Open letter to Cisco regarding the UC320 platform

Question

Cisco,
I have never in my life been exposed to a "production" piece of equipment with so many bugs, missing features and oddities as the UC320. While I am sure many of you are working hard to reign in the problems, this platform is an utter embarrassment that should be in the preliminary alpha stages, not a channel product being sold to end users.
It is clear that Cisco has little understanding of how SMALL business works and how SMALL partners work with small business customers. A larger partner may be able to string a larger business along with promises of bug fixes and feature additions while charging them to make things right and.or padding the overall cost to account for the callbacks. True small businesses don't have the time, patience or money to deal with problematic hardware. When a partner sells a small business a piece of technology, it better work (at a reasonable cost) or the technology and the partner are out the door.
I was extremely excited when this system was announced and saw great potential for small business customers and an alternative to the Avaya Partner IP and other platforms targeted at the same demographic. I jumped in and put a UC320 in the office of one of my small customers. This whole experience has cost me the trust of a client and is going to end up costing me $3000-$4000 out of pocket (hardware, labor, travel) to make things right with the customer.
As it stands, countless hours have been spent trying to get this system to operate in a reasonably stable and productive manner. At this time the UC320 system has been reset and reconfigured in KEY mode (this time using 2.1.3(0), as the problems with steering digits, call routing and redial in "hybrid mode" made the system more than a little cumbersome to use. Now in KEY mode, caller ID only works on some stations AFTER a call is picked up. On one station, incoming calls are somehow routed to the "Phone Monitor" buttons instead of the "Shared FXO Line" buttons. The user has to press the monitor button to pick up a call, but the call does not always ring at the station so she has to watch for the lights. While the caller ID functionality is a bit better after the latest firmware update, it is still far from working properly. These basic call routing problems are not reasonable and not acceptable, period. The customer is tired of "we are working on it" and so am I.
Other problems (to mention a few):
The GUI is full of buggy behavior. One example if many: The impendence matching dialog only works the first time around and then the GUI loses track of what it is doing and must be reset.
It takes 7-10 minutes for the GUI to load to the login screen over a remote connection. The UC320 is connected to a Verizon DSL, while not blazing fast it is a decent connection. Initial GUI loading on the LAN is almost as bad.
The IE9 product that ships with every new Windows computer is not compatible with the GUI. This is not reasonable.
The AA is somewhat unpredictable with regard to picking up calls and sometimes results in a busy tone and dropped call, even if the call is the ONLY call on the system. Sometimes the prompts are garbled and sometimes the AA does not even pick up.
Steering digit redial issue - still not addressed. Redial on hybrid mode is useless, as is the phonebook.
Caller ID only works part of the time, yet on every other system I have ever used, it works 100% of the time. This is not acceptable.
Answered calls on shared FXO lines show as MISSED on other stations with those lines. The workaround: remove the missed calls display feature. This is not acceptable.
Thus UC320 is not happy unless it is the only router, DHCP and DNS client on the LAN. The grayfield implementation appears to fail no matter what LAN topology and equipment are used. This device is far from friendly to the typical SBS or existing LAN with a dedicated DNS and/or DHCP server.
The handsets have a cheap feel to them compared to the Avaya and other competitors phones.
The sound quality of the ringtones is almost laughable if not sad
The speakerphone quality and overall voice quality are not as good as the competition's.
The filtering functionality of the logging feature does not appear to work properly
Firmware updates often result in a HANG condition where either the GUI needs reset, the system needs a physical reset and/or sometimes defaulted
Firewall port forwarding rule oddities where a rule is deleted from the gui but is still active in the firewall, yet the inability to easily use another data router to work around this problem.
The inability of the device to properly use the LAN port for INTERNET based functionality (Time for example) if the WAN port is NOT connected,
countless other 'issues" raised in the support forum and other venues...
These are ALL very basic functions that one would expect to be fixed BEFORE a basic telephone system platform is released for production. It is absolutely unreasonable for a CUSTOMER to have to put up with a system this buggy and it is absolutely unreasonable for a partner to have to devote this much time and money to getting system to work at even a very basic level of functionality.
To repeat the scenario: This config is as basic as it gets running 2.1.3(0) with (3) system phones, (3) users, (2) pots trunks and that's it. There are no odd call routing scenarios, no complex AA rules or schedules (in fact the AA is defaulted, including prompts). All (3) system phones have BOTH shared FXO lines (KEY MODE). Each and every firmware version has been tried and the system has been defaulted numerous times. The system fails to meet even the most basic expectations of myself or the end user and has become a sore spot between our company and a very good client.
I am somewhat baffled, if not outright bothered by the fact that this device is riddled with so many problems and the fixes are taking so long to be implemented, if at all. I have been asked (ordered) by the customer to get this "hunk of crap" out of their office and replace it with something that works "at no additional cost". I could not agree with the customer more...
A very unhappy Cisco Partner.
William Burnett

Answer 1

To William (and Cisco,)
Honestly, I like Cisco.
I like their  "openess" (you can find documentation and help on almost anything  anywhere), the contribution they make to industry by their huge R&D  effort (more than all their competition combined....or so I've been  told...), the accessibility and responsiveness of some of their key  people in the distribution channel, and yes, I like the ecosystem in  terms of support, tons of free education and sales support for both  their SMB and classic enterprise solutions.
Having said that, I thank God for people like William  Burnett, who I am sure opened the eyes of many partners about the things  that are horrendously wrong with some of the products in the SMB  portfolio, most notably the UC320. I think it is fair to say, that  William has effectively "killed" it (the UC320) in it's present  incarnation. That is, unless Cisco, decides to really rise to the  challenge and fix a product that at first seemed ideal for the small  enterprise, but which was poorly implemented in terms of QC and in some  cases design.
We certainly are not going to be touching the UC320  with a 10ft pole now Nobody wants (or can afford to) get a bad name by  selling "trouble" to your Mom&Pop shops or to people whose trust you  worked hard to gain and who are really depending on you to deliver. Not  in this economy....not ever.
Coming from a Nortel telephony background, its really  hard to accept that having to respond to trouble calls or complaints  continuously from customers when Nortel products worked so reliably. In  fact, Nortel Norstar is so reliable as a key system that people joke ,  that's why they went out of business, they couldn't generate enough  turnover in new sales on account of people holding on to their Norstar's  forever.
As a seller/installer/user of Cisco voice (UC540) and CME there are a couple recommendations I would like to make to Cisco:
1)Private line emulation - inability to transfer or conference calls on a private line.  (using the TRUNK XX command) on the CME/UC500 platforms needs to be  significantly improved in order to keep up with the competition:
for  one, when you select a private line and make a call you cannot transfer  that call. Every other system I have worked with allows you to do this.  This for me is a glaring "defect/design flaw". I spent a lot of time  trying to get this "fixed" as I couldnt believe that Cisco would just  omit such a basic function when all their competition  has it. (You dont  even think about this when dealing with other systems.) Its just  expected.
2)Private line emulation - Inability to reflect the dialed number in the Call Detail Records for calls made via a "private line". If you select a private line on the UC500 or  CME and make a call, the dialed number would not show up in the CDR. I  have programmed systems from Nortel (Norstar, BCM,CS1000), Avaya - (IP  Office 500, Partner Plus, and S8x00 Communication Servers) as well as  various systems from Mitel and
Panasonic .  The CDR packages for these systems are very well implemented and  documented. Cisco's systems are well documented as well, but this is an  area of the implementation where Cisco falls behind the competition. I am sure this can be fixed, but for some reason, despite a number of requests, it hasnt.
In  trying to understand why it is Cisco, with such a huge R&D budget,  can't seem to get some things working properly that the competiton has  long ago solved and moved on with, I have come to the conclusion that it  must be that Cisco propably didnt tap enough of the right (human)  resources when it was developing its voice portfolio, and the lack of  industry experience shows up in some random places. Sad to say, not  paying attention to some of these details, to real world usage  scenarios, makes what would be an otherwise super product, just good  enough.
Cisco is the biggest networking vendor on  the planet. People have a right to have high exectations of Cisco. Their  marketing also conditions users and partners to expect more when using  their solutions. While we accept that no one is perfect, not even the  mighty Cisco, I think most of the complaints and dissapointment  expressed in this forum, on this particular thread, are justified  because there is a strong feeling that if Cisco can be such a  trailblazer with their enterprise portfolio, that they should have  understood the importance of ensuring and enforcing good quality control  in the design and manufacture of the SMB portfolio. I honestly hope  someone from "Corporate" or high enough to make a differnce, looks at  this thread started by William and uses it to inspire the will to fix  what needs to be fixed to redeem the UC320 in whatever incarnation, in  the eyes of its partners (even former ones....such as William)and  customers. This is beginning to look like a textbook case of how not to  do product development.