Delivering a TMS replacement for 9000+ Cisco devices

The Challenge

Enable a seamless TMS replacement across 9,000+ Cisco collaboration devices

One of the largest national intelligence agencies in the world uses Cisco infrastructure for its classified communications. It operates 9,000+ collaboration devices and has 60,000+ users.

The agency’s in-room equipment is registered to Cisco Unified Communications Manager (CUCM), and it was using Cisco TelePresence Management Suite (TMS) for administration. With TMS approaching end-of-support, the agency needed a replacement management platform capable of supporting such a large device footprint, and integrating with multiple CUCM clusters.

With mission-critical meetings taking place on the Cisco platform, the switchover had to be seamless for users. In particular, hierarchical address books needed to be retained exactly as before.

The VQ Communications Solution

A scalable solution, backed by delivery hypercare

Cloud-based management software was off the table, due to the sensitivity of the agency’s work. VQ Conference Manager was therefore the only complete TMS replacement option that provided the assurance of being able to support such a large collaboration device deployment.

VQ Conference Manager also met other key requirements for the agency, including:

• CUCM connector, to seamlessly sync devices
• Migration tools for meetings and address books
• Support for flat, location-based, and nested address books
• Tooling to configure and maintain large device deployments efficiently
• Device analytics for service troubleshooting and strategic planning

Equally importantly, VQ Conference Manager brings a swathe of functionality over and above TMS’s capabilities. This will enable the agency to further enhance the user experience and resilience of its service as it deploys these features.

Hypercare ensures a successful migration

Understanding the scale and criticality of the customer’s migration, we included attentive support throughout delivery. This included periodic check-ins during the planning phase, followed by hypercare throughout the two-day migration window, to enable a successful move in this tight timeframe.

Outcomes

Smooth migration transforms device management and paves the way for user experience and resilience enhancements

The agency, supported by VQ Communications, completed the migration in the planned window. One of the agency’s team told us afterwards: “The upgrade from Cisco TMS to VQ Conference Manager went really smoothly – and as anyone who works in enterprise IT knows, that’s a rarity with such a significant and fast-paced migration.”

As a result, the conferencing service resumed on-schedule, with no noticeable changes for end users.

For administrators, though, the upgrade has been transformational. Previously manual and time-consuming tasks, including certificate management, are now automated and scalable, freeing up team time for higher-value work.

The agency has now retired TMS, comfortably ahead of the end-of-support date, and is planning the rollout of additional VQ Conference Manager features. This will include enhanced self-service scheduling with our Outlook plug-in, followed by high-availability to increase service resilience.