How Does Cisco's Information Technology Department Support And Manage The Company's Uc Services?

Cisco IT has a global service management and delivery team that provides support for all of the company's services. I am the service owner for the IT Unified Communications and Video team, and together we are responsible for the overall strategy, planning, and execution of voice and video services across the Cisco company.

Our customer service and support structure are divided into four tiers. Users are provided with comprehensive web-based and wiki-based self-help by Cisco IT. This IT support teaches users how to order, install, and configure their fundamental IT services. Our global helpdesk, which is the frontline support team for all of our IT services including voice, IP telephony, voicemail, and video, are located in tier 1 of our support structure. They make use of a variety of runbooks in order to prioritize and address user issues (forgotten passwords, phone not registering etc.). In the event that it is determined that the problem is more complicated, the team will move the issue to tier 2, which is comprised of particular IT teams and Cisco RMS to manage problems with service. The tier 3 operations level is the highest tier in the information technology field.

The fact that the team that manages our global UC and Video operations is part of the same organization as the team that manages our network operations enables close coordination when it's necessary. These teams are made up of expert engineers that are responsible for resolving complex infrastructure platform events, as well as managing and driving operations improvements on our platforms. Additionally, the Cisco Technical Assistance Center (TAC) is available to the Cisco IT Tier 3 Operations Team as a resource for a comprehensive solution and product troubleshooting support, as well as to report the occasional issue. The Technical Assistance Center (TAC) is Cisco's consumer-facing support service; after all, we are still a Cisco customer.

Cisco Information Technology has delegated a significant portion of the management and monitoring of our infrastructure services to Cisco Remote Management Services (RMS). They monitor and alert Cisco IT on all of our WAN networks and circuits, including our voice circuits at remote sites, from their central Network Operations Center (NOC). When problems cannot be solved by the RMS and the service provider, the incident is brought to the attention of the tier 3 team so that it can be rectified. The RMS has its own monitoring platform, but internally, we also use some of the management capabilities integrated into the UC manager platform such as RTMT (real-time monitoring tool) and a combination of our internally developed enterprise management platform tools. Although the RMS has its own monitoring platform, the RMS also has its own monitoring platform (monitoring platform availability and status). Now, we have access to a variety of tools for managing and supporting networks thanks to the Prime Collaboration Platform. Both our phone and video services are currently being monitored and troubleshot through the utilization of Cisco Prime Collaboration. Our use cases for Prime are always expanding as time goes on.

In addition to managing support for the platforms, the life-cycle management of these platforms is also under our team's purview. The question now is: how will we handle upgrades? In a perfect world, with dexterity and superb engineering. Learning is a process that never stops when it comes to managing improvements. Over the course of many years, we have had several opportunities to make significant advancements in our particular field. Both the capabilities of the platform and our IT processes have changed for the better over time. We have adopted a more rigorous approach to change, and as a direct consequence of this, we are transitioning to a release cycle for feature-related upgrades that are more structured and predictable. After migrating our Unified Communications Manager (UCM) to the Linux platform with version 5, we were able to begin taking advantage of server partitioning. This meant that each server had an active and an inactive partition, and that we staged upgrades on the inactive partitions to minimize disruptions to the core processing. Because of the new system, IT was able to remain practically invisible, and modifications could be performed in the background without interfering with business as usual. As a result, we were instantly hailed as heroes, although not in the literal sense. Upgrades have been even less of a hassle for us as a result of our switch to virtualization on the UCS platform.

From the point of view of the end user, we are able to patch and upgrade the CUCM software with almost no downtime. When we talk about the service having "near-zero downtime," what we really mean is that it is always "on." We may still have to restart the phones, which means that this procedure is not completely invisible to the few people who are using their phones in the middle of the night, but it is also not an overly intrusive one. When your phone restarts itself, you won't be aware of it if you aren't using it at the time. If you're on the phone when the restart occurs, it won't take effect until after you hang up, so you won't even realize it.

On the other hand, if you have just concluded a call and need to make another one, but your phone restarts, this obviously causes a slight disturbance in your plans. The majority of the time, we plan these kinds of updates at times outside of typical business hours when there is the fewest number of users online. In the event that we need to do a significant upgrade, additional planning from the perspective of testing and integration is required. The actual procedure for upgrading does not change at all. We have a tendency to package important updates in order to avoid having to upgrade frequently. We are currently on a cycle of approximately two upgrades per year that are connected to new features, however, we may be forced to perform emergency upgrades in response to critical security alerts or incidents. The process of upgrading hardware, on the other hand, is a little bit more challenging for us than changing software.

What exactly takes place when the phone's hardware is updated? This is a subject that has presented us with difficulties in the past and it does so today. Cisco is a big corporation that boasts more than 70,000 people in locations all around the world. No matter how you look at it, the task of managing an ongoing refresh cycle for a fleet of more than 100,000 physical devices is not an easy one. We still have phones that have been in our network for more than ten years and are functioning quite happily (even if a few of their owners occasionally get jealous of a colleague's new device). This is something that I like to point out whenever I am questioned about the rate at which we update our phone fleets.

In the past ten years, information technology infrastructure has managed its complete infrastructure by using a life-cycle management strategy for the budgeting and refresh processes. We always make sure that our network infrastructure is up to date so that we don't run into any operational problems caused by outdated technology or platforms, and so that we can maintain our agility when it comes to enabling new business capabilities. We have used some of the money that is allotted to us on an annual basis in conjunction with site visits to upgrade various aspects of our network infrastructure in order to consistently modernize the parts of our phone fleet that are the oldest. We provide a self-service phone upgrade tool for users so that they can replace their own individual phones. In addition to this, we focus on rightsizing our desktop phone deployment, meaning that we only deploy phones when they are required and in areas where they get good usage. This helps us bring down the overall cost. Because many of our locations are more flexible and allow employees to sit wherever they wish, we don't deploy phones to individuals as much as we used to. Instead, we deploy phones to desks and workspaces within the office rather than directly to individuals.

There is no question that video, bring-your-own-device (BYOD), mobile, tablet, and software phone clients all have an effect on the desk phone market within Cisco. There is no longer a requirement for a desktop phone at each and every workplace or employee workstation. Some workplaces, typically offices or common spaces, are equipped with video equipment that offers excellent video phone service. Many of our staff members bring their own smartphones or tablets to work, and with Single Number Reach, they are able to utilize those devices as their primary business phones. Because I can make HD video calls using the Jabber client, I stopped using an IP Phone at home about a year ago. I figured that there was no reason for me to take up space on the desk at my home office with a phone that I didn't need. There are a few of our workers that are engaging in the same behaviour here at the office. In the future, there will no longer be a requirement for people to have a real phone on their workstations if they would rather use an alternative communication method such as their soft client, mobile device, or Jabber video. By doing so, we may cut costs associated with both the hardware and the continuing management of the fleet. In spite of this, the vast majority of workers still choose to use a traditional IP phone while they are in the office or working from home. This is something that we observe even today.

There are a lot of IT support services out there that meet top standards. Among them is IT Backbone Limited. We have a team of IT specialists who can develop a tailored strategy to meet the specific needs of your business in terms of network infrastructure and phone fleet management. We specialize in rightsizing deployments, setting up self-service tools, and rolling out life-cycle management strategies that can enable you to stay on top of technology refreshes while sticking within budget. If you would like to learn more about how we can serve your business, call us today!