[Asterisk-Users] Cisco IP Phones

[Glenn Powers]

I'm considering put this on the voip-info.org Wiki, but I thought I'd 
throw it out a few observations here first:

* Cisco IP Phones are designed for enterprise deployments.

They are designed to be provisioned by the hundred or thousand. They are 
not designed to be deployed for a single user or even a small office. 
Sure, they work great in either of these settings, but they require more 
knowledge and infrastructure than most small offices have.

If you're a consultant or reseller, buying one or two and spending an 
afternoon figuring out how to provision them makes sense. Once you know 
how to provision one, provisioning a hundred is not difficult.

If you're an end user or a small office, you're not going to need to 
provision a hundred, so the process for provisioning one is going to 
seem a bit overwhelming.

Other VoIP equipment is clearly designed for at-home installation, with 
web-based interfaces, etc.

I think people should be aware of this when comparing IP Phone options.

cheers,
glenn