Cisco upgrades Unified Communications Manager

Cisco Systems has added additional functionality to its Unified Communications Manager (UCM) to keep users productive no matter where they are and what device they're using, The VAR Guy reports.

UCM 9.0's features focus on promoting flexibility, bridging systems together and investment protection for enterprises, said Thomas Wyatt, VP and GM of the Collaboration Infrastructure Business Unit at Cisco. “We have almost 100 new features and capabilities aligned with those three user themes.”

CIO Today quotes Wyatt as saying: "Enterprise IT managers want to address user demands for access to collaborative technologies on a variety of devices. At the same time, resellers are looking to enable IT managers to maximise the value of existing investments while they transition to next-generation collaboration technologies."

Cisco UC 9.0 aims to do all of this. A new featured called Extend and Connect works with Jabber to bring any third-party phone into the Cisco UC environment. Cisco is also offering support for fixed mobile convergence to give users with any type of mobile phone access to more desk phone-like features anywhere - without the need of a smartphone, a data plan, or a mobile client installed on the phone.

According to News Factor, on the video front, UC 9.0 promises better bandwidth management via a built-in implementation of Call Admission Control (CAC).

CAC automatically creates a logical view of the network so the system can dynamically update traffic management across clusters and locations to ensure optimal call quality, even during peak usage periods. Cisco is also offering support for additional video endpoints and a dial by e-mail feature.

Cisco UC 9.0 includes Packaged Contact Center Enterprise, which provides a packaged deployment model of Cisco's enterprise contact centre software, CBR writes.

Customers can now implement a contact-centre application quickly and administer it easily, the company said.

Precision Routing enables contact centres to drive complex call-routing decisions that better match customer desires with agent attributes and competencies.