Cisco Unified Communications Manager (CUCM) Online Training

A unified communications manager is a software-based call-processing system designed to bring together different communication services like voice, video, messaging, collaboration, voice mail, call answering, and more. Cisco develops the world's most popular unified communications manager (usually referred to as CUCM), which is a holistic enterprise communication platform with services run entirely over IP networks. CUCM manages IP telephony, call routing, signaling, device management, and provides a centralized management platform.

This course on the Cisco Unified Communications Manager (CUCM) is predominantly intended for IT professionals who manage call processing systems, sometimes also referred to as collaboration administrators or collaboration engineers. It's also valuable for network administrators who need to incorporate CUCM into their IP network, or vice versa. Network engineers and network architects who need to plan a large-scale network that uses Cisco collaboration technology should also consider taking this course.

This course is primarily focused on providing an overview of what the Cisco Unified Communications Manager provides for an organization and how IT professionals can manage it. That information is helpful for anyone who's planning on earning entry-level collaboration certifications from Cisco, like the CCT Collaboration, but this course wasn't designed as certification prep. This course teaches how to control the communication manager's functions, not memorize facts or test answers.

Yes, you could think of the CUCM as a Private Branch Exchange (PBX), but Cisco's communications manager offers more services than traditional PBXs do. A CUCM is the central call-processing component within an organization, and so it handles tasks that a PBX would normally provide: call routing, signaling and device management. But video, messaging and collaboration tools are also available with CUCM – a PBX isn't usually considered a comprehensive platform.

Yes, the Cisco Unified Communications Manager (CUCM) is a Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP)-based system. All the collaboration and communication that CUCM facilitates occurs over IP networks by transforming voice signals into digital data packets. In addition to handling voice calls over an IP network, CUCM can also manage call setup, termination and routing – all handled via the IP infrastructure. CUCM's other communication services are also transmitted and managed via IP.