[Asterisk-biz] Asterisk for small businesses.

Thu Feb 17 15:01:16 MST 2005

That's my whole point. Asterisk requires more skill, but once those
skills are obtained, it knocks the socks off a proprietary system.

-----Original Message-----
From: Sergey Kuznetsov [mailto:asterisk_biz at deeptown.org] 
Sent: February 17, 2005 3:10 PM
To: jim at vanmeggelen.ca; Commercial and Business-Oriented Asterisk
Discussion
Subject: Re: [Asterisk-biz] Asterisk for small businesses.

I can program any complicated AGI on Perl in very short time.
Way faster than it takes time to proprietary expert to tune up his/her
system.

My extensions.conf will look like:

[default]
exten => XX.,1,AGI(jack-of-all-trades.agi)

Probably sip.conf and iax.conf will be overcrowded, but this is still
Okay for me.

The rest will be done in Perl and Postgres.

Jim Van Meggelen wrote: 

Alex Pui wrote:

Jim,

I totally agree with what you said here. I guess we need to

find out what are Asterisk problems at this point of time and

we can work together to solve it. In my experience it is not

much a "product" problem, it is a "productization" problem.

Actually, there are already too many telecom "products" on the market.

Trying to turn Asterisk into yet another one strikes me as a tactical

error. Asterisk changes the rules; disguising it as another legacy

system doesn't strike me as serving any purpose.

To learn how to install Asterisk is fun, but to use Asterisk

to make money it is difficult, problems are : 1. There is no

perceived value as a total solution or package at the right

size. Unless we can build such value perception for the

customers in the mass market, that is people can easily

compare a Cisco model with Asterisk and then they can compare

how much they will have to pay for Cisco and now how "Less"

they need to pay for Asterisk consultant and also the

benefits, we will have no point to say we charge $60 or $100

per hour as nobody can link the cost and the value together.

For my customers, the fact that it is _not_ a Cisco or Nortel and is a

Linux-based open source technology has huge value. They completely

understand the fact that Linux doesn't come encumbered with vendor-lock

in. I had thought there would be more resistance, but the only

resistance I've seen comes from the old-school telecom folks, who seem

to think that a revolution happens when you don't change anything.

Asterisk _does_ require a more complicated sales cycle, but where I

think we may make a mistake is when we position it as "cheaper". Sure,

we can be extremely competitive due to the commodity hardware and

software we use, but some of that cost difference needs to go into the

custom development required.

Putting Asterisk into a box and then selling that box is a mistake.

Asterisk needs to be sold as a service. That means that the

hardware/software is irrelevant. What is sold is the fact that whatever

the customer wants can be delivered (what seems so self evident is

actually huge - no other telecom system can make this claim). The value

comes from outstanding customer service. Asterisk solutions need to be

priced high enough that there is money available to provide superior

service. Customer service is sadly lacking in the telecom industry, and

is therefore a huge opportunity (it always was, in any business).

Asterisk should not be sold as a cheap system; it should be sold as a

technically superior way to engineer telecom systems. It is not "free"

and I would argue that it is not necessarily a compelling sales strategy

to tell customers that it is (I'm not talking about hiding the fact that

it's GPL, I'm talking about focusing on the value of the solution, not

the price of the components).

Let's look at a hypothetical $20,000 VoIP-enabled legacy key system

with, say 20 sets.

Each character represents $500

# represents hardware cost

+ represents licensing of "extra" features (including voicemail)

^ represents sets

! represents labour

The Legacy, proprietary "solution"

##########+++++++^^^^^^^^^^!!!=========

The Asterisk solution

####^^^^^^^^^^^^^!!!!!!======

With twice as much labour in the job, and more expensive sets, there is

a similar margin, and yet you can go as much as 25% lower (and I

wouldn't start $5000 cheaper either - especially if the Asterisk solves

problems the proprietary system cannot - a 10% difference might be

compelling enough). If your competition matches your price, they lose

money.

This is very raw, but what I'm hoping to demonstrate is the concept that

the savings due to the commodity hardware and software allow for more

labour to go into the customized development. This is service!

Having worked with many different kinds of PBXs, I do not find the

configuration process in Asterisk to be complicated at all. A skilled

craftsperson should be able to program an Asterisk system in roughly the

same time as it takes to build an equivalent proprietary system. 

2. The education process to customers are killing. Yes, open

source is free, knowledge to set up the system is not, and

the cost of education to the customer about this knowledge

will kill most of our business.

If you do not base your price on your costs, then yes. But yhy are you

trying to teach your customer about Asterisk? They probably don't care.

Sell them on how you can solve their problems.

Therefore we need to work together to solve these problems

(or some other problems if you want to share) then we can

fly. There are not much successful cases we are hiding,

Asterisk business is a lot of fun and attractive but not that

profitable unless someone wants to correct me.

Asterisk is going to be enormously profitable. But it will never be

easy, or straightforward.

Cheers,

Jim.

HYPERLINK
"mailto:asterisk-biz-bounces at lists.digium.com"asterisk-biz-bounces at lists
.digium.com wrote:

HYPERLINK
"mailto:asterisk-biz-bounces at lists.digium.com"asterisk-biz-bounces at lists
.digium.com wrote:

Hi,

I'm looking in to the possibility of starting to sell a small

Asterisk installation in to one or two small businesses to test the

waters in my area, north west UK.

Are others doing similar things on a small scale? I currently do not

have a lot of investment to  plough in to this business at the moment

so things would have to be done within my current financial

constraints. I have a full time job at present which I plan to leave

in 8 months time if all goes to plan.

Now I realise people are not going to disclose their business winning

secrets but I'd welcome any friendly advise from others who have done

this or are doing it at present.

(I have linux/unix experience going back to 1992 but only about 3

months * experience, with a server at home running 2 analogue lines

and 4 extensions.)

As far as I'm concerned, open-source telephony is going to

turn the world of enterprise telecom on it's ear. I've worked

in that business for over 15 years, on equipment and networks

of all shapes and sizes, and I've never seen anything like Asterisk.

This is extremely disruptive technology, in the same way the

IBM PC was in the early 80s, or Linux through the 90s.

Check out this article for some thought-provoking ideas on the future:

HYPERLINK
"http://tim.oreilly.com/articles/paradigmshift_0504.html"http://tim.orei
lly.com/articles/paradigmshift_0504.html

When I talk to customers, the amount of hate they have for

the likes of Cisco, Nortel, Avaya and such is shocking. The

horrible service they have come to expect from their telecom

providers is hard to believe. The problem, as I see it, is

that the technology that exists simply does not allow service

providers to truly solve their customers' communication

challenges. It's too closed. Too proprietary. Too inflexible.

Asterisk in and of itself does nothing. But the service that

can be provided to one's customers, using Asterisk, is

approaching miraculous. Even as raw as it is, Asterisk is

amazing. This is so much like the evolution of the web. We

started with text-based browsers, then Mosaic made it all

graphical. Now, we have a billion different ways of making

websites, and each site is a total custom job. This is the

potential of open-source telephony. Will Asterisk still be

the dominant engine in ten years? We just don't know. but

rest assured that whatever succeeds it will be better, not

worse. And the chances of it coming out of the labs at any of

the telecom giants is zero. It's going to take them a few

years just to get it, never mind provide a response. Some

will go bankrupt, those that survive will embrace the new

paradigm (the idea of IBM, Novell and the like embracing

Linux even five years ago was ridiculous).

Just don't expect it to be easy. This is a revolution! (a

real one this time). The industry will begin to attack

Asterisk soon. Expect to see much FUD coming from the big

boys, just as soon as they perceive the threat, 'cause FUD is

all they've got.

To parapharse Ghandi: "First they laugh at you, then they

fight you, then you win"

Cheers,

Jim.

--

Jim Van Meggelen

HYPERLINK "mailto:jim at vanmeggelen.ca"jim at vanmeggelen.ca

-- 

All the Best!

Sergey.

=========================

Sergey Kuznetsov

President/CEO

         High Intellectual Technologies, Inc.

           Web: HYPERLINK
"http://www.hitcalls.com"http://www.hitcalls.com

        E-mail: HYPERLINK
"mailto:sergey.kuznetsov at highintellect.com"sergey.kuznetsov at highintellec
t.com

Business phone: (416) 548-9700

  Mobile phone: (647) 287-8448

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