Item: Cisco Business Edition 6000 (discontinued)
Rating: 8
Author: Eric Taylor

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Several locations in my organization have been using a Cisco BE6000 to provide voice services locally. These appliances are very convenient to deploy for small businesses and remote locations that are not connected to a larger enterprise system. They can be a self contained solution providing multiple services all in one package.

Pros and Cons

Flexibility of configuration
More cost effective to deploy at small to medium size locations
Great support

Cost could always be lower, but you get a solid product for your investment
Licensing can still be confusing if you need multiple products on the appliance
Redundancy/DR

Return on Investment

Saved us from purchasing additional unnecessary WAN connections to remote sites
Allowed quick deployment
Well supported and utilizes applications we are already familiar with

Alternatives Considered

Since our organization uses Communications Manager at other locations this was a natural choice for us as configuration and management is the same as other systems we already are using. This meant no additional training was necessary for us to deploy this solution at the remote sites where it was needed. No other competing products could match the value we got from that.

Other Software Used

Jabber

Likelihood to Recommend

We deployed the BE6000 at some small sites that were not well connected to the rest of our enterprise network to provide local voice services. The appliance was easy to deploy and configure for the use case. We even set up SIP trunking between the remote systems and our main enterprise system.

Cisco BE6000 Review

Overall Satisfaction with Cisco Business Edition 6000 (BE6000)