AudioCodes Mediant Enterprise Session Border Controllers (E-SBCs) vs. Cisco Unified Communications Manager (Call Manager)

The E-SBC works well in situations where you are working with multiple carriers and/or multiple phone systems and need to route either by IP, sender info or inbound phone numbers.

I find that companies that require faxing to go through the E-SBC seem to be a little less stable than competitor devices.

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.

• High capacity for call volume in a chassis with a low rack space requirement makes this gateway a great solution especially when you need more than one!
• The ability to have redundant interfaces to the carrier, the network & redundant power supplies, makes these devices perfect for disaster recovery planning.
• Ease of configuration via GUI without having specific CLI experience makes it a pleasure to implement the AudioCodes E-SBC with various circuit types. The GUI is particularly helpful when you are about to add a parameter that is incorrect and the device changes the color to let you know.
• The low price tag compared to other brands, helps customers easily deploy these gateways to more sites with less cost overhead than others.
• The SBC/firewall capabilities of these devices make it very simple to allow or block traffic from specific IP's or proxy groups
• AudioCodes support is fantastic. They are helpful to diagnose issues even after it becomes clear that the problem is outside the device and with the carrier or network.

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

• better detailed documentation for features like Dial Plan, Tagging
• Better backup solution without OVOC
• Improvemnet of OVOC to managed SBC's

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

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

AudioCodes E-SBC's are preferred for use with our VOIP customers due to their ability to scale up and interface with multiple networks in a single chassis for far less than other competitors. We have found that the AudioCodes devices routinely come with more power at the base level than others as well.

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

• cheaper integration with sip trunk provider
• lower cost for service as an local PBX
• less hardware and lower Co2 footprint

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