Any reason to upgrade from Cisco UCM 6 to UCM 7?

[trmg]

Hey All,

I'm in the process of doing our regular system updates. We recently implemented a Cisco IP telephony system and this'll be the first time I do software updates on the "Call Manager" servers.

Right now we're running 6.1(1.2000-3) and I'm looking to update to 6.1(4) which is to be release today. However, when looking at the UCM compatibly matrix on Cisco's website, I see that there is UCM version 7.

Should I stick to updating UCM 6? Is there a reason to move to UCM 7?

As you can tell, I'm new at the whole Cisco VoIP stuff.

Many thanks in advance to any and all input!

 

[whykap]

If you are going to upgrade go to 7 since it is the latest version. However, you need to order the upgrade from cisco (free with software agreement) so you can get a new license file compatible with the new version.
otherwise after the upgrade call manager service will stop running.

 

[trmg]

Hmn. We're also using Cisco's Unity messaging system. Will the upgrade require any changes on the Unity side?

 

[whykap]

Not at all. But you might want to upgrade unity to 7.X as well.

 

[phnechic]

We just moved from 6.1(3) to 7.1 and it does include some nice features including visual voicemail and the ability to configure local route groups. To me, it was worth the change. The only hiccup we had was the licensing, which we did not get in place in advance.