Like most VoIP phones, the 7970G will also perform Internet functions such as searching a database for work orders. It does so by running programs written in an emerging software language called XML (Extensible Markup Language) that's used to share data over networks.

Also Tuesday, Cisco said it will extend XML capabilities to its 7905G and 7912G VoIP phones by the end of the year. The phones are available now, selling for $135 and $165 respectively.

There's one kind of simplicity that I like to call simplexity. When you take something incredibly complex and try to wrap it in something simpler, you often just shroud the complexity. You don't actually design a truly simple system. And in some ways you make it even more complex, because now the user has to understand what was omitted that they might sometimes need. That's simplexity.