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Can I replace Cisco?

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jnowotny

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Hello,

I currently have an old Cisco/Unity phone system. Here are the basics:

1) Call Manager 4.1
2) Unity VoiceMail 4.0 with Exchange 2003
3) 40 Cisco 7960G phones
4) 5 Cisco 7936 Conference room phones (made by Polycom)
5) 5 Cisco 7905G phones
6) Cisco 2821 router with a dedicated T1

We want to upgrade Exchange to the 2010 version, but this has to change first. Can 3CX replace this Cisco mess without getting new equipment?

Thanks…Jim
 
jnowotny said:
Hello,

I currently have an old Cisco/Unity phone system. Here are the basics:

1) Call Manager 4.1
2) Unity VoiceMail 4.0 with Exchange 2003
3) 40 Cisco 7960G phones
4) 5 Cisco 7936 Conference room phones (made by Polycom)
5) 5 Cisco 7905G phones
6) Cisco 2821 router with a dedicated T1

We want to upgrade Exchange to the 2010 version, but this has to change first. Can 3CX replace this Cisco mess without getting new equipment?

Thanks…Jim

Jim,

I cant believe it, but you almost have the same setup we have. I was going to post the same question but you beat me to it :)
The only differences in our setup are:
- Unity v 4.2(1)
- Call Manager 5
- Phones are 7941

I am very interested to find out the answer to your question. Please PM me if someone directly contacts you with the answer.

I appreciate it!
 
BTW, I am very interested in the connectivity between 3CX and Exchange Server 2003/2010
 
Short answer - yes

3cx needs a windows machine to sit on - as you have servers it can run as a service on one of those (takes up little resources) or use a dedicated hyperv machine. We run ours on a hyperv that is also a DNS server, file share and runs our Source Control system for some developers.

There has been some success with the phones - see this post for your 40 cisco 7960 phones http://www.3cx.com/forums/finally-cisco-7960-success-7398.html

Voicemail is built into 3CX. It can also email voicemails as attachments (regardless of email server - e.g. yahoo, gmail, your exchange etc.). And faxes as PDFs (assuming your provider supports t38 faxing)

There is an outlook plugin (or salesforce) if you want to use that on a users pc.

3cx can also optionally use Unified Messaging in Exchange 2007 and 2010. It is an easy configuration in 3cx admin page. Though this is optional as 3cx can provide everything.

Hope that helps.

My advice to you is to download the free version and set up one or two of the cisco phones and try it out while keeping your old system going for now.
 
Thanks Mark. The phones are the part that I'm worried about. Looking around here it seems that the older Cisco stuff is a real pain in the ass. I'm in the process of getting the latest SIP firmware for my phones. Hopefully the latest is the way to go. I'm also worried about making this work with current "PSTN Gateway Router". I'll switch to a VOIP provider later on.

Jim...
 
If you can upgrade those phones to their SIP equivalent firmware and already have the correct configuration for the TFTP server, then i see no reason why they wouldn't work with 3CX.

The 2 above are pretty much the "Hard" part of the whole Cisco replacement issue.
All you would need to do is just change the Extension Number / Auth ID and Server IP for each config file for your cisco phones and replace the old Call Manager with a 3CX Machine.

That's pretty much it :p
 
LeonidasG said:
If you can upgrade those phones to their SIP equivalent firmware and already have the correct configuration for the TFTP server, then i see no reason why they wouldn't work with 3CX.

The 2 above are pretty much the "Hard" part of the whole Cisco replacement issue.
All you would need to do is just change the Extension Number / Auth ID and Server IP for each config file for your cisco phones and replace the old Call Manager with a 3CX Machine.

That's pretty much it :p

This is a great topic, I been researching the 7940 and 7960 and as i see it with the help of online resources, you get the firmware, you plug it in to the Tftp server, then you config the files, config 3x with the 79xx phones and your good to go. I actually was about to try to set this up, if you have any luck let me know
 
Personally i've had a 7941 which worked fine.
I've also seen a lot of people on the forums who use 79xx series phones. You can search for their topics by using the search field on the forum, maybe you will get some more tips from their topics.

As i said, the hard part is finding the correct configuration files for your 79xx series cisco, as almost all phones in the 79xx series has a different config file. It even took me a few days of banging my head to the keyboard and extensive google searching / test and trial of many different configuration files to get the correct config files for my Cisco.
But if you already have it beforehand, then you're in good luck :mrgreen:
 
LeonidasG said:
Personally i've had a 7941 which worked fine.
I've also seen a lot of people on the forums who use 79xx series phones. You can search for their topics by using the search field on the forum, maybe you will get some more tips from their topics.

As i said, the hard part is finding the correct configuration files for your 79xx series cisco, as almost all phones in the 79xx series has a different config file. It even took me a few days of banging my head to the keyboard and extensive google searching / test and trial of many different configuration files to get the correct config files for my Cisco.
But if you already have it beforehand, then you're in good luck :mrgreen:

Yeah Google really has helped me on getting everything I need to run the 7940 which is my plan. Since it seems the 7940 is the most talked about version ha ha
 
It looks like the Cisco 7936 Conference room phones don't have any SIP firmware, they are SCCP only. It's always something.

Jim...
 
hello,

I am also in a very close situation, I have several cisco isr 2821 with cisco call manager express 4, i would like to reuse cisco routers as well as cisco 79xx phones, our customers are very satisfied with cisco hardware, but they need feature that 3cx provide.

Thanks
 
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