I guess Cisco want people to stop buying the 79xx phones as the basic design is pretty ancient in IT terms. Shame they did not do a better job with the 69xx!

There is alot of information about BE3000 in the latest CUCM SRND and from the look of it the OP will be disappointed - a sample about ICT is shown below:

Business Edition 5000 and 6000 both support intercluster trunking as well as H.323, SIP, and MGCP

trunks or gateways and analog gateways. However, Business Edition 3000 does not support intercluster

trunking. Business Edition 3000 trunk and gateway support is limited to the Cisco 2901 Integrated

Services Router (ISR) for MGCP PSTN connectivity over a maximum of two E1/T1 PRIs. Business

Edition 3000 also supports the Cisco VG224 Analog Voice Gateway for analog phones.

I would recommend doing a search for "3000" in the SRND to get a feel for all these restrictions.

[paolo bevilacqua]

Exactly my feelings, rated !

However personally I do not find anything wrong or even outdated in color 79xx phones.

[Glenn Quesenberry]

Additional 79XX phone support is coming in next SW version 8.6.4, due out within the month!

BR,

[nalbert]

James and all,

The BE3000 does not support ICT, but does support SIP trunking across BE3000s (multiple networked BE3000 as a distributed call control). See "Multi-Systems Cisco BE3000 Solution" under http://cisco.com/go/smartdesigns/uc