Not being a lover of hosted or cloud systems I stay away from them I was recently asked by a friend to look at a system of a friend of his. This person bought Cisco sets on line and was told by Optimum sales that they would work on their network. I saw no other equipment with the sets. The optimum tech was installing a piece of equipment that would take sip trunks. Again not being a hosted person I was always under the impression that dial tone comes in over the internet to a piece of equip that is hooked up to the sets. Not on prem. The sales rep also told him to run two cables to each location one for the set and the other for the PC. Hate repeating myself but I'm not into this stuff. Don't you need some sort of manager program to program the sets. Also no power units with the sets but I know he can go POE. I guess I can go on and on but unsure of what's needed I would be wasting my time and yours. What would be needed to get this guy up and running. I will not try this myself but if I can give him some direction. Thanks in advance

I'm not a hosted IP guy, but our SIP carrier has a Hosted IP product, and we have replaced a bunch of Hosted IP setups---so I'm a bit familiar with the product.

You may not have to do anything to get him up and running.....or you may end up jumping through hoops you never even thought of.
My guess is that Optimum has their own website and will give the customer a password and id name and id number to get in and program their phones. All that is needed is an internet access and away you go. I think our SIP rep has told me that all we have to do is plug in the phones (the Yealink phones are pre-configured and provisioned) and that's it.

Having bought the Cisco phones on the internet and not through the provider--I'm sure that some provisioning and programming will have to be done.

Some Hosted systems have a Gateway and then provide a POE switch for the network. The phones may be Cisco, Aastra, etc. There usually is a customer provided Server and PCs for the network.

Good Luck. It's tough when all of the equipment and all of the services are provided by someone else and YOU are expected to help on the programming and installation. It's really a no-win situation at times. Again, Good Luck.

JWRacedog is correct, Most cisco cloud providers have their own firmware on the cisco phones that connect back to their servers. Shortel in Newyork is once such company. There should be a provisioning guide on your providers website, or you might be able to send the phones to them to have them provision for you. (Shortel has done this for us in the past)