Cisco Unified Border Element (CUBE) vs. Cisco Unified Communications Manager (Call Manager)

If IP PBX is Cisco CUCM, CUBE is its best partner to connect PSTN SIP trunks. The multiple trunks can be from different PSTN providers. It also supports SIP forking for network recording.

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.

• Call accounting (Integration with 3rd party applications for ease of use and comprehensive CDR's)
• Address hiding (Keeping your internal network secure with PSTN calls)
• Internetworking between multiple protocols
• SIP profiles (message/header customization)
• Billing, cost counting

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

• The expense of the device to run CUBE may have you looking outside Cisco for options.
• Requires additional DSPs for transcoding operations.
• There's a bit of a learning curve in getting this set up to work with your specific provider when using this as a SIP gateway.

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

The flexibility is great for leveraging SIP profiles and dial peers.

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

I've been using Cube for years and I like the way Cube handles a call. Minimum administration required once everything is set up correctly.

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

To be fair to CUBE and AudioCodes, my experience with AudioCodes was over 4 years ago, so their interfaces and CLI may have seen some revisions/updates. CUBE provides a unified CLI experience with the rest of your existing enterprise Cisco environment, whereas AudioCodes blend of a UI and CLI feel a little "90's" in comparison. It certainly can be a tad more friendly to someone just getting a feel for network devices, but the actual feature set felt harder to use as a result. I didn't have any reliability issues or stability issues with either device, though and the AudioCodes solution is less costly, generally speaking, if it will work for your environment.

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

• Saving money on PRI cost by switching to ITSP connections. Massive savings.
• TAC support is great. Having maintenance with Cisco gear is game changing for small IT shops.
• Streamline security. Great place for a Demarc.

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