Unified Communications

Today's work environment can be very different from what our parents experienced. The business environment is more competitive, with an unrelenting pressure to be more efficient, to react quickly, and to make important decisions instantly. Efficiencies can be gained by reducing costs, which in turn increases profit, but significant gains can also be made by investing in the business infrastructure so that productivity increases dramatically. Increased productivity means more opportunities to profit from a newfound competitive edge. This is known as Return on Investment, or ROI. The goal is to maximize the ROI—for every dollar spent, businesses want to see more dollars earned, or at least fewer dollars wasted.

One area in which businesses have found ways to improve their ROI is in their communications. The evolution of communications from traditional telephony, through cell phones, to smart phones and email, and now to Unified Communications, has created opportunities for businesses to access information and get it to workers instantly. Unified Communications puts voice, data, and video on a converged single network. This makes monitoring, administering, and maintaining the network simpler and more cost effective than if three separate systems existed. Unified Communications also puts powerful applications with information-distribution features right where they are needed. Workers today can be almost anywhere and can carry out meaningful or even critical tasks anywhere they can get a connection to the converged network.

The next significant feature of a Unified Communications system is that it is easy to scale, adding more users, more locations, and even more features. Because the Cisco Unified Communications system is a distributed collection of devices, functions, and features that are linked by common protocols, adding a new component is much simpler, and integration of the new component's capabilities and features can appear seamless to the people who use the system.

The components required to create and use such a system are numerous and complex. Cisco has taken significant steps to develop, document, release, and support the various components as an integrated system. The next section examines the components of a Unified Communications system and introduces the devices and applications that make up the system.


Key Components of the Unified Communications Architechture

• Infrastructure Layer: This layer refers to the network itself, made up of connected switches, routers, and voice gateways. This is the converged network that carries data, voice, and video between users on the system.

• Call-Processing Layer: This layer manages the signaling of voice and video calls. When a user picks up the phone and dials a number, the call processing agent determines how to route the call, instructs the phones to play dial tone or to ring, and records the details of the call for future analysis. The call agent carries out many other functions; it can be considered the equivalent of a traditional PBX system, but with many more features.

• Applications Layer: This layer features elements such as voice mail, call-center applications, billing systems, timecard or training systems, and customer resource management applications—to name just some of the many applications that can integrate with, draw from, or otherwise complement the Unified Communications systems. Because the Unified Communications systems are distributed (meaning not constrained to one box or even one location), the applications can be hosted almost anywhere, given appropriate connectivity.

• Endpoint Layer: This layer includes the parts of the system that the users see, hear, or touch. This includes Cisco Unified IP Phones, PCs with software phones, video terminals, or other applications that send and receive information from the Unified Communications system.

Infrastructure Layer

At the infrastructure layer, we are building the connections between all the devices that send and receive data, voice, and video. These include Layer 2 and 3 switches, routers, and voice gateways. Voice gateways are among the most important components because they provide the connection to the PSTN or other network carriers. One of the critical functions (and one that is unfortunately often underemphasized in many deployments) is quality of service, or QoS. QoS provides service guarantees to various types of network traffic, in particular voice and video traffic. Without QoS, you can experience poor call quality or even failed calls. Infrastructure design and deployment is literally the foundation of the system; if any weaknesses exist here, they will manifest as system failures or unreliability. It is very important to build a solid and correct foundation. The goal is to achieve 99.999% uptime; achieving that goal takes careful attention and good design.


Call Processing Layer

The call processing layer is chiefly about the call agents. A call agent is not a person; it is an application that looks at the signaling traffic from devices that place and receive calls, and it determines what to do with the call. A Unified IP Phone sends a packet to the call agent when you lift the receiver; the call agent instructs the phone to play a dial tone. When you begin dialing a number to call, the call agent receives the digits and tries to find a match for the number in its dial plan. If the destination number is a phone that it controls, it tells the called device to ring. During the call, the call agent also sets up other services, such as Hold, Call Park, Transfer, Conference, and so on. The call agent also instructs the phones to tear down the call when one party hangs up. The call agent usually keeps detailed records of each call made; these are commonly used for billing purposes or troubleshooting.

Cisco provides several options for call agents, matched to the size and requirements of the customer:

• The Cisco Smart Business Communications System is designed for small businesses with up to 48 users. The system runs on the Cisco Unified Communications 500 Series for Small Business devices.

• Cisco Unified Communications Manager Express serves up to 240 users and runs on the Integrated Services Router platforms.

• Cisco Unified Communications Manager Business Edition handles up to 500 users and runs as a standalone installation on a 7800-series Media Convergence server.

• Cisco Unified Communications Manager can handle 30,000 or more users and runs on clusters of 7800-series Media Convergence servers.

Smart Business Communications System


The Smart Business Communications System is a group of specially designed, integrated devices that can provide highquality routing, firewall, intrusion prevention, Power over Ethernet, wireless, and many WAN and PSTN connectivity options. It is essentially a solution-in-a-box, with a simple web-based interface that is largely plug and play. The Unified Communications 500 Series devices are small and inexpensive, providing the kind of connectivity options small businesses need to allow them to take advantage of Unified Communications with a good ROI. The SBCS is expandable using 500-series switches, and the call agent software can support up to 48 phones. Voice mail and Auto-Attendant functions are provided by the integrated Cisco Unity Express application.


Unified Communication Manager Express


Cisco Unified Communication Manager Express is a software feature that can run on the ISR-series router platforms, including the 800, 1800, 2800, 3800, and 7200-series platforms. The call agent application is embedded with the Cisco IOS software and is configured either from the command line or a Web-based interface. Unified CM Express is a fullfeatured call agent that is cost-effective, reliable, and scalable and integrates with both Service Provider connections and Unified Communications Manager clusters. With support for both H.323 and SIP protocols, site-to-site connections are possible in a variety of environments. The Unified CM Express system can be set up either as a PBX or a Key switch system, providing customers with a familiar experience that suits their operating environment.


Unified Communications Manager, Business Edition

Unified Communications Manager, Business Edition is a standalone installation of the Unified CM application and Cisco Unity Connection, coresident in a single MCS 7800-series appliance. This system can support up to 500 users in a single site or multisite centralized deployment and can be migrated to a full CM cluster if growth necessitates it. Unified CM Business Edition provides medium-size businesses with advanced features such as Mobility (a.k.a. Single Number Reach), Do Not Disturb, Intercom Whisper, and Audible Message Waiting Indication, as well as speech recognition and integrated messaging. Because Unified CM Business Edition uses the same call agent software as a full cluster deployment of Unified CM, it supports full integration with the other Unified Communications applications, such as Unified Presence, Unified Personal Communicator, MeetingPlace Express, Contact Center Express, and so on.


Unified Communications Manager

The full version of Unified Communications Manager is an enterprise-class, fully scalable, redundant, and robust distributed packet-telephony application. Scalable to 30,000 users per cluster, with the capability to form intercluster connections, it can support a global unified communications system for hundreds of thousands of endpoints. Unified CM versions prior to 5.x are Windows based, whereas versions 5.x and 6.x are Linux-based appliances.

Applications Layer

There are effectively a limitless number of applications that can be part of a Unified Communications system, because third-party applications can be developed to closely integrate with the Cisco suite of products. The following is a list of the more common applications found in a Unified Communications system:

• Voice Mail: Voice mail can be provided using Cisco Unity, Unity Connection, or Unity Express. Unity and Unity Connection run on the MCS 7800 series platforms, and Unity Express is a self-contained module that is added to an ISR router and administered through the command line and GUI. The maximum mailboxes and recording time capacities vary depending on which module (either Advanced Integration Module or Network Module) is installed in the router.

• Cisco Emergency Responder: This application tracks the location of an IP telephony device based on the physical switch port it is connected to. This information is attached to the caller information in the event the device calls 911, which in turn allows 911 responders to locate the device (and therefore presumably the emergency) more precisely. 911 operation in a Unified Communications environment is a major design challenge because a VoIP phone system can easily throw out the premise that a PSTN call is placed from the same location as the phone that made it.
  

• Cisco Unified Contact Center [Express]: This is a call center application with full feature support for advanced call distribution, supervision, escalation and logging. Versions are available to support small and large call centers.

• Cisco Unified Meeting Place [Express]: This is a full-featured web-conferencing application enabling voice and video conferencing as well as document sharing and collaboration, whiteboarding, and conference participant management.

• Cisco Unified Presence: This extends the native capabilities of Unified CM 6.x+ to indicate presence information. The native capability includes on/off hook status in speed dials and call lists, whereas the full applications server provides detailed presence information as typically found in chat applications ("On the Phone," "Out to Lunch," "Do Not Disturb," and so on).

Endpoints Layer

An increasing variety of Cisco Unified IP Phones (and third-party IP phones) can be part of a Unified Communications deployment. All Cisco Unified IP Phones provide a display-based user interface, user customization, Power over Ethernet capability (where appropriate), and support for G.711 and G.729 codecs (and, on some models, Cisco Wideband and/or iLBC codecs).

Understanding Unified Communications Applications

In this section, we examine the variety of applications available for integration in a Unified Communications environment, including Messaging, Auto Attendant, Interactive Voice Response (IVR), Contact Center, Mobility, and Presence.

Messaging

A variety of messaging options are available to suit the needs of businesses small and large. The following table provides a summary of the options.


Cisco Unity Express

Unity Express is an ISR-based application that runs either on an AIM module or an NM module. AIM modules are connected to the main board as a daughter board addition and use flash memory for greetings and message storage. AIM modules therefore have less capacity for storage. NM modules are inserted into module bays in ISR routers, use a hard disk for greeting and message storage, and have greater capacity for storage than AIM modules. Unity Express supports from 4 to 16 concurrent sessions and 12 to 250 mailboxes (dependent on the module and platform installed). Unity Express is managed through the command line or a web-based GUI. It allows users to view and sort their voice messages using the IP Phone display, email application, or IMAP client. Unity Express can be deployed in conjunction with Unified CM or CM Express and can supplement a full Unity deployment.


Cisco Unity Connection

Unity Connection is a medium-size business solution with a full range of messaging features. It can be deployed on its own or as a coresident installation as part of Unified Communications Manager Business Edition on suitable MCS platforms. When deployed as part of CM Business Edition, Unity Connection supports up to 500 users; when deployed as a standalone application, Unity connection supports up to 3000 users per server (dependent on hardware). Scalability is achieved by networking up to 10 other Unity messaging products of any type. Fourteen languages are supported for deployments worldwide. Unity Connection also supports speech recognition, allowing users to speak commands to manage their messages hands-free. Multiple interfaces are supported for managing messages from an IP Phone, an email client, a web GUI, or Cisco Unified Personal Communicator. Users can define their own rules to transfer calls based on caller, time of day, and Microsoft Exchange calendar status.


Cisco Unity

Unity is the enterprise-class messaging application with support for up to 7500 users per server and up to 250,000 users in a multi server networked environment. Interoperability with legacy voice-mail systems, notably Octel and Nortel systems, allows a phased transition to IP messaging with minimal disruption to users. Unity supports 35 languages, facilitating deployments worldwide. Full unified messaging is possible with connectors for Exchange, Notes, and GroupWise, providing a single inbox for email, voice mail, and fax messages. Text-to-speech capability allows users to have their emails read to them over the phone by the RealSpeech engine; speech recognition is also available so users can instruct Unity to play, search, or record messages hands-free. Secure messaging is supported, allowing encrypted messages and preventing messages that have expired from being played. Access to messages is made simple, intuitive, and possible from almost anywhere.


Auto Attendant

An Auto Attendant is basically an advanced answering machine; instead of only one message, it can play several, depending on the date and time, which number was called, and most importantly, what numbers the callers pressed in response to the greeting they heard. If you have ever heard: "For service in English, press I. Pour service en Francais, appuyez sur le 2 . . . , " you have been served by an Auto Attendant. Typically, Auto Attendants allow callers to select the department or extension they want to call, and often they allow the caller to spell out a first or last name to search in the company directory. Cisco Unity, Unity Connection, and Unity Express all provide Auto Attendant functionality; Unity and Unity Connection include a simple web interface that makes it very easy to construct menus and test to see that they work as you intended.


Cisco Unified IP IVR

Although Auto Attendants are useful, their functionality is limited to pretty basic menu navigation. To scale this functionality up to call-center size, and especially to include speech recognition, prompt-and-collect ("Please enter your 10-digit account number, followed by the # sign"), Text-to-Speech, database integration, and Java application integration, a much more advanced IVR application is required. Cisco Unified IP IVR has all these advanced capabilities. Call centers that have a high call volume and many possible queues of callers waiting for different agent capabilities can effectively deploy Unified IP IVR to steer callers to the correct agent, or perhaps to an automated information source without the need to tie up an agent at all. Unified IP IVR includes the capability to provide both real-time and historical reports on its utilization and offers multiple-language support.


Cisco Unified Customer Voice Portal

For the very largest call centers, the Unified CVP product provides advanced IVR, including speech recognition, advanced queuing, integration with Cisco Unified Contact Center (Enterprise and Hosted), and powerful call routing, management, and reporting features.


Cisco Unified Contact Center

Cisco provides a range of Contact Center products for SMB, Enterprise, and Service Provider applications. Customer contact solutions provide multiple avenues to reach and interact with customers, including basic telephony as well as feature-rich web, email, and even video interaction. The three Contact Center products are described next:

• Cisco Unified Contact Center Express: Suitable for 10 to 300 agents, it provides sophisticated call routing, outbound dialing capabilities, comprehensive contact management, and chat and web collaboration in a singleserver, integrated "contact center in a box."

• Cisco Unified Contact Center Enterprise: Provides intelligent contact routing, call treatment, network-to-desktop computer telephony integration (CTI), and multichannel contact management. It combines multichannel automatic call distributor (ACD) functionality. Sophisticated monitoring allows customers to be routed to the most appropriate agent (based on real-time conditions such as agent skills, availability, and queue lengths) anywhere in the enterprise, regardless of the agent's location.

• Cisco Unified Contact Center Hosted: An application hosted by service providers, who then lease its functionality to customers who want a virtual contact center without the need to manage and maintain it themselves. Subscribing business customers can have IP or time-division multiplexing (TDM) infrastructures or a combination of the two. Contact Center Hosted provides all the advanced capabilities found in Contact Center Enterprise.

Cisco Unified Mobile Solutions

Today's workforce is mobile, distributed, and utilizes multiple technologies to communicate. The desire to have a seamless transition between the various ways in which people can be reached has spurred the development of mobility features in Cisco Unified Communications. The key products are the following:

• Cisco Unified Mobility: (a.k.a Single Number Reach) Allows multiple remote destinations (commonly a cell phone, a home office phone, or other work location) to be configured to ring at the same time as the worker's enterprise desk phone. Thus, when a customer calls your work number while you are on your way to a meeting, your cell phone can ring and you can answer without the customer realizing you are away from your desk. Furthermore, if you return to your desk, you can simply pick up your desk phone and continue the call. A related feature, called Cisco Mobile Voice Access, allows users to place calls from their enterprise desk phone from a remote location or a cell phone. By dialing a configured number and entering an access code, the enterprise system will prompt for the number you want to call, and the call will be placed as if you were at your desk. This is useful not only for presenting the preferred Caller-ID number to the customer, but also potentially for long-distance toll savings.

• Cisco Unified Personal Communicator: A desktop PC (or Mac) application that combines a software IP Phone, IM client, video, and online collaboration capabilities. Presence indications ("Busy," "In a call," "Away," "Do Not Disturb," and so on) can save time and enhance productivity because users can see the status of the person they want to contact before trying to reach them. Integration with an Outlook toolbar provides click-to-call or click-to-chat from a message or contact.

• Cisco Unified IP Communicator: A fully functioned software IP Phone, often characterized as a "7970 under glass." Users can place and receive calls from their PCs from anywhere that connectivity to the call agent can be established. This is typically achieved through a VPN connection; it is perfectly possible to place a call from an airport boarding lounge or your local coffee shop. Unified IP Communicator can be enhanced with Unified Video Advantage, which integrates a PC webcam for video calls.

• Cisco Unified Mobile Communicator: An application for smart mobile phones that provides access to enterprise directories, presence indicators, secure text/chat, voice-mail access, call history of any of the user's phones displayed on the mobile handset, and collaboration and conferencing integration with Unified Meeting Place.

• Cisco Unified Presence: A server-based application that extends the on/off hook status monitoring capability of Unified CM 6.x to include IM-like status messages. Status indications can be displayed or integrated with Personal Communicator, Mobile Communicator, IP Phone Messenger, the Microsoft Office Connector, and IBM Sametime Communicator.

Cisco Telepresence

Cisco Telepresence is a state-of-the-art high-definition videoconferencing system. A specially designed system of furniture, cameras, monitors, and microphones creates a life-sized illusion of a meeting whose participants may be half a world apart. With 1080p HD video, CD-quality spatial audio, and high-quality lighting, the experience is dramatic to say the least. In combination with the Telepresence Multipoint Switch, up to 36 locations can be included in a single conference with nearzero latency. This can only be described as a high-end solution, with commensurate demands on bandwidth.