Cisco 6945 IP Phone
OK, maybe your break room phones aren’t EoL, but the model we have been using is. We use the 6945 for our break room phones, and the 6900 series had their end of life announced last month. The last ship date is Oct. 28, 2014, so if you need some to finish a project, you might want to order them. Depending on how far along you are in the project, you might want to switch over to their replacement, which I’ll cover in just a moment…
Maybe you are breathing a sigh of relief because you are using the venerable 7931G as your break room (or other low use/basic use location) phone. Well, you’re feeling that relief all too soon because that’s EoL, as well…
Cisco 7800 Series IP Phones
The replacement for both of these is the new 7800 series (no, not the MCS 7800, silly). My organization is in the middle of migrating 50 sites from key systems to a Cisco UC solution. We are only about 1/3 of the way through the project and we haven’t deployed many of the 6900 series, so we will most likely be switching over to one of the 7800 endpoints for the remainder of the project. Yes, they do look different, but the icons are still the same as on the 6900 and 8900 series (which are the two primary series of endpoints we have been using). If you are on the 7931G, it is more of a change, but you had to know that was coming.
Of course, who knows what level of quality the 7800 firmware will be. It’s taken a while for the 8900’s to become mostly stable. Hopefully the 7800’s will be a bit better, but that’s something you will definitely want to take into account as a risk factor in your projects.
FIN
Breakroom? We just got done using 6945s for our entire hospital deployment save a few executives. So far I’m impressed which is probably why Cisco EOL’d them. :)
Oh, we like shiny. The 6945s would not have seemed like an upgrade from our old phones and that would have resulted in less user acceptance. We deployed 8945s. Class 2 PoE, lots of features, video built in. Obnoxious stand, that no one seems to like the angle of, though.
The 6900 series phones had goofy limitations. Things got a little better later in life, but they were still the ‘cheap ass phones’. I remain a loyal 79xx fan, however the new DX650 has me slobbering a little.
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And just to keep you on your toes, the 8941 is now EoL, as well. Other 8900 series are fine, they just are dropping the 8941.