CUCM to WebEx Calling migration - PSTN connectivity explored!

 # Webex Calling PSTN: The Cloud Does Not Make Dial Plans Disappear


Hi Guys!


There is a great new post on the Call Recording blog, addressing a task becoming more and more common for my fellow UC engineers, CUCM To WebEx Calling migration!

The fact is the writing is on the wall: Cisco are about as subtle as a Bull, and yet there is no subtly in their obvious push to get everyone off premise and on to their UCaaS platform. I think their terrible handling of the CUCM 15 upgrade roll out, (complicated for everyone by the broadcom purchase of VMWare and its subsequent impact on UC hosted on ESXi!) along with their terrible handling of the recent retirement of the TLS client extended key usage property for publicly signed certs. 

The Webex Calling PSTN strategy guide, goes through Cisco CUCM to WebEx Calling migration and what you need to think about from a PSTN connectivity perspective when migrating. You have lots of options such as Cisco First-Party offered PSTN connectivity, Cloud Connected PSTN, or CUBE Local Gateway. 


From a Cisco engineer's point of view, offering all three is reasonable. Different countries, carriers, emergency-calling rules, and existing contracts make one universal PSTN answer impossible. What is less reasonable is pretending that "cloud PSTN" is the default and always selected option. while it can lead to (slightly) easier number porting (always a nightmare), caller-id and some failover solutions, it's got some drawbacks the article goes into that are worth considering, especially in regards to analog devices and emergency calling.


Ultimately I think the best way to approach this problem is to pick your connectivity per location, not a one-size-fits all option that is meant to work for the entire company. 


Like the article mentions, none of this matters if your test plan sucks, it's not just about testing a variety of different numbers like local, long distance and International, but on the type of call scenario, example: actual inbound, outbound, transferred, call pickup group, call forward, call parked. etc. etc. Of course! I would be remiss not to mention, you should probably test you're correctly recording the calls too (Call Recording offers the best solution for this hands down, it's a no brainer!). 



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