Hi Bill,
While I don't have a lot of experience with the SPA9000 system, I can tell you a little bit about the UC500s. The company that I work for tries to implement important pieces of hardware into our own corporate environment prior to installation in our customer's. The way I see it, if I am using it myself, I'll know the shortfalls and problems prior to having to find them out in a customer's installation. Therefore, we installed a UC520 in our office a couple of years ago with several of the CE-520 switches, a WLAN controller, light weight access points, and a bunch of IP phones. We tested the system fairly thoroughly for about 6 months before we started selling them to our clients, and the UC500 platform has proven to be very reliable. I'll answer your questions to the best of my ability below:
Q. Is it reliable (ie, does it need power cycles every few days)? Do the phones' LEDs go into odd states at unpredictable times?
A. I just telnetted into my UC540 and found that they system has been up for 10 weeks, 1 day, 13 hours, and 38 minutes. The last reboot was likely due to a software upgrade. As for the phone LEDs, we will occaisionally get some weird behavior from a phone, but it's few and far between. In the event that you do have a problem that can't be resolved over the phone, TAC or SBSC is very willing to process an RMA.
Q. Does voice mail work with outside calls? (ie, can an outside caller be transferred to another extension, and then go to the voice mailbox if no answer?
A. Out of the box the system is easily configured to allow the above functionality. The first time that you work your way through the settings, it can be a bit overwhelming, but after you spend some time in CCA, you'll appreciate all of the control that you have over the system. Our incoming dial plan is as follows: Incoming Call --> Receptionist --> (If receptionist does not answer) --> Blast group 1 --> Blast group 2 --> Auto Attendant From the Auto Attendant, you have choices about which department that you would like to reach (IT, Engineering, Sales, etc.). If nobody is available at that extension, you get dropped into a group mailbox or a user's mailbox. This is easy to setup.
Q. Does Shared Line Appearance actually work? (ie, can two phones share one extension number, either phone can take a call, place a call on hold, and then the other phone pick up the call)
A. Yes. I personally have a desk phone and a softphone (CIPC) on my computer and have also had a wireless phone in the past. If all are active in the network, all will show the same extension and all will ring on an incoming call. I can select the phone that I want to answer and the other phones display that the line is being used.
Q. Does blind transfer actually work?
A. Yes. We have also enabled the ability to transfer directly to voicemail which is a standard option as well.
Q. Is the programming of the SPA504 phones and UC500 similar in concept to the SPA9000? For example, dial plans.
A. Not sure on this one, but Cisco recommends using CCA to configure the UC500 family which is a straightforward, easy to use, GUI.
We have noticed a few quirks here and there, but overall, I'm very impressed with how much functionality is packed into this system at such a low cost. My recommendation (if you can live with SBSC support and NBD replacement) is to go with the UC540 if you have less than 32 users. The UC520 requires a hardware change when you add users, where as the UC540 is flexible from 8 to 32 users on a single hardware platform.
Hope that this was helpful.
Seth
