We should now have a full understanding of the 3CX Phone System. In this chapter, we compared hardware and software phone systems, as well as 3CX and Asterisk phone systems.

We quickly took a tour of the major components that make up 3CX. The phone system itself (made up of 13 services), the 3CX VoIP Client, the 3CX softphone, the 3CX Assistant, the Call Reporter, and Hotel module.

We reviewed the characteristics that really define 3CX. Its ease of use, its ability to interoperate with many standard SIP hardware vendors, and that it is unabashedly a Microsoft Windows product are just some of those characteristics. We also took a look at the fact that 3CX is not on the same level of maturity as a Cisco phone system. It's not a turnkey phone system that you can just plug and play. Finally, it's not a finished product; development continues at a dizzying speed.

We noted some features that we shouldn't expect 3CX to provide, such as key system features, Microsoft OCS integration, multi-tenancy, and multiple languages at the same time.

In the next chapter, we will be taking a look at the items we should get together to set up a 3CX Phone System and what computer or server we should use for our system. Then we'll download 3CX and finally go through the 3CX install and a basic test of the system.