I’m very excited to announce that the Collaboration Engineer site is evolving into a solution repository for Engineers, I started this project as a way for me to document my studies and achieve my CCIE in Collaboration. I completed my task few months ago, along the way I was introduced to exciting technologies and interesting things into the Cisco Collaboration arena, and I now feel that I want to share all things have come across, and introduce it to whomever will make use of the information I will be blogging about.
How to Take in this series as?
Let me open this section by saying this; I’m a firm believer that Certifications in general are an excellent way to make everyone around you aware that you care for your education. I consider that a Certification may open the doors to many opportunities and challenges in the IT industry, and last but not least, I understand that being an expert into certain areas or technology requires effort and consistency.
By stating the last piece I can now begin to talk about the main focus of this new section of Collab Engineer, and the information you are about to be introduced is solely for the purpose of getting the basic understanding of the Unified Communications and Collaboration Technologies; with that being said, the blogs, videos and material you will find here is for helping you get ideas of how to implement solutions, but not entirely to prepare you for any Cisco Certification, which will not be the focus of this track.
It is true that having the knowledge and understanding of the technology we are going to lay out in this series you will somehow be prepared to take in any UC Infrastructure deployment, but not necessarily to Pass and get certified on CCNA or CCNP Collaboration.
What is the Main Focus for upcoming Blogs?
The main focus of this series is to give you the tools and material to take in a simple or complex UC infrastructure Deployment. I will share stuff that I have been using for the past 5 years in my career, the includes, tricks and shortcuts and some things that can make your life easier in the long run.
This is the first of a few series that I will be creating based in real world scenarios and real stuff that may come up in any Project engagement you may have.
Now with that being said and all the expectations set in the right place, lets move on to the material.
What is the content of the Series?
The Project
You have been contacted by your Project Manager and the UC Architect of your company about a new project that is set for you to complete in the next couple of weeks. The project consists of a client that is in Retail Business with 2 Offices located in Coral Gables, Florida.
The client requirements are as follows:
– Basic Dial Tone
– Voicemail
– Presence Client
– Call Center with 5 agents
– Integration with CRM
– Ability for Remote users to access Internal UC infrastructure
We will take this project piece by piece and go thru the whole thing together.
The Technology
Here are the steps we will go through the project
– Planning
– Design
– Implementation
– Knowledge Transfer and Documentation
Here are the Technologies
– Voice Gateways and PSTN Interaction
– Unified Communications Manager
– Unity Connection
– Unified IM & Presence
– Cisco Collaboration Edge and Mobile Remote Access (MRA)
– Cisco Unified Contact Center Express
Final thoughts
I hope you find what you are looking for out of this series and take advantage of the information.
About the Author:
Andres Sarmiento, CCIE # 53520 (Collaboration)
With more than 13 years of experience, Andres is specialized in the Unified Communications and Collaboration technologies. Consulted for several companies in South Florida, also Financial Institutions on behalf of Cisco Systems. Andres has been involved in high-profile implementations including Cisco technologies; such as Data Center, UC & Collaboration, Contact Center Express, Routing & Switching, Security and Hosted IPT Service provider infrastructures.