Cisco recently announced a third model in the Business Edition 6000 family—the Business Edition 6000S, an all-in-one business collaboration platform built into a Cisco (News - Alert) 2921 Integrated Services Router (ISR). BE6000S targets the low-end of mid-market or branch offices with 25-150 users, introducing a smaller-scale, more cost-effective version of the full Business Edition 6000M/H virtualized telephony platform which targets mid-market organizations that have up to 1,000 users.

The new BE6000S fills a gap in Cisco’s product line, following the January 2014 end-of-sale of the company’s line of on-premises business telephony platforms for small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs), namely the Cisco Business Edition 3000, the Unified Communications (News - Alert) 300 Series and the Unified Communications 500 Series. At that time, Cisco’s virtualized platform, Business Edition 6000, became the recommended on-premises alternative, though the price point was considered too steep and the deployment too complex for some smaller organizations.

BE6000S addresses price sensitivity and deployment complexity by offering a simplified office-in-a-box solution, pre-configured with “essential” applications that are typically required by smaller offices. The BE6000S, including hardware, licenses and services, is priced approximately 20 percent less than a BE6000M, according to Cisco.

The Business Edition 6000 Portfolio

Business Edition 6000 was originally introduced in 2011 as a virtualized telephony and unified communications platform designed for organizations with up to 1,000 users. The solution uses VMware virtualization technology to consolidate multiple applications— voice, video, conferencing, messaging, instant messaging and presence, contact center and more—on a single platform for a lower total cost of ownership. Business Edition virtualized platforms support high availability features for mission critical environments and utilize a centralized branch deployment architecture that unifies dispersed offices and remote employees into a single, cohesive system.

To be specific, Business Edition 6000 uses VMware virtualization technology to run multiple virtual machines, allowing pre-loaded and licensed Cisco applications to run co-resident on a single Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS). These include “foundational” applications that are typically used together to deliver core voice and unified communications features, namely the Cisco Unified Communications Manager for call control, Cisco Unity Connection for voicemail and unified messaging, Cisco Instant Messaging and Presence Service with Cisco Jabber and Cisco Prime Collaboration for initial deployment and provisioning. The Cisco Paging Server for point-to-point and group audio paging is included on the new BE6000S platform, or optionally activated on the medium-scale models (BE6000M and BE6000H).

Additional applications complement the core applications above and are available and ready-to-activate as needed on the medium-scale models (BE6000M and BE6000H): Cisco Unified Contact Center Express, Cisco Unified Attendant Consoles, Cisco Emergency Responder, Cisco Expressway and Cisco TelePresence Conductor, Cisco TelePresence Video Communication Server, Cisco TelePresence Server Virtual Machine and Cisco TelePresence Management Suite. Additionally, Business Edition 6000 can integrate with Cisco’s cloud-based WebEx Web conferencing service.

Model Options

Business Edition 6000 now comes in three models to suit varying size enterprises and feature requirements.

• BE6000H
  The “H” (high-density) model is suitable for medium to large deployments. A high-density Cisco UCS C220 M3 1RU Rack Mount Server, with a pre-installed virtualization hypervisor, supports eight of the collaborative applications listed above and the provisioning application simultaneously for a total of nine applications. Maximum capacities include 1,000 users, 2,500 devices and 100 contact center agents.

• BE6000M
  The “M” (medium-density) model is suitable for medium-scale deployments. A high-density Cisco UCS C220 M3 1RU Rack Mount Server, with a pre-installed virtualization hypervisor, supports four of the collaborative applications listed above and the provisioning application simultaneously for a total of five applications. Maximum capacities include 1,000 users, 1,200 devices and 100 contact center agents.

• BE6000S
  The “S” (small-density) model, suitable for small-scale deployments, runs on the Cisco 2921 Integrated Services Router (ISR) and UCS E160D M2 blade server, with a pre-installed virtualization hypervisor and integrated routing gateway. This all-in-one platform supports the following five fixed, preconfigured core applications: Cisco Unified Communications Manager, Cisco Unity Connection, Cisco Unified Instant Messaging and Presence Service with Cisco Jabber, Cisco Prime Collaboration Provisioning and the Cisco Paging Server. Maximum capacities include 150 users and 300 devices.

All BE6000 models support a new option for preconfigured settings whereby Cisco will configure the core applications prior to shipping the system to the partner, speeding up the deployment process.