The Cisco HUCS architecture offers service providers significant operational benefits over standard IP-PBX architecture - improving operational scalability, reducing operational costs and capital expenditure, and increasing top-line revenues

A converted NGN that can be more easily deployed and managed (on a hosted or non-hosted basis) by service providers by adopting the Cisco HUCS architecture.

This is especially the case in terms of reducing the ongoing administration and operation costs, but also from the prospective of the future support of unified communication applications and features, such as Cisco Unified Communicator, Presence, Fixed to Mobile Convergence, Video Conferencing, IP Contact Centre; all of which form part of the Cisco Unified Communications roadmap.

Cisco’s strategy with HUCS is to provide a carrier-grade solution to Providers, with the following core features:

  • Specific multi-tenant capabilities
  • The use of standards
  • Proven scalability and resilience
  • The reduction of technical risk through design and the extensive end-to-end regression testing of the architecture

A further essential benefit of the solution is the ease of migration of telephone devices from the “old” telephony world to the “new” IP-world, and ensuring that the evolution process itself does not undermine a customer’s business case for IP telephony.

VOSS manages multiple customer groups, their sites, devices and end-users on a massive scale, automating the critical ‘flow-through’ processes behind the successful delivery and on-going operation of mission-critical IP telephony services.

As a result, service providers and large enterprises can create, deliver, personalize and scale sophisticated IP voice services more swiftly and at lower cost so unlocking the economic benefits of converged service networks.

The multi-tenant capable management solution improves bottom line revenues by ensuring business voice services can be deployed on time.

The management solution reduces the risk of project timescales slippage and accelerates product installation rates whilst ensuring high quality data capture and build so increasing customer satisfaction and customer retention.

Once the platform is in service the management solution reduces operational costs through process automation which reduces cost of maintaining platform-wide data integrity. VOSS also allows the service provider to devolve management tasks such as moves adds and changes, or even input of initial customer provisioning data, down to the customer which reduces costs for the service provider.

The Cisco HUCS solution provides a number of additional benefits to service providers and their customers:

  • Enables service providers to customize full-featured IP-PBX telephony services for multiple tenants, departments, divisions and locations, including secure, devolved management for each tenant
  • Accelerates UC deployments and new services launches
  • Minimizes disruption to users when migrating from existing telephony environment to new managed UC solutions
  • Simplifies telephony management through web-based automated provisioning, deployment, and management, providing centralized management without the need for centralized call control
  • Reduces operating costs through business process automation and customer self administration of day-to-day moves, adds, changes and deletes, using an extensive set of secure, web-based administration, self-care or bulk operational tools
  • Supports overlapping dial plans, enabling agencies or enterprises to support different dialing and telephony environments, invisibly to existing users. Ideal for migrations to new IP telephony environments, allowing groups of users to begin benefiting quickly from advanced IP telephony capabilities without disrupting service for existing users of private branch exchange (PBX) or analog services
  • Supports regulatory features, such as lawful intercept, 911, and other capabilities
  • Allows multiple departments or agencies to administer and customize their valued-added services available
  • Supports highly dynamic environments, enabling agencies, large enterprises, and service providers to acquire or divest agencies or subsidiaries and grow to more than 200,000 phones while managing them as a single entity, simplifying integration with other business and operating support systems and reducing operational complexity and costs
  • Automates and simplifies large-scale site roll-outs, providing real-time, phone-based provisioning to save time and reduce associated deployment logistics and costs
  • Enables mass configuration through the ability to integrate bulk load capability in support of migration programs and to allow much faster rollout of IP devices and services