SAN JOSE, Calif., Feb. 11, 2004 - Cisco Systems® today announced that its Cisco Internet Protocol (IP) Telephony system has been selected by Miercom for a "Best-in-Test" award - the second such prestigious award Cisco has received for its system in a three week time span.
Miercom, a leading network consultancy and product test center http://www.miercom.com, compared the Cisco CallManager, the core of its IP Communications system, with entries from Alcatel, Avaya, Mitel and Pingtel. This test, commissioned by Business Communications Review (BCR) magazine, covered small-to-mid-range IP telephony systems capable of supporting 100 to 999 users. All five vendors were rated in six different categories: architecture, endpoints, management and administration, features, performance and security.
In January, Miercom conducted a test of large-scale IP PBXs and the Cisco CallManager was declared the overall test winner. The only difference between the Miercom tests conducted in January and February was the capacity of the Cisco IP PBX reviewed. The Cisco Media Convergence Server (MCS) 7825 reviewed this month can support up 4,000 endpoints, the highest among all the systems tested. The Cisco MCS 7845, reviewed in January, can support up to 30,000 users in one discrete system.
"Winning both of these competitions is a major milestone for Cisco's voice business," said Marthin De Beer, vice president and general manager of the Cisco IP Communications Business Unit. "These results validate that Cisco is the premier IP Communications vendor having surpassed the traditional voice vendors in a very short period of time. The results also confirm that Cisco offers a truly world-class IP Telephony system spanning small to very large enterprises."
The Results
Cisco placed first in the endpoints, management and administration, and performance categories. Cisco tied for first in architecture category and for overall top honors in the review. The complete results of the review are available now in the February edition of BCR magazine. BCR noted that several new advanced phone and security features will be available in the next release of Cisco CallManager. BCR did not provide points credit for the new features that will soon be shipping. Cisco takes top honors in endpoints
"Cisco took the lead in this category thanks to the breadth and depth of its offerings, excellent IP phone design, and some useful software applications that facilitate use," according to the BCR report. "Cisco offers one of the widest arrays of IP phones - from the 7902G, which costs only $130 plus $40 for software license - to the high-end 7935G, which sells for $1,195. In between are eight models, including a touch-screen color phone, the 7970G."
Cisco aces management and administration
"Cisco's CallManager took management gold in last month's large IP-PBX review and maintained its position in this one," according to the BCR report. "The Web-based CallManager administration application, which is integrated into CallManager, is still the most well-organized, intuitive, menu-driven and easiest to use among the products tested. A key factor in CallManager administration's win in this category is the availability of several plug-in management tools that come with the price of the system."
Cisco tops all in performance
"CallManager had the best interactive voice quality scores, beating its competitors in all but one test, in which it had the second best rating. The CallManager also delivered 100 percent call completion rate and relatively low latency metrics."
Cisco ties for first in architecture
"The ability to gracefully scale the Cisco system is a key architectural feature," according to the BCR report. "CallManager also won points for its Survivable Remote Site telephony (SRST) feature, which resides on a Cisco router."
SRST extends a subset of CallManager capabilities to the local router, so if the phones cannot reach CallManager, they automatically re-reregister with the router to continue handling calls.
