Early on I posted about “CUCiMOC is it too late”. I got some interesting feedback from a couple of people that are either in the process of deploying or are deployed. One thing I have noticed is that anything about CUCiMOC received the most hits on my blog this month. So people are certainly interested in what it has to offer and what others have to say about it.
So I did a little looking around on the web and come across a few other bloggers that have some interesting views on this piece of software. Adam’s UC blog is a fairly impartial view of CUCiMOC and he really does a great job describing and weighing up some of the pro’s and con’s. The second one I found interesting and a little amusing was Jason Shaves blog post titled, “CUCiMOC …what a crock”. I think the title alludes somewhat to Jason’s opinion of CUCiMOC.
Having looked and tried the software I have come to my own opinion. CUCiMOC is a good telephony product for the small to midsized enterprise that aren’t all that fused with UC and have the desktop power available (it certainly ran pretty sadly on my Dell Latitude D600). To me CUCiMOC breaks the UC model and is only slightly better than running Cisco IP Communicator and Microsoft Office Communicator on the same laptop with RCC tying them together(to me this isn’t real UC either). At least if you did the later you could still run Cisco Video Advantage and have video. The only major benefit in my opinion is the changes to RCC. I think Cisco needed to do this so that CUPS wasn’t necessary and to ensure the continuation of the feature after Microsoft sunset the current RCC integration. Other benefits like one dial plan etc, to me are minor and are balanced out by what you lose by not using OCS as your UC platform.
In my opinion, CUCiMOC in its current form has too many short falls for a company looking to take real advantage of UC, especially if you are already paying for the enterprise cal for OCS. I could probably go into all of the shortfalls here but if you have already read Jason’s blog I think you are well aware of what they are. I think in the longer term this is more of a hold over till they fully integrate Jabber into their portfolio and make it part of the workspace license agreement with customers. I think the Webex Connect integration is just the start to a much larger effort to take advantage of what they purchased with Jabber. In the end this is just my educated guess at their product roadmap by piecing together their purchases and product releases but it certainly makes sense to me anyway and probably most Cisco observers.
CUCiMOC (with some improvements) has the potential to make Microsoft sit up and pay attention especially if customers stall OCS Enterprise voice with what I consider a workaround to what could be a bigger Cisco plan. The downfall of stalling of course is missing out on the benefits from what OCS and Microsoft UC has to offer especially if you have already purchased the license:-)
I think if you are not a Cisco shop, the CUCIMOC does not make sense much less the CUPS server. From a configuration standpoint, it is night and day compared to the CUPS server deployment with MOC. No more DNS queries, SIP trunks to and from the OCS server, sifting through log files why x does not work and y should. The CUCIMOC is quick to deploy, easy for any size org. I see more 1000-3000 CUPS/MOC deployments that would love to get rid of the CUPS server.
ReplyDeleteOrgs that have huge investments in Cisco UC really do not care they have ability to run Enterprise voice because it was included in their licensing. Enterprise voice and Cisco UC do talk to each other of course, the but the features, configurations, support is completely different. You have a staff of 20 trained around Cisco UC solutions. You have executive admins, support centers, end users on Cisco UC. Switching out to an OCS platform because there is a license included? nope.
For orgs that are Cisco, the ability to have presence in their MOC is what they are looking for. Personally, I do not pick up the phone, I type in my MOC client, see there on the phone and IM them to call me. Call rings on my IP Communicator or whatever Cisco device im using seemlessly.
You are correct. Its a wakeup call to MSFT. MSFT before would harp "Well, to make Cisco solutions work you need to buy their server and x licenses, etc" Now there is no server. No Sip trunks to/from CUCM or CUPS.
It's funny. All over the UC blogs, postings, etc.. we all say someone is going to be the "dominate" player in this arena. And I think it just will not happen. There will always be anti cisco shops, and anti MSFT shops. And when you have that, you will never have dominance in the market, but each will share a good chunk of it.
Hi,
ReplyDeleteYou make some good points but in the end just because its the safe solution (Cisco UC) doesn't make it the best one. I work for a large enterprise that has large investments in both Cisco and MSFT and they choose MSFT because the Cisco UC story is not what it should be with all its bolt on platforms to CUCM and the whole CUWL story did more damage than good. Training people on a new platform is not a big deal because everytime Cisco upgrade their platform, you have to go through all the training for admins anyway. As for users they already had MOC in their hands so it wasn't a big deal just to add new features.
I think in the long run market share between the two will vary depending on what they release. At the moment MSFT have the leg up in the UC space just because Cisco do not have a large scale Enterprise IM and presence engine. But like anything nothing is certain and this space has a long life a head of it.
I read the other day over at nojitter.com that made sense to me. UC is not a product, its a concept. So depending how you define UC it can mean different things. For years, I kept trying to define UC with products, where as now, I look at it more as a concept with a mixture of business practices and solutions from an array of vendors. Voice, Video, Messaging and Collaboration.
ReplyDeleteDefiantly a career to be in these days! except at nortel ha