Cisco TelePresence Video Communication Server Version X8.9 Data Sheet

Advanced Video Applications, Session Control, and Firewall Traversal

As the workforce becomes more mobile and distributed, leaders recognize the benefits and growing impact of video as a key part of business collaboration. Video is being used to improve communications, relationships, and productivity by helping people meet face to face over distances. These meetings:

●   Improve decision making by reducing communications delay

●   Build trust and understanding across time zones within cross-functional and diverse teams

●   Reduce employee travel, real-estate costs, and environmental impact

●   Encourage information sharing and knowledge building with employees, partners, and customers

It's all part of engagement - making it easy and natural for people to collaborate - and Cisco is taking these interactions to the next level. Video collaboration experiences are available anywhere, and are as easy as voice. For many use cases, these experiences are better than being there.

Cisco TelePresence^® Video Communication Server (VCS) is at the heart of these experiences. VCS delivers rich video-enabled collaboration throughout and beyond the enterprise network, and is ideal for organizations that do not have Cisco^® call control environments but want to use Cisco TelePresence conferencing applications.

Cisco Expressway Series

The Cisco Expressway^™ Series provides functionality similar to VCS. Expressway provides a video-centric call control and firewall traversal solution that supports registration of both Cisco and third-party endpoints. For most customers, Expressway-C and Expressway-E will provide a more flexible and extensible licensing model as well being more cost-effective, and will be preferable to VCS Control and VCS Expressway. For more information about Expressway, visit http://www.cisco.com/go/expressway or contact your Cisco account representative.

Product Overview

VCS comprises Cisco TelePresence VCS Control and Cisco TelePresence VCS Expressway to enable smooth video communications easily and securely inside and outside the enterprise.

VCS Control provides video call and session control, registrations, and enhanced security for Cisco TelePresence conferences. It enables definition of aspects such as routing, dial plans, and bandwidth usage, while allowing organizations to customize video call-management applications to their requirements.

For organizations that need video collaboration beyond the enterprise, VCS Expressway is required alongside VCS Control. VCS Expressway allows video traffic to traverse the firewall securely, enabling rich video communications with partners, customers, suppliers, mobile workers, and teleworkers.

Important use cases for Cisco VCS include:

●   Business-to-business video: Using Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) dialing, you can collaborate with customers, partners, and suppliers as easily and securely as you do using email messages. No prearrangements are needed. And if your partners, suppliers, or customers have a third-party standards-based Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) or H.323, system, you can collaborate with them too, as easily as you do with the people in your own office.

●   Mobile video experiences using Cisco Jabber Video^™ for TelePresence (formerly Movi^™) clients: Providing secure mobile access based on Transport Layer Security (TLS), Cisco Jabber Video for TelePresence mobile lets you make and receive video calls without requiring the extra step of a VPN.

●   Teleworkers: Teleworkers can use their personal Cisco TelePresence endpoints for video interactions with colleagues, customers, partners, and suppliers from their home office.

●   Investment protection: The solution offers video interoperability with your current standards-based SIP or H.323 systems and devices.

When VCS is deployed with Cisco Unified Communications Manager or Cisco Business Edition 9.1.2 or later, the following are also possible when remote and mobile access to Cisco Unified Communications Manager is enabled:

●   Mobile experiences using any Cisco Jabber^® client with access to all collaboration workloads (video, voice, content, instant messaging, and presence) without requiring the extra step of a VPN.

●   VPN-less teleworker support for Cisco endpoints (Cisco TelePresence EX Series, MX Series, and SX Series; Cisco TelePresence Integrator C Series; Cisco DX Series; as well as Cisco Jabber).

●   Mobile and browser-based collaboration with Cisco Jabber Guest: Realize the benefits of new ways of securely and easily interacting with “guests,” whether they are consumers, other businesses, or even temporary employees.

VCS Control and Expressway deliver exceptional scale and resilience, highly secure communications, and simplified large-scale provisioning and network administration in conjunction with Cisco TelePresence Management Suite (Cisco TMS). They can be deployed as a dedicated appliance or as a virtualized application on VMware with additional support for Cisco Unified Computing System^™ (Cisco UCS^™) platforms.

More features and capabilities are listed in Table 1.

Table 1.       Additional VCS Features and Capabilities

Figures 1 illustrates a standalone VCS deployment, and Figure 2 shows VCS deployed with Cisco Unified Communications Manager or Business Edition.

Note:    Requires Cisco Unified Communications Manager with Business Edition 9.1 or later and VCS X8.1 or later with mobile and remote access to Cisco Unified Communications Manager enabled.

General Specifications

Table 2 lists general specifications for VCS Control and VCS Expressway.

Table 2.       Specifications for VCS Control and VCS Expressway

Product Specifications for Virtualized Environments

VCS Control and VCS Expressway can be deployed virtually or as an appliance. Table 3 lists the virtualized application specifications.

Table 3.       VCS Control and VCS Expressway Virtualized Application Specifications

Product Specifications When Deployed as an Appliance

VCS Control and VCS Expressway can also be deployed as an appliance on the VCS CE1100 appliance. Table 4 lists the features and benefits of these appliances. Table 5 gives the specifications for the appliance. Table 6 provides the certifications and approvals for VCS Control, VCS Expressway, and the CE1100 appliance.

Table 4.       Appliance Features and Benefits

Table 5.       Product Specifications for the VCS CE1100 Appliance

Table 6.       Certifications and Approvals for VCS Control and VCS Expressway and CE1100 Appliance

Ordering Information

To order VCS, visit the Cisco Ordering Home Page and refer to Tables 7 and 8.

Table 7.       Ordering Information for VCS Control

Table 8.       Ordering Information for Cisco VCS Expressway

Service and Support

Cisco offers a wide range of services programs to accelerate customer success. These innovative services programs are delivered through a unique combination of people, processes, tools, and partners, resulting in high levels of customer satisfaction. Cisco Services can help you protect your network investment, optimize network operations, and prepare your network for new applications to extend network intelligence and the power of your business. For more information about Cisco Services, visit Cisco Technical Support Services online.

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For More Information

For more information about the Cisco TelePresence VCS product line, please visit http://www.cisco.com/go/vcs or contact your local Cisco account manager.