Alcatel-Lucent OmniSwitch vs. Cisco Unified Communications Manager (Call Manager)

The Alcatel-Lucent OmniSwitch 6900 series switch is highly robust, technological, and perfectly suited to our purpose. It is rich in advanced routing features including BGP, OSPF, static, 10Gb and SFP+ ports, 40GbE QSF+, and stability with redundancy across hardware. It is ideal and we recommend it for distribution and network core scenarios. The price is much lower than the big switch leaders.

Incentivized

The Cisco Unified Communications Manager platform would be most suited for the below scenarios. 1. An organization with very restricted policies and compliance where can't move to cloud-based solutions for data security. They can install the CUCM on-premises. 2. An organization that is still on a legacy phone system could adopt CUCM to save costs and have better services.

• Many 10GbE SFP+ fiber port options.
• Can be used in Distribution and Core topologies.
• Options with 20, 32 and 48 10GbE SFP+ ports.
• Redundant fans, fonts, and CPU.

Incentivized

• Customizability - The program allows for a lot of specific features and ways to use the program.
• Traditional - The system is a very traditional phone system, with everything you would expect and need from an enterprise phone system.
• Expandable - The system allows from a small amount of users to a large amount, with no upper limit.

Incentivized

• Being provided in Cloud environments
• Out of the VPN connection and service usage
• limited reach when using DECT antennas.

Incentivized

• CUCM is overly complex and requires a very capable engineer to maintain it. Similarly, implementing anything new requires a great deal of specialized knowledge of CUCM.
• CUCM is difficult to troubleshoot because of it's complexity.
• CUCM is expensive licensing and they nickel and dime you with a plethora of tiny little license charges for every little feature. They have the most convoluted licensing models, ever, for their CU products in general.

Incentivized

We have been using this product for 20+ years and will continue too. This is a great product and new features are always coming out.

Incentivized

Like said before - I think there are better solutions in the market to solve the challenge rather than a physical appliance. Functionalities are there and capabilities are available, but, in my experience, they lack the inherent capacity a cloud solutions provides. Lacking on the capacity to have the flexibility and dynamic growth Cloud platforms enable.

Incentivized

Although it's very easy to use, once you understand the concepts of IP telephony, as I said before, I think Cisco could have improved the management interface of the platform, adding modern technologies and the design language of the other platforms like DNA Center, etc. This interface hasn't had a substantial improvement for about 10 years

Incentivized

CUCM is supported by most third-party vendors for related products, so it makes finding solutions to specific needs easy. Also Cisco TAC is very knowledgeable, and we have never run into a problem they have not been able to resolve. Usually they are resolved without the need to escalate tickers either.

Incentivized

This was the first phone system we implemented that could span multiple locations. We were very satisfied once fully implemented

Incentivized

Most problems that face our company has been solved by an effective performance of this product. The operation and continuity of our business programs are boosted by great network connections. Alcatel company has been helpful in providing training and development guidelines where possible. The system performance has built a powerful operation base that can identify and provide solutions to business challenges. The digital working base for all our plans has been implemented.

Incentivized

The Cisco Call Manager application has been around for much longer than many of the competitors. As such, they have had plenty of time to resolve bugs and increase the feature set that comes natively with this solution. One of the biggest factors for us was the professional services/support that comes along with using any Cisco product.

Incentivized

• Cloud platforms have a quicker rollout of new functionalities rather than a dedicated appliance
• high initial OPEX which may require financing solutions vs Cloud platforms is most of times a no brainer in favour of Cloud
• Fewer companies support Alcatel-Lucent OmniSwitch, thus it may be difficult to manage and support it on the medium to long term

Incentivized

• Return on Investment as one shot investment was made then only licensing contract renewing is needed.
• Virtualized environment and centralized administration tools.
• Money saving as a result on using features like TEHO.
• Business continuity assured on environments with SRST and Multi site Deployment with Distributed Call Processing.

Incentivized