Phones don’t last forever?
I’ve been having a lot of conversations lately around Cisco phone models. Until version 11.5, it was a true statement that Cisco Call Manager still supported every Cisco phone that had ever been replaced. While this was a great thing for the customer on cost and ease of upgrade, it limited Cisco’s path forward. With every major release since, Cisco has begun to discontinue support for older phone models. When Cisco Call Manager 14 comes out later this year, there will be another batch of phones that drop off of support. I was a bit surprised to see the 6900 series make it in to the list so quickly, but they always felt like sort of a step child to the flagship 7900 series that came out a decade before them and look to outlast them with the release of 14.
- Cisco Unified SIP Phone 3911
- Cisco Unified SIP Phone 3951
- Cisco Unified IP Phone 6911
- Cisco Unified IP Phone 6921
- Cisco Unified IP Phone 6941
- Cisco Unified IP Phone 6945
- Cisco Unified IP Phone 6961
- Cisco Unified IP Phone 7906G
- Cisco Unified IP Phone 7911G
- Cisco Unified Wireless IP Phone 7925
- Cisco Unified Wireless IP Phone 7925G-EX
- Cisco Unified Wireless IP Phone 7926
- Cisco Unified IP Phone 7931
- Cisco Unified IP Conference Station 7936
- Cisco Unified IP Conference Station 7937G
- Cisco Unified IP Phone 7940
- Cisco Unified IP Phone 7941
- Cisco Unified IP Phone 7960
- Cisco Unified IP Phone 7961
- Cisco Unified IP Phone 7985
- Cisco Unified IP Phone 8941
If you’re running some of these models in your environment, it’s not the end of the world. Call Manager 11.5 is still an active release with no current end of support date (as of Mid 2020). Even once announced, there will still be a good 4 to 5 years of life still in it. That’s more than enough time to plan for hardware refreshes and to get users up to speed.