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Abstract
Cisco Collaboration Systems Release (CSR) 10.6, along with CUCM 10.5(2), enhances the user and administrator experiences and interactions. In many cases, a change to one product may necessitate changes to other products. For example, where the deployment options for video conference control changed to place all control behind the Telepresence Conductor, Cisco Prime Collaboration management tools had to be updated to reflect this new deployment approach. As new endpoints are added, CUCM and Prime Collaboration both needed to be updated to reflect the new endpoints.
Sample
As companies expand and become more globalized, or downsize their office real estate, employees are becoming more accustomed to working nontraditional hours in nontraditional settings.
This often translates to less cubicle time, with face-to-face opportunities for staff communication, and more challenges in maintaining a team environment while physically being in different places.
Increasingly, companies like Cisco are building suites of products that provide new tools and innovative methods for team members to communicate. This includes products that support the mobile nature of today's employees by expanding wireless and mobility access to the corporate communications network. The goal is to enable workers to reach the right person, at the right time, using the right communications method regardless of physical proximity.
Cisco's product focus has expanded to provide seamless communication across many types of devices including traditional IP desk phones, tablets, smart phones, and conference rooms. Cisco Collaboration Systems Release (CSR) 10.6 defines the latest in the integration of telephony, voice and video conferencing, and messaging solutions across multiple devices for enterprise IP customers. This design will allow an organization the ability to integrate voice, video, and web participants into a single unified user experience.
Over the past few years, there has been a tremendous amount of growth in the collaboration area, both in services and applications, and the way that users interact with them. The list below gives you an idea of the breadth and depth of this environment.
This white paper will provide an overview of CSR 10.6 with a focus on Cisco Unified Communications Manager (CUCM) supported features.
CSR 10.6 encompasses all four areas of the Unified Collaboration environment.
- Infrastructure
- CUCM, Cisco Unified Communications Manager Express (CME), Cisco Business Edition, Telepresence VCS
- Cisco Session Management Edition (SME)
- Cisco Unity Connection
- Cisco Instant Messaging & Presence (IM&P)
- Conferencing
- Instant Conferences (Ad Hoc)
- Permanent Conferences (MeetMe or Rendevous)
- Scheduled Conferences (Using TMS)
- Cisco Collaboration Meeting Room (CMR)
- Cisco CMR Hybrid (adds link to Cisco WebEx Meeting Center)
- CMR Cloud Conferencing (no on-premise resources or infrastructure)
- Telepresence Conductor
- Telepresence Management Suite (TMS)
- Conference Resources
- Endpoints and clients
- IP phones
- Collaboration Desk Endpoints
- Collaboration Room Endpoints
- Immersive Telepresence
- Software Clients
- Integration Series
- Management
- Cisco Prime Collaboration Deployment (Centralized deployment solution)
- Cisco Prime Collaboration Provisioning (Centralized management solution)
- Cisco Prime Collaboration Assurance (Centralized monitoring and diagnostics solution)
- Cisco Prime License Manager (Centralized licensing solution)
- As you can see, there are many pieces to this collaboration puzzle that need to be properly designed, implemented, and managed in order to provide a rich, easy to use experience to the end user.
The three main areas of focus for CSR 10.6 are:
- Experience (both user and administrator)
- Continued improvements to the interfaces to provide a simpler, more intuitive user experience
- Simplicity
- Single deployment model for On-Premise conferencing using Cisco Telepresence Conductor for conference scheduling and management
- Increased Scalability
- Deployment Acceleration
- Improvements in the Prime Collaboration management applications
- Ubiquity
- Ability to join a meeting from within or outside of the enterprise utilizing the users tool of choice
- Collaboration Meeting Rooms (CMRs) that span on-premise, hybrid, and cloud deployments
- Single Sign-On for remote users
CUCM is one of the main components of the CSR deployment, providing call control and resource management to the cluster. Where CSR 10.6 outlines the overall collaboration architecture and interaction, both within and between collaboration systems, CUCM 10.5(2) is the version of Unified Communications Manager that aligns with CSR 10.6 and deploys some of the specific features that will be discussed below.