Typical End of Sale timelines for IP phones

[Shekhar Mahajan]

Dear all,

We plan to procure 7975G IP phones for our firmwide VoIP deployment over the span of next 1-2 years.

Is it possible to know typical EOSale/EOL timelines for a hardware/IP Phone from the date of release/to order? E.g. an IP Phone's lifespan set by the Cisco's product development team is set to 5 years. Even if we get to know this, we can determine the time since the 7975 got available and count down until now.

Say after 1 year, the phone goes EOS, what do we do then? the aim is to build a same look and feel across the firm worldwide.

In which case, we may not go for this series.

Suggestions/alternatives would really help.

Second:

Versus 7945G, 7965G and 7975G, support for features and functions remains the same and the only difference being in the numberof side buttons, bigger screen and touch-screen correct?

[kimcneil]

Hello,

Understand your question and objectives but unfortunately, there isn't a typical timeline from time of product introduction to EoS/EoL. These portfolio decisions take into account many factors both internal and external to Cisco and are made on a case-by-case basis.

From an EoS announcement to EoL, support is typically offered for five years so you could use that as a planning reference. Also note that from time an EoS is announced to when it goes into effect, there is a period of six months upon which orders are accepted by Cisco for a given endpoint - thus, you would have half a year to purchase additional phones to meet your short term and longer term needs.

If you have not seen an EoS bulletin, a listing of those that have been declared on the IP Phone 7900 Series is available on Cisco.com at the link below:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/phones/ps379/prod_eol_notices_list.html

Regarding the second part of your question, you are correct for the models in question. Display size, number of line/feature key appearances and number of sidecars (expansion modules) are the differences between these endpoints.

Regards,

Kirk McNeill

Collaboration Solutions Marketing

Cisco Systems

[Shekhar Mahajan]

Thanks "captain" ;-)

But to be honest, you cant go back to the leadership with this answer...you really cant!

There has to be a logic behind every decision made and product manufactured. Understood that situations, market, adoption by customers etc. may drive production and in turn EOS decisions but given that we are talking about an enteprrise telephony scenario, it gets more sensitive here specially for firms where tolerance for telephony glitches is 0% (and by the way its not just call centers)

Do you think an interface to the Product development team or manager would help? Anything that can give a more logical answer to this trivial situation.

To give you an example, I once asked my accounts team some 2 years back that given the "hoopla" of Go-green and "Energy-wise" on the rise, would IP phones of the future consume less power or more; specifically, would we have more of Class 2 or Class 3 phones?

Same kind of a answer that I received then.

Why was it so important? I had to sixe my LAN gear so that whatever phones I buy, Class 2 or 3, should be pwoer by the switches I have!

A 3750/3560 48 port switch would not power all 48 phones @ Class 3 power unless you have a 1150W PSU BUT any normal 24 port would!

The answer then could have been simple, more features and more fancier stuff = more power atleast in the current sub-space-age times.

fortunately, I got more of 24 ports an 1150W then.

Any more specifics or out of heart would really help Kirk and all.

[thabomashiyane]

Hi Kirk McNeill,

Could you please assist me with the following product from Cisco to identify it's EOL, or perhaps you can assist me with when was it released then I can apply the lifecycle policy to determine the EOL for the product.

Cisco 7975 Telephone.

Thank you

Regards,

Thabo Mashiyane

[kimcneil]

Hello Thabo,

Short answer - 7975 is active. Not End of Sale. So no timeline applies.

How you can determine those endpoints that are End-of-Sale and when End of Life applies is available on Cisco.com. As you scroll to the bottom of a Series page (i.e., a 6900 Series, 7900 Series etc), if there are End-of-Sale notifications that have been published, you will see a link you can click on to those notifications and you can then view them to understand - is it hardware, software, when's End of Life etc.

As a case in point, here's the link to the 7900 Series where you can see the notifications for hardware and software that go back to the early models such as 7911's, 7940's etc. Page worthy of bookmarking for reference.

Cisco Unified IP Phone 7900 Series - End-of-Life and End-of-Sale Notices - Cisco

Trust this helps.

Kirk McNeill