Tools & Guides
Prognosis for Migrating to Cisco Unified
Unified Communications
Communications Platform
Checklist and Strategy
Common phases More organizations are choosing Cisco as their preferred
of a rollout: platform for integrated unified communications (UC),
collaboration, video conferencing and contact
01 Understanding center solutions.
Your Environment
Whether your organization is considering
02 Migration a complete migration to Cisco, or an
extension or upgrade of your current
setup, this guide highlights critical areas to
03 Stabilization address along your journey, proven tactics
to successfully manage the transition and
04 Run State a strategic migration assurance checklist.
Any change or update to your
organization’s infrastructure can involve
a major investment of money, time and
resources. It’s important to know why
you’re doing it and what you’re hoping
to achieve.
Before you start, ask yourself some basic
questions. Are you:
• Replacing an aging system?
• Implementing additional functionality?
• Looking to implement the productivity
gains that Cisco provides?
• Investing to gain financial savings?
• Taking advantage of the Cisco Flex
Licensing opportunity to test the water
in the cloud?
Answering these questions will help you
start a plan, identify stakeholders and
determine how to measure success.
Migrating to Cisco Unified Communications Platform
Checklist and Strategy
ir.com
It’s also important to remember that all
IT projects involve three key components;
people, process and technology. The
people aspect is too often neglected;
however, it is usually the people that
are going to make or break the project.
Communicate to your people early and
often, clearly articulating the vision, to get
their buy-in and make them feel like active
participants in the process.
This guide breaks migration planning and
execution down into the 4 phases of the
migration lifecycle:
01 Understanding the Current
Environment
• Pre-migration testing & assessment
• Scoping the migration
02 The Migration
• T
 rack migration & monitor
performance
• Train users and track adoption
03 Ensuring Stability (on-going
monitoring)
• Analyze & remediate
• Rapid & predictive troubleshooting
04 Run State
• Measuring usage & ROI
1
01
Understanding Your
Environment
Before you start, it is
imperative to understand
your current UC ecosystem,
network quality and
capacity. Stress testing
critical components will help
ensure compliance with
quality and performance,
as well as aligning key
business drivers and
system requirements.
Pre-migration testing and
assessment – test technical
deployment and network
architecture:
Check the health of your network.
Check network connectivity.
Note the tools and resources you
require to set up a test environment.
Document the tools and techniques
you use to ensure the proper
assessment and provisioning of the
underlying network.
Take baseline measurements of
existing usage prior to deploying new
Cisco UC, Collaboration and Video
Conferencing platform.
Assess whether the test environment
is scalable to test larger or more
complex deployments.
Record the existing systems (e.g.
ticketing, monitoring, etc.) that will
need to be updated or reconfigured
for your new Cisco UC ecosystem.
Plan back-ups of all databases
impacted by migration.
Ensure that you have the necessary
license files for the new release.
• Use the Prognosis license report to
monitor the Cisco licenses in use
and relinquish any licenses you
are paying for but not using.
TIP: there may be a massive cost
saving to be made here!
Utilize an end-to-end testing solution
to pinpoint weaknesses in network and
infrastructure.
Migrating to Cisco Unified Communications Platform
Checklist and Strategy
ir.com
Scoping the migration:
Plan migration in phases or
controls groups, rolling out smaller
locations before moving critical
functionalities/departments to
new Cisco platform. Apply lessons
learned to each new phase.
Determine whether you need to
deploy new end-point hardware –
phones, headsets, video conferencing
devices, etc.
Check that the software version you
are upgrading from is running on a
virtual machine.
• Determine whether you need
to update the virtual machine
configuration.
Identify whether you can upgrade
or migrate directly from your current
installed version, or whether you
need to upgrade or migrate to
an intermediate version before
proceeding.
Identify the type of deployment
you have – on-premise, hosted,
managed service, private or public
cloud, or hybrid.
Utilize Cisco’s suggested upgrade
documentation based on the
needs of your deployment and
the recommended upgrade or
migration method.
Verify whether your existing servers
or network will meet the requirements
of the release you are migrating to.
If it doesn’t (or if you are changing
vendors) move your deployment to a
supported hardware platform.
Leverage multi-vendor, UC and
network performance management,
monitoring and troubleshooting tools
with end-to-end visibility to ensure
success of your migration.
2
02
Migration
When migrating or
upgrading, it is vital to have
a robust monitoring and
troubleshooting solution
in place to give you the
migration assurance you
need to mitigate risk.
Third party monitoring
tools, like Prognosis, can
Track migration success and
monitor performance:
Use pre-migration discovery findings
to ensure minimal impact to end-user
during transition.
Check connectivity of all systems to
CUCM – including IM and Presence.
Collect configuration and login
information.
Record the registered device
Train users and track
adoption:
Ensure all departments are receiving
training from your internal IT team.
Determine how will you track
adoption and usage patterns in your
environment.
From a licensing perspective, allocate
the right mix of features and functions
for each type of user.

help manage this process
by providing end-to-end
visibility of your new and
legacy UC ecosystem and
simplifying troubleshooting
during these transitions.
count, number of assigned users
and key parameters.
Export user records.
If your organization is deploying
a hybrid environment, determine
whether the on-premises equipment
(SBC’s, video equipment, etc.) will
operate smoothly with your managed
or hosted service provider.
Track whether users are effectively
adopting new Cisco UC features and
applications.
Don’t give users excessive features
that they do not need.
Throughout the migration journey,
communicate clearly to users about
what changes they will experience (e.g.
lost/added features).

Ensure you have end-to-end visibility Ensure your plan has realistic
to quickly diagnose voice or video expectations that are aligned with
quality problems. your desired outcome.

Define your success criteria (e.g. call
quality, user-experience, timing, cost,
etc.).
Perform regular and ongoing testing
to confirm that you are delivering on
quality expectations and meeting
internal service level requirements.
Have reporting available to track
usage, user experience, performance
and utilization of new Cisco UC,
collaboration and video conference
platform and end-points.

Have a clear understanding of the

features available in your geographic
region (e.g. PSTN calling plans and
availability).

Deploy and turn-up new UC platform

– hardware, applications, databases,
end-point devices, etc.

Verify critical services are up and

running, then begin validating all
other connected applications are
operational and have migrated to
new platform.

Migrating to Cisco Unified Communications Platform

Checklist and Strategy
ir.com 3
03
Stability
Once you have deployed
your new technology, the
key to long-term success is
to provide ongoing support
to end-users. Make sure
you have systems in place
to continue to refine tools
and processes, and gauge
progress as time goes on.
04
Run State
As with any project
undertaken in a business
environment, it is important
to be able to show
evidence to support ROI
as a measure of success.
Analyze and remediate:
Determine your support model now
that your organization has deployed
the solution and users have migrated
to the new Cisco UC platform.
Put in place a dependable and
efficient method of identifying
and correcting failures or enabling
features for users.
Continue to refine
processes for monitoring and
managing your environment.
Evaluate the ability to leverage APIs to
integrate UC platforms into business
process applications?.
Ensure you can troubleshoot issues
reported by the users effectively and
easily.
Set threshold alerts to preemptively
avoid costly service outages.
Establish reporting that provide an
understanding of your calling patterns
to ensure you are meeting SLAs.
Track your return on investment (ROI)
to determine if you realize the ROI
expectations made during your initial
forecasts.
Create utilization and adoption
reporting using a tool that provides
complete visibility across entire UC
ecosystem and network infrastructure.
Migrating to Cisco Unified Communications Platform
Checklist and Strategy
ir.com
If you chose a hybrid environment,
understand your on-premises
infrastructure and how it relates to
your cloud providers, so you can
monitor performance in real-time.
Have clear demarcation points of UC
environment component ownership to
ensure success and speed any issue
resolution (e.g. internal IT, UC provider,
and telecommunications provider).
Rapid and predictive
troubleshooting:
Have adequate support staff or help
available to answer questions and
provide troubleshooting capabilities.
Before problems arise, ensure you
have the tools in place to quickly
pinpoint and resolve them.
Have a performance monitoring
solution that will enable you to
pre-emptively avoid costly outages by
providing alerts before problems occur.
Get tools in place to monitor, report
and troubleshoot all aspects of
Cisco UC ecosystem to optimize
overall performance.
Determine if you were able to
successfully and effectively manage
costs during the migration to Cisco UC
platform.
4
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