Networking firm Cisco has introduced its Unified Communications (UC) Release 9.0 that addresses the key challenges of IT managers, as they seek to "collaboration-enable" their employees both in the office and on-the-go.
The new release include new feature called Extend and Connect which works with Jabber to bring any third-party phone into the Cisco UC environment.
It also offers support for fixed mobile convergence to give users with any type of mobile phone access to more desk phone-like features anywhere, without the need of a smartphone, a data plan, or a mobile client installed on the phone.
UC 9.0 delivers better bandwidth management via a built-in implementation of Call Admission Control. CAC automatically creates a logical view of the network so the system can update traffic management across clusters and locations.
It also supports additional video endpoints, next-generation "dial by email" and both legacy as well as future URI-based systems, simplifying the use of video technologies such as TelePresence.
Cisco UC Release 9.0 includes Packaged Contact Center Enterprise, which provides a packaged deployment model of Cisco’s enterprise contact centre software. Customers can now implement a contact-centre application quickly and administer it easily, the company said.
Precision Routing enables contact centres to drive complex call-routing decisions that better match customer desires with agent attributes and competencies.
UC Release 9.0 will enable Cisco to add reporting through Cisco Unified Intelligence to provide important metrics for managing the contact centre.
It also adds Web chat to Cisco Unified Contact Center Express, opening a new channel for customers to connect with a contact centre.
The new release supports native call queuing, so in-bound callers, groups of callers can be automatically put on hold and properly routed into a queue and given custom greetings and announcements.
One Button to Record feature will allow users to start or stop call recording directly from an endpoint.
