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

[rees]

Joe,

Keep in mind that the training path is extensive and costly. If you already have some employees with CCNA w/voice, it's less time and money, but you're looking at 154 hours and 11K in classes/tests.

You should try to upgrade the phones to 79XX.

I have two UC systems that I'm working on right now, and I will continue to sell them, as they will cover all of their needs and I expect them to last a long time....

I doubt Cisco is going to change their minds, but wouldn't it be nice if they did....

[pierrescotland]

I have already advised all my UC500 customers not to buy any more SPA phones so they have the option to upgrade to CCME or BE6000 in the future without serious handset cost.

If Cisco had even a shred of respect for their SB customers they would issue immediate support for SPA phones on the BE6000.   But of course they won't do that because their enterprise (sorry, mid-level!) customers may jump at the chance to use cheaper handsets.

[nalbert]

The certification cost to get to ECS is a direct result of the functionality of the product. There is so much one can do with the BE6000 that it is hard to bring down the cost of certification. This is a one time cost.

However the main barrier to entry for smaller customers is the cost of the hardware server to start with. Remember the 25 user UCL licensing bundle is (almost free) something like $500 not even considering the discounting.  I can tell you Cisco is taking a serious look at this and looking at lower end servers to deploy the BE6000  (no garuntee that this is actually going to span out though).

[pierrescotland]

A lot of my customers already have one or two VMware hosts (even to run just one or two servers) that I am sure would be adequate to run BE6000 VM guests, I'd really like to see an option to run the apps on your own VM infrastructure which would reduce the cost greatly and moreover can be cross-sold with other services.

I don't really see the point of buying a cisco rack server if you already have an HP or Dell that can cope with a few more VMs.

[rees]

Navin,

I'm not trying to be rude, but without regard to what the BE600 can do, there are MANY partners who are satisfied with what the UC500 does and don't need to sell anything larger. My 30 person office doesn't care about jabber or telepresence. The need a phone system that is rock solid and has the features they need without a bunch of extra cost.

The cost of the training and certification excludes a massive amount of partners by default.

[nalbert]

Rees, You are certainly not being rude and I dont mean to belittle the costs involved in certification. I was just stating the reality of the training itself. I heard that some resellers have found ways to work with Disti's to bypass the cert requirements, if they are getting support for the Distis. I am not sure how that works. I think working with your locals sales team might give the right contacts to do that.

[JOSEPH GALEA]

Navin,

I understand the BE6K can do more in Mobility and Jabber and adding of 3rd party SIP devices, etc. 

If I may, I just wanted to ask this way first:

#1) Is there anything that the UC540/UC560 can do that the Router+CME+CUE cannot do? 

#2) Is there anything that the UC540/UC560 can do that the BE6K cannot do? 

Is it just the SPA phones that are lost when moving to these "higher" systems?

#3) Is the Auto-attendant the same?

#4) Can I still use the CUCE script editor?

Thank you.

[nalbert]

Joe,

Here are some answers

1. UC540/560 is just a nicely packaged Router+ CME+ CUE with a front end easy to use GUI - CCA.

2. The BE6K is a nicely packaged version of Enterprise Cisco collaboration suite (UCM, CUC, IM&P, VCS, CER etc. etc.) that use Prime Collaboration to simplfy the experience.

3. BE6K has not much in common with UC500. However UC500 and CME/CUE are mostly the same

4. BE6K has not much in common with UC500. However UC500 and CME/CUE are mostly the same

The Enterprise Cisco Collaboration suite is more complicated because it has much more functionlity (It is used in most of the Fortune 500 companies and has 10 times the features of UC500).

The same way CCA makes it easy to deploy the UC500, the BE6K uses Prime Collaboration to bring the whole solution togather in a easy way.

[paolo bevilacqua]

Navin can add but these are the basic straight answers:

1. Yes, SPA phones, and CCA.

2. various things, e.g.

• Small, selft contained box of reasonable cost and complexity w/o rotating disks and OS.
• Name lookup for incoming calls.
• Multiple DNs per button
• Simple, embedded paging system w/o addiotional application.
• Unlocked meet-me conferencing.
• Set CFA for non-primary buttons.
• CUBE-like features without additional router.
• And probably more.

3, 4: To ISR G2, yes. To UC6K, I don't think so.

[nalbert]

Thanks Paolo.

[JOSEPH GALEA]

Thanks.

[JOSEPH GALEA]

Another question:

Do any other phones besides the SPA525G2 have the built in SSL Client?  I find the SPA525G2 a great phone when showing the Cisco solution to customers. I simply bring it with me and plug it into their LAN and presto I am on my PBX.

Thanks again,

Joe

[nalbert]

The 9900s, High end 8900s and 7900s support VPN

[JOSEPH GALEA]

Navin,

This may not be the place for this. I have several 525G2's - for each, I create an SSL Account Name and SSL Password in UC500 (which is acting as the SSL SERVER).  I then enter the IP Address of the UC500 into the 525G2, I also enter the SSL Account Name and Password into the 525G2.  I can then plug the 525G2 into any customer LAN and the 525G2 negotiates with UC500 (SSL Server) and comes up as a phone as if it were in my office.   I do have a 9951 but I do not know where in the settings I would enter the SSL IP Address, the SSL Account name and SSL Password.  Is there a way to do this?

Thanks,

Joe

[johschaf]

Hello Joe,

On UC500 only the SPA525Gs work with the SSL VPN. Navin was speaking in general terms what phones can do SSL VPN, but not all of those phones can do SSL VPN with the UC500s.

Thanks,

-john