UC500\UC300\BE3000 EOL

[crowe]

https://communities.cisco.com/message/128811#128811

End-of-Life Announcement: Cisco Business Edition 3000, Unified Communications 500 Series, and Unified Communications 300 Series

Cisco®  Business Edition 6000 is Cisco’s leading midmarket on-premises  solution, providing right-priced, optimized collaboration for companies  supporting from 25 to 1000 users, and partner-hosted collaboration  powered by Cisco enabling customers to collaborate directly from the  cloud. Together, these two solutions options are addressing the trends  that midmarket companies are facing across the globe. With these trends  in mind, Cisco is simplifying the small and midsize portfolio to the  Business Edition 6000 and cloud collaboration.

Figure 1  Cisco Unified Communications and Collaboration Portfolio for Small and Midsize Businesses

To  do this efficiently, we are reducing today’s portfolio offers with the  end of life of the lower-end on-premises unified communications  platforms, effective July 22, 2013. The Cisco Business Edition 3000,  Unified Communications 500 Series, and Unified Communications 300 Series  will be available for partners and customers until January 2014.

Please refer to Q&A below, and contact us with any questions.

Q&A

Can  I continue selling the Cisco® Unified Communications 300 (UC300),  Unified Communications 500 (UC500), and Business Edition 3000 (BE 3000)?  Will they be supported?

Yes, these products will be available  until January 2014. However, customers and partners are encouraged to  deploy the BE 6000 or cloud-hosted collaboration moving forward. The  end-of-sale announcement will describe support timelines.

What is the replacement product options?

Cisco Business Edition 6000 for up to 1000 users

Cisco Unified Communications Manager Express on the Cisco Integrated Services Routers (ISR) for branch offices

For  deployments of fewer than 25 users, we recommend the use of the Cisco  SPA IP phone series in conjunction with a hosted service provider, and  for deployments of fewer than 10 users, a third-party PBX service is  recommended. The migration program, planned for availability on August  1, 2013, will offer support for migrating SPA phones to Cisco Unified IP  Phones, which can be used on the BE 6000 and in cloud-hosted  deployments.

Is there a migration plan for UC300, UC500 and BE 3000 customers? And will my existing SPA phones be included in the plan?

Planned  for availability on August 1, existing customers on the UC300, UC500,  and BE 3000 platforms will be able to migrate to the BE 6000 via the SMB  Collaboration migration program. Support for migrating SPA phones to  Cisco Unified IP Phones is also be included in the program.

Is Cisco leaving the sub-20 market?

No. Cisco has multiple solutions covering the sub-20 small business segment,

including branch, networking, security, and voice and conferencing endpoints

Also, for more information about the Cisco Small Business portfolio, visit www.cisco.com/go/smallbusiness

What is the support model for the BE 6000 compared to the UC300 and UC500?

The  BE 6000 is supported by the Cisco Technical Assistance Center (TAC);  the UC300 and UC500 are supported via the Cisco Small Business Support  Center.

How do I get updates on the BE 6000?

On the Cisco Support Community Business Edition 6000 page or on Cisco.com

Is the BE 6000 a real option for midsize customers?

Yes,  the Cisco BE 6000 has recently expanded its midmarket support by adding  a 25-user bundle to effectively support deployments with fewer users,  reducing cost and simplifying the ordering experience, and adding  support for Cisco Prime™ Collaboration. In addition, a new Express  Collaboration Specialization focuses on enabling midmarket partners to  have a successful business practice with the BE 6000. This new partner  program is designed specifically for partners who serve the small and  midsize customer segments, pulling together Cisco's flagship  collaboration, unified communications, and cloud solutions into a single  program. The Express Collaboration Specialization significantly reduces  the requirements and cost for partners desiring to develop a Cisco  Collaboration practice and resell the BE 6000.

How do I find more details about the Express Collaboration Specialization?

Visit Cisco Partner Central

End-of-Life/End-of-Sale Announcements:

Cisco Business Edition 3000

Cisco Unified Communications Manager 500

Cisco Unified Communications Manager 300

[David Trad]

Kind of figured it would come sooner rather than later... But the BE3000 is a bit of a surprise as I would have thought it best to replace the UC500 series.

I can see this putting many Select Certified partners out of operation as many of them wont upskill to the BE6000 series or have no interest in doing so.

Interesting turn of events me thinks

Cheers,


David Trad.


**When you rate a persons post, you are indicating a thank you or that it helped, but at the same time you are also helping to maintain the community spirit - You don't have to rate posts and you wont be looked down upon :) **

[pierrescotland · Accepted solution]

This is going to cause a lot of upset in the SB channel. 

a) UCME license price needs to come DOWN to what UC500 was if Cisco have any chance of getting SMEs to use their products.

b) Cisco don't offer a cloud solution, how can SME gain any kind of Cisco loyalty?

c) It's a HUGE jump in price and complexity to go to a BE6000.

While I was completley dismayed when support for UC500 moved to Lynksys(call it what you will) I always thought "we can always just sell UCME again", but the prices are way too steep vs UC500.  I suppose we'll have to see.   MS LYNC and hosted LYNC seem to be viable options but none of these will help me sell Cisco. 

It's times like these I am glad I didn't commit 100% to Cisco-only tech.  Back to selling routers and switches...

[Alberto Montilla]

Hi David;

Thanks for your comments. The decision around BE3000 was a result of the analysis done after the early introduction of the product. Most of the feedback around it (specially from end customers) was related to functionality missing (and available on BE6000). Customer satisfaction went up when moving from a BE3000 to a BE6000.

From partner perspective, it is valid to say that BE6000 is more complex to BE3000 due to its richness in the feature set, however our analysis and results from BE6000 sales and deployments indicates that complexity is similar to products of its nature such as IPOffice. There are currently many partners having a successful practice with BE6000. Having said that, we keep working on making deployment easier and faster. We have experience on that, so expect improvements on that area.

I understand changes always bring uncertainty and may also bring some resistance, but this change is for Cisco, partners and end-customers to enable a better (and more profitable) collaboration practice, with an advanced solution that have a market-leading footprint and roadmap.

Regards;

Alberto

[David Trad]

Hi Alberto,

Thank you for your reply, it is pretty much along the lines of what I was expecting

Having been involved with Cisco from Sales to Technical support to being the installer of all your systems, I am not surprised that we are finally crossing this bridge.

Lets be honest with each other here, the writing is on the wall that localy hosted systems are on their way out, and every major carrier in all the developed country are now targeting the low hanging fruit (Small Business) with cloud/hosted solutions and it is taking off, it actually makes sense to do that as it is affordable, economical, and broadband in this day and age is very viable to do such things as reliability and redundancy is just there.

I think this has taken some by surprise because Cisco is pulling right out of the SMB market, and lets face the facts, you are... The BE6000 is a vitalized system and is almost an identical system to the full blown call manager, so getting it in the sub <$5000 mark for a <20 seat business is a far stretch, where as with IPoffice from Avaya you can.

I know this as I have to quote Avaya on a daily basis now, and we were intending on bringing on Cisco within the next 2 months (Tier 1 major carrier), but when I discuss this with them I know this will have thrown a spanner in the works. Even buying an IPoffice with just their essential office system allows Us to start at the <10 seats market and can compete directly with the LG-Ericsson iPECS system which has a 45+% market share here in Australia.

Again don't get me wrong, I know you guys had to do it I am not that naive, but it does not remove disappointment knowing that the BE3000 could have been properly developed by the same unit that builds the BE6000, and they could have made that the answer to the SMB/SME market, the system just required development and I think we all know that.

One of thesee days I will chase up a BE6000 from Cisco to start learning on and then progress to get the appropriate certification for it, assuming I do end up choosing to stay in the industry

Cheers,


David Trad.


**When you rate a persons post, you are indicating a thank you or that it helped, but at the same time you are also helping to maintain the community spirit - You don't have to rate posts and you wont be looked down upon :) **

[Bob Salomon]

I just investedt in a Demo UC540, can i get my money back?

[Alberto Montilla]

Dear Bob;

Can you please contact us at ask-collab-midmarket@cisco.com?

Regards

Alberto

[Matt Waechter]

This does suck....I asked about this a month ago and had no deffinative answer from Cisco. I just sold another UC560 with 90 phones (customer signed Tuesday). I had been working with them for months to get this done and now the system is going EOL...crap!

[paolo bevilacqua]

Matt Waechter wrote:
This does suck....I asked about this a month ago and had no deffinative answer from Cisco. I just sold another UC560 with 90 phones (customer signed Tuesday). I had been working with them for months to get this done and now the system is going EOL...****!

Not to play smart, but if you had a read here or software packs document thread, this move was anticipated some 6 months ago already.

If I  were you I would move them to ISR G2 that at least runs current code, not the one of two years ago, and full support for CLI configs that most often are the only way to have things work properly.

[David Trad]

Hi Matt,

Please don't worry yourself too much, the UC560 will soldier on for quite some time for the customer, you have not done wrong by them as Cisco have not announced an EoS (End of Support) on it, which means it will most likely continue to get support just not any major upgrades (Maybe maintenance releases).

I have deployed hundreds of UC500 into the field, and 98% of them are still in operation and this is going on more than 6 years now, so they will continue to soldier on.

Plus the BE6K might not be an ideal solution for that client or you as you will need to retrain yourself as BE6K is a Call Manager based system.

For future reference, it is a good idea to keep an eye on what Cisco are doing, there are normaly tell tale signs that things are going to happen, it just becomes a guessing game as to when the trigger is pulled

Cheers,


David Trad.


**When you rate a persons post, you are indicating a thank you or that it helped, but at the same time you are also helping to maintain the community spirit - You don't have to rate posts and you wont be looked down upon **

[paolo bevilacqua]

David Trad wrote:
Hi Matt,
Please don't worry yourself too much, the UC560 will soldier on for quite some time for the customer, you have not done wrong by them as Cisco have not announced an EoS (End of Support) on it, which means it will most likely continue to get support just not any major upgrades (Maybe maintenance releases).

Surely cisco has announced the End of Support for the UC560, and it as follows:

End of Phone Support: HW	The last date to receive phone support as part of the product warranty. After this date, all phone support services for the product are available with additional charges or support fees. In some cases, support may not be available.	January 20, 2015
End of SW Maintenance Releases Date: HW	The last date that Cisco Engineering may release any final software maintenance releases or bug fixes. After this date, Cisco Engineering will no longer develop, repair, maintain, or test the product software.	January 20, 2015
End of New Service Attachment Date: HW	For equipment and software that is not covered by a service-and-support contract, this is the last date to order a new service-and-support contract or add the equipment and/or software to an existing service-and-support contract.	January 20, 2015
End of Service Contract Renewal Date: HW	The last date to extend or renew a service contract for the product.	April 17, 2016
Last Date of Support: HW	The last date to receive applicable service and support for the product as entitled by active service contracts or by warranty terms and conditions. After this date, all support services for the product are unavailable, and the product becomes obsolete**. Warranty duration is based on product ship dates; refer to warranty terms and conditions for details.	January 31, 2017

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/voicesw/ps6788/vcallcon/ps7293/end_of_life_notice_c51-729017_ps7293_Products_End-of-Life_Notice.html

No new "major" upgrade software will be ever released for the UC500. That means the product will only do what it does today.

[davetechfreak]

We have one customer with a BE3K and it wasn't a very good experience at all. Simple functionality was missing and the customer was so frustrated. We sometimes logged cases and TAC engineers were resolving issues by somehow pulling the full-blown BE6K GUI on the same box!?! I am actually glad this product is EOL now.

[nalbert]

Matt and others,

Partners who were selling UC500 to lower end of the market are finding ways to work with Distis to position BE6K for the same market . I understand BE6K looks complicated and expensive when looked at from a distance. However we are working on many processes that will make it a very cookie cutter process and nail the complexity. Once the complexity is reigned, the whole gamut of features and the scalability of the product is just mind biggling and opens up a whole new market for smaller players. I would recommend that you work with Sales to get in on it ( hint: BE6K sales last year was more than UC500 life cycle sales put togather (all 6 years))

[pierrescotland · Accepted solution]

"BE6K sales last year was more than UC500 life cycle sales put togather".

That just proves the point that BE6K is out of the price range of the SMEs that would have bought a UC500.  This is not a plus point for the BE6000 or Cisco's shoddy treatment of those who will now no longer be their customers.

Midsize companies start out as SMEs, if you can't instill brand loyalty at this stage then you will be fighting a losing battle against those that do.

As soon a Microsoft start offering proper PSTN-enabled (enterprise voice) Office365 LYNC to SMEs then this entire segment is going to very quickly belong to Microsoft unless Cisco have something up their sleeve that doesn't involve shelling out £35K before you start.

peter.

[TWalsh · Accepted solution]

Seriously???

"Is Cisco leaving the sub-20 market?

No. Cisco has multiple solutions covering the sub-20 small business segment,

including branch, networking, security, and voice and conferencing endpoints

Also, for more information about the Cisco Small Business portfolio, visit www.cisco.com/go/smallbusiness"

Gee, since this question is supposedly related directly to the EOL/EOS announcements for the UC series and the BE 3000, it is only voice systems that anyone reading this post is probably interested in.  The referenced webpage lists the UC300, SBCS (UC540/560), and BE3000 for small business voice systems, now all listed as EOL.  So the only other Cisco option for a small business is one of the Voice Gateways???

Or even better:

"For  deployments of fewer than 25 users, we recommend the use of the Cisco  SPA IP phone series in conjunction with a hosted service provider, and  for deployments of fewer than 10 users, a third-party PBX service is  recommended."

The UC series was originally maketed as a collection phone systems for small businesses that needed more complex options for their phone systems than current voice gateways offered.

Does Cisco really think that any current customer that has invested less than $3K for a complete phone system (everything:  UC, phones, switches, installation) will want to migrate to a new system that would cost multiples of what they already invested.  Not to mention the added cost (both for the installation tech, and any associated downtime/lost productivity while everyone re-learns yet another new system) of a complete reinstallation.

Despite any of the answers in the Q&A to the contrary, it is apparent that Cisco has completely misjudged the SMB voice market, and/or doesn't want to deal with it any more.   Heres some basic pricing (pulled from the CDW website for a 15-user system based on the UC / SPA series sytem, vs. one based on the BE6000 / 7900 series:

UC540W (includes 30 user licences) + 15 SPA508G = $4,940

BE6000 (least expensive version) + 15 user licences + 15 7942G = $18,965

Even if Cisco were to offer a trade-up program that offered full allowance for the cost of existing system and phones, a customer would need to shell out an additional $14K just to get back to a system that will be supported beyond the next 3.5 years

If Cisco is truly going to stick the BE6000 as the migration path from the UC series, they have 1 choice:

    1.  Free trade-in and upgrade to BE6000 for current UC series customers

    2.  Free trade-in and upgrade to 6900 or 7900 series phones for existing SPA500 series phones

    3.  BE6000 / 6900 series / 7900 series pricing that will closely equate to current pricing for UC series and SPA 500 series.

Otherwise, Cisco is in fact giving up on the SMB voice market.

I'm sorry, but from the my standp0int as an SMB partner, Cisco just lost my support, and any potential business from any of my customers.