Score one for Cisco. They now claim that the University of Cambridge has become one of the largest if not the largest IP telephony system in the education sector. Cisco and BT announced the deployment in a multi-million pound deal which will see BT, Cisco, and the University’s IT Consultancy partner, PTS Consulting, deliver approximately 20,000 IP telephony handsets to the University over the next 18 months.
"The University’s investment will modernise the student experience, enabling students to collaborate in new and more innovative ways through the deployment of a converged voice, video and data network. Sharing information more easily will improve the quality of education and research, with students and academics using instant messaging, voice emails, streaming video and much more to share ideas in real time, from anywhere in the world."
20,000 handsets is nothing to sneeze at and it's something that I'm waiting to hear comparable news from the Asterisk camp. I've heard rumors about a large Asterisk deployment at a Fortune 500 company, and was even told my a news source they'd give me the scoop on it, but i haven't heard anything.
Could Asterisk solutions be relegated to the SMB market and not the large enterprise? Nah. I think a Fortune 500 company is in the works or has deployed already, but we just haven't heard about it.
I wonder if this University of Cambridge deployment will be 100% Cisco phones or if they will have some non-Cisco phones, now that Cisco Call Manager supports SIP as well as their proprietary Skinny protocol. In 2006, I broke the news that Cisco was adding SIP support to their phones and would enable 3rd party phones to work. I find that most big institutions such as the government, military, and universities tend to overpay for things, so my guess is that they went with 100% Cisco phones. I'm sure the 20,000 Cisco phones were highly discounted though. I just hope University of Cambridge is aware they can purchase additional VoIP phones that are non-Cisco. Considering University of Cambridge is one of the world's most prestigious universities, I'm sure they're aware.
I sure hope they have QoS (such as TOS bit-setting) running on their network considering universities are notorious for hogging bandwidth with P2P apps like Bittorrent. Check out the full article.
"The University’s investment will modernise the student experience, enabling students to collaborate in new and more innovative ways through the deployment of a converged voice, video and data network. Sharing information more easily will improve the quality of education and research, with students and academics using instant messaging, voice emails, streaming video and much more to share ideas in real time, from anywhere in the world."
20,000 handsets is nothing to sneeze at and it's something that I'm waiting to hear comparable news from the Asterisk camp. I've heard rumors about a large Asterisk deployment at a Fortune 500 company, and was even told my a news source they'd give me the scoop on it, but i haven't heard anything.
Could Asterisk solutions be relegated to the SMB market and not the large enterprise? Nah. I think a Fortune 500 company is in the works or has deployed already, but we just haven't heard about it.I wonder if this University of Cambridge deployment will be 100% Cisco phones or if they will have some non-Cisco phones, now that Cisco Call Manager supports SIP as well as their proprietary Skinny protocol. In 2006, I broke the news that Cisco was adding SIP support to their phones and would enable 3rd party phones to work. I find that most big institutions such as the government, military, and universities tend to overpay for things, so my guess is that they went with 100% Cisco phones. I'm sure the 20,000 Cisco phones were highly discounted though. I just hope University of Cambridge is aware they can purchase additional VoIP phones that are non-Cisco. Considering University of Cambridge is one of the world's most prestigious universities, I'm sure they're aware.
I sure hope they have QoS (such as TOS bit-setting) running on their network considering universities are notorious for hogging bandwidth with P2P apps like Bittorrent. Check out the full article.
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This is good news both for Cisco and for Cambridge. I believe The Pennsylvania State University is presently near the top of Cisco's EDU deployments, currently operating 12,500 phones with 16,000 estimated at the completion of our large conversion project. And those are all Cisco 79xx IP phones.
Tom - from a cost impact standpoint, Cisco's "support" of third party SIP phones is somewhat misleading for the uninformed.
For most users, the appeal of using a 3rd party SIP phone would likely be to escape the cost of license fees associated with Cisco's IP phones. Cisco tacks on anywhere from $50 to several hundred dollars, per phone, in licensing when you purchase a "CH1" licensed Cisco phone, which is the appropriate licensing to be in compliance when using Callmanager.
If you refer to this link, look at table C-2, step 5 - http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/voice_ip_comm/cucm/admin/5_0_1/ccmcfg/b09sip3p.html
"Note Third-party SIP Device (Basic) supports one line and consumes three license units, and Third-party SIP Device (Advanced) supports up to eight lines and video, and consumes six license units."
Even using a 3rd party phone, the user must purchase 3rd party licensing keys in order to register their phone with Callmanager, and the licensing is required in order to complete the SIP registration for the 3rd party handset.
When I last checked, the licensing cost to implement a Grandstream GXP-2000 (an $80 phone) with a Callmanager deployment was an additional $300, which would bring the total cost of the handset to roughly $380.
Cisco defines a "Basic" 3rd party SIP phone as a phone supporting 1 line, and user must purchase (3) license units at $50/ea ($150 total) to deploy a "basic" phone. Since the GXP-2000 supports multiple lines, it would be considered an "Advanced" 3rd party SIP phone, and requires (6) license units be purchased, at a total cost of $300.
A detailed overview of 3rd party SIP licensing fees is here http://www.cisco.com/comm/applications/IPCApps/Docs/SIPTHIRDPARTYENDPOINTFAQ3_20_06.doc
It is actually less attractive in the majority of cases, from a cost standpoint, to implement 3rd party SIP phones on Callmanager than it is to simply use Cisco phones when you factor in their extremely expensive licensing fees. I am sure this is completely by design. Just wanted to clarify this for your readers who are running Callmanager and are looking at using 3rd party SIP phones.
Holy Toledo! 3 licenses just for 1 third-party SIP phone?
Thanks for sharing that info Cory. Well that stinks, since there are many 3rd party phones that have more features or are less expensive than Cisco phones.
Boy, Cisco really locks you in. Amazing there hasn't been more controvery surrounding their licensing. I doubt Microsoft could get away with charging 3X licensing for Mac or Linux clients that connect to Active Directory.
Hmm, sounds like a good blog post...
Also, only vendor products who have undergone TekVizion Labs 3rd party interop testing, and have passed, and eligible to be used as 3rd party SIP devices with Callmanager. Right now, it looks like RIM has ponied up for the testing, and Linksys is grandfathered in by virtue of being Cisco owned.
Also looks like Grandstream has, or is in the process of undergoing the Tekvizion interop testing. I have no idea what TekVizion charges for this, but I am sure it is a lot.
http://www.tekvizionlabs.com/3rdpartyprograms/sip_verification/faqs.php
My take away from this is that Cisco is spinning this as their way of giving their Callmanager customers "more choices" when it comes to SIP endpoints, but it seems to serve their bottom line much more than the financial and technical interests of their customers....which is fine, but is not so transparent.