Cisco Cisco Prime Collaboration Assurance 11.5 White Paper

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With a centralized collaboration management solution, organizations can avoid the disconnected, siloed approach

to management that has burdened traditional management tools. A comprehensive management solution for

collaboration will enable enterprises to handle provisioning, assurance, and reporting - all from a single, integrated

product. This centralized approach can help organizations simplify and automate management tasks, and enable

them to take advantage of a common set of best practices. It also provides a consistent design for collaboration

application management tools to help reduce complexity, ease administrative tasks, facilitate training, and minimize

TCO.

Simplifying Management of Collaboration Services

Troubleshooting and maximizing network availability are always the immediate priorities for IT organizations. For IT

engineers and help desk staff, keeping users satisfied and help desk calls to a minimum is essential for smooth

day-to-day operations. But as collaboration networks become increasingly pervasive, management is taking on a

more strategic role, enabling strategic planning. A truly effective management solution automates and augments

the lifecycle process required to manage an end-to-end network - through an integrated solution that provides a

centralized point of view.

Simplified, Intelligent Provisioning

By streamlining the provisioning process for unified communications voice services, organizations can start saving

money immediately, dramatically reducing their deployment and operating costs. Simplification can be achieved

through convergence onto a single user interface for call control, messaging and presence, automation of

processes, and an intuitive GUI.

Efficient provisioning of new users and services can help accelerate site rollouts. Furthermore, any time saved

provisioning an individual user will quickly add up if an organization is adding several users at once, as part of a

merger, acquisition, or reorganization. This multiplier effect for group provisioning can significantly improve

productivity and cost savings.

Simplifying the provisioning process is essential to cost control. Using an intelligent, centralized management tool,

MACDs that once were time-consuming and required a highly skilled IT engineer can now be delegated to help

desk personnel who can perform them quickly and easily. Training requirements are reduced, further lowering

OpEx.

An effective voice provisioning system that encompasses all network devices will also provide improved

operational consistency and control. For example, with role-based access, organizations have an effective, policy-

based method to help ensure that each user can reach the content, applications, and services most appropriate to

their needs. Because network management spans all network devices and services regardless of location, IT

managers can take advantage of complete tracking and auditing of all activity, for improved accountability and

troubleshooting (Figure 1).