EOS - UC320 / UC500

[ECartman]

Hey Guys,

Whats the deal with cisco killing of their SMB voice portfolio ?

We just started selling these about a year ago and now they are being killed off with no mention of a replacement. I know cisco's advice is to migrate to BE6000, but that's ridicously out of budget for SMBs !!!

Are they working on anything else that I havent heard about ?

Thanks....

 

[whykap]

As far as I know the plan is to replace it with the BE6000. I'm sure it won't be able to compete with the under 20 phone marketplace, but if the customer needs other services (presence,call center, etc), bundled with wireless and data hardware and pro services it will outdo most others.

 

[ECartman]

Yeah, I agree that BE6000 is a nice product and will suit a customer with 50+ users with UC/CC requirements.

But that is not a viable replacement or migration option for most SMBs......It looks like they are just washing their hands of that market segment which is not cool for vendors and customers.

 

[whykap]

I understand your frustration. Unfortunately cisco is into making money and I don't think that market was what they expected it money making wise.
That said, we still do installs with 50 or less phones using be6000 and consistently beating NEC, Avaya and the likes. Usually though, those are customers that also need security, wireless and LAN hardware. The rest either can't do it all or they come in with a solution that included three or four manufacturers.
Most savvy customers won't touch that as it becomes an installation and support nightmare.

 

[ECartman]

Unfortunately, our main market is 10-20 users/endpoints which it just isn't priced for.

 

[gm85]

We have a UC560 we installed at our office last year to replace a Nortel system.

The platform of the UC500 was based on the Cisco ISR G1 Routers (1800, 2800, 3800 series), with a CUE module.

The best suitable replacement is to move to a ISR G2 Router (2900, 3800) with a services module to handle CUE. You do lose CCA, but if you were to learn the CLI, you can offer a lot of more customization with a system. I think cisco also has some (limited) GUI tools, such as CCP for the ISR series.