uc320 should be cutting edge...

[shuotari2]

It would be really great is someone would come out with a "Small Business" phone system at an affordable price for small business.

Small business seems to be left in the dust alot of times, due to their size.  They are expected to use older technologies, older telco thought processes, and phone systems with older thinking.

My suggestion for the Cisco Marketing and Sales team is to get in a room with some real "Small Business" people, "Small Business Technologists" and "Creative Thinkers" and design a phone system that is amazing.

A phone system that does everything you could imagine.  Can you even imagine what would happen to the small business phone system market.  If Cisco, or some other vendor, would come out with a truely revolutionary low cost phone system that does everything, does it well, and is forward thinking in it's approach.   Imagine everyone using the Cisco name as a benchmark in it's thinking.  The small business industry could begin thinking about Cisco as the iPhone, iPad and other Apple products.

With the uc320w, it is clearly a follower product.  It really does not do anything special.  What if it did.  What if it could do follow me, email integration with exchange, What if it could...   Be the leader in small business communications.  To do what no other company does for small business.  To be so entrenched in the media that people are calling us and asking us to sell them the Cisco Small Business Solutions.

What if...

Scott Huotari, President / Owner

Creative Computer Solutions

360-944-5111

[nalbert]

Scott,

I will contact you directly for futher information. We are pretty confident UC320W will soon deliver "unseen" funcationlity to small businesses.

[Paul Williamson · Accepted solution]

Interesting thread, I'm surprised there wasn't more discussion on this.  I bought the UC320 for a branch office but unfortunately without the abilitity to have a remote phone and/or inter office connectivity it doesn't fit the bill.  If it could dial other ITSP numbers that would have been a workaround.

Some 17 months later from this this thread and little in terms of new features that people have been crying out for have been added which is a great shame because I think Scott makes a brilliant point.  I can certainly understand Cisco or other manufacturers worrying that it will take sales away from their larger systems but I would have thought that this issue could very easily be dealt with by limiting the number of phones/users that can be added to the system.

Originally, given that the unit was not upto the job we needed it for, I intended to pop the UC320 in a cupboard and bring it back into use in the future if the features that are discussed a lot in this forum are ever brought into being.  However, I've found a use for it and one where I think inadvertently, the UC320 fits really well - that is; at home.  As a home phone system it really does fit the bill as if this is what the designers of the system were really thinking about when they did the original spec and if it's self installed it fits nicely in terms of price.  I may have a little advantage here in that my home already had structured cabling but surely that's not the end of the world for a home user/home office.

Having said that, I would still like to see the ability to add a remote phone, ideally as a softphone to run on smartphones as it would be handy when I travel abroad to keep in touch with home without a cost implication.  I currently use a softphone app on my iphone to dial in which is instant and free but if I'm wanted from home, they either have to call me with cost or send a text asking me to call them.

It would be very interesting to see a published roadmap from Cisco for this product with clear distinctions between what "wil" be introduced and what is "under discussion" for possible introduction.  Any chance of that happening?

Regards,

Paul.

[Karsten Iwen]

It's not only you who is waiting, and waiting, and waiting ...

Luckily I never sold one to customers, they were probably as disappointed as I am of the system that even the most basic functions are not availabe.

-- 
Don't stop after you've improved your network! Improve the world by lending money to the working poor:
http://www.kiva.org/invitedby/karsteni

[Matthew Needs]

Couldn't agree more Paul.. I've been saying the same things for ages.

https://supportforums.cisco.com/message/3719566#3719566

Navin - I'd also be very interested to hear about these features?

Thanks all

Matt

[Stephen Lisk]

Paul’s post is very much a mirror of both of our initial expectation of the UC320 as a SME solution for main and or branch offices, and of our disappointment when the same lack of key features (remote ‘phone, inter-office connectivity between UC320 and or UC500, wireless IP ‘phone, soft phone for PC/smartphone) were discovered. Also like Paul, our test bench UC320 is now installed at home where it is performing well. However, with well featured SIP offerings available to home users today at reasonable prices it is hard to see the price relevance of the UC320 in a domestic setting. These same SIP offerings are also available to SME businesses. I sometimes wonder if Cisco has decided to not invest in developing the UC320 into a great product because these SIP offerings threaten its market and is just maintaining it before killing it off.

That said, there is a significant market for a device to sit astride the very dynamic SIP offerings from the telcos that will provide SMEs with reliable and full featured PBX and UC functionality, a la the UC520. A report released in April 2012 by the Ministry of Economic Development on small and medium businesses here in New Zealand states that “97 percent of all enterprises in New Zealand employ 19 or fewer staff”. I don’t know what the price point of the UC500 is in other countries, but here a business with 19 or less staff generally cannot afford one. Small businesses need the same tools as larger organisations. We have seen WebEx go from being the preserve of well-heeled, large enterprises to now being readily available to all. So, why not the same availability of full featured telephony and unified communications for SMEs? SMEs need functionality now and are going where they can get it and that is not Cisco at the moment. Without a committed roadmap we are not in a position to convince our customers to wait for Cisco to deliver on the UC320.

[dmaginnis]

I'd like to hear more about the great new features too.  We bought this for our office fully anticipating we could sell to our customers - very grateful we didn't do that!  I would be embarassed to install this system as a business solution.  We have lived with it for over a year now and it is tolerable at best - certainly not something I expected from Cisco. This forum is full of requests and recommendations that could make this a good system, but I think we'll see Cisco drop it before we see any improvement - I hope I'm wrong.

Dave