Solved: uc320 should be cutting edge...

shuotari2 · ‎04-14-2011

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

Paul Williamson · ‎09-04-2012

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.

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