[Asterisk-biz] Asterisk for small businesses.

Sun Feb 20 10:28:03 MST 2005

Allan, Dario et al,

I am glad to hear that we are on a similar page of "Productization"of
Asterisk. My target customer group are same as yours, mainly SME that
already have a proprietary PABX in place. I am surprised to find many of
them are paying up to $1-2K phone bill a month and they can cut that to 1/3
or 1/4 by going into VOIP and they don't want to give Asterisk a try. (yet !
part of the reason as Jim has mentioned we might not build the value enough,
as my typical customer's feedback is : " I don't really care if  Asterisk
have limitless features, I don't have problem (in fact they do) on my
current system and nobody wants to make a change, just to give me a proposal
to cut the rate"

As I have to feed business to a team of staff, I can't wait here to build
value for another year or so, I have to find a way to survive and grow. I
don't want to be a box mover neither as I know very well what kind of
prospect it would bring me. Therefore with some luck from efforts, I found
my way of productization of Asterisk.

Currently I am base on a box (8 ports, 32 ports, and 128 ports) used in
China Unicom for VOIP which is supplied by a famous company in China in VOIP
arena called Beijing Gongye (not well known out of China, same as many
telecommunication Giant such as Huawei or Utstarcomm). This box can work
with most (I have not checked all)  proprietary PBX, the connection is to
plug an PBX telephone extension into this box and a few setting, with a
static IP address (preferable but not a must) and ADSL (or other broadband),
and this box will now bring the whole PBX system to IP.

This box itself is not only a gateway but also a PBX, therefore the
expansion (increase more phone lines) or extension (cover home office,
mobile workers or to put global branches together) is easy and ready and
ready to go. Therefore the customer can phrase in and phrase out and
eventually come out completely from their PBX and come into the IP-PBX
system within years.

The greatest thing I have done here and not possible with other talkswitch
type box is Gongye is very open minded in bringing their system to work with
Asterisk, therefore, now after the customer have installed the box, enjoy
the IP rate, we can build the trust and now we can hear what exactly is the
problem or limitation of our client on the telephone system,  and we can now
use Asterisk to solve their problem which no other proprietary PBX or IPPBX
can do. Now instead of throwing a general project, I can have a definitive
project either for my technical staff or to find Guru here then I feel more
comfortable as a business. (Don't get me wrong, this is one of the way,
certainly not the only one way and might not even be the best way).

The way that Jim mentioned might work for technical passionate business
leaders and they might not like this approach, but some of the others, if
you like this approach, let me know, so we can work together to become
stronger, quicker.

This week end I sold the system to a friend that they have several creative
people working in different offices and in different cities, and they have
many long distance call, I suggest them to install the small boxes (each of
about $500) in each location, and now if there is incoming call, they can
work like in the same office and they can even call their Chinese vendor as
simple as calling an extension and even to have the vendors staff to
participate in the conference call to their customer without LD charge.

Since they are creative people, they like to see the power of Asterisk in
the future. However, three months ago, I told them the same thing about
Asterisk and they turned me down politely such as $2K phone call is not such
as big deal for them. I don't draw any conclusion here, just an example to
share -- a simple plug and play box to enjoy immediately benefit still a
super selling point for most people.

Alex 

-----Original Message-----
From: asterisk-biz-bounces at lists.digium.com
[mailto:asterisk-biz-bounces at lists.digium.com] On Behalf Of Dario Vidovic
(Vox Mundi)
Sent: February 20, 2005 3:18 AM
To: Commercial and Business-Oriented Asterisk Discussion
Subject: RE: [Asterisk-biz] Asterisk for small businesses.

Hi Allan,

I share your views my company is located Croatia and Slovenia.

We have significant experience in Asterisk, we have done some
customisation for our customers and I'd like to see how we could
work together.

Kind regards,
Dario

-----Original Message-----
From: asterisk-biz-bounces at lists.digium.com
[mailto:asterisk-biz-bounces at lists.digium.com]On Behalf Of Allan B.
Allsopp
Sent: Thursday, February 17, 2005 2:54 PM
To: alex.pui at act-labs.com; Commercial and Business-Oriented Asterisk
Discussion; jim at vanmeggelen.ca; 'Mike Dent'
Subject: RE: [Asterisk-biz] Asterisk for small businesses.

Mike, Jim, Alex and all.

Interesting discussions.....Cant disagree with any of them. At
smecommunitiesonline we are working towards delivering that "productization"
coupled with a cohesive business and financial model. We are currently
developing our delivery portfolio.

We have a development server operational and are hard at testing. We are
also in discussions with a few sme's across the UK about utilising *Asterisk
over proprietary PABX and have one organisation who are keen to make the
switch. For them the economics are easy to see............They have a quote
of L25k from their PABX Supplier to upgrade their existing platform (which
will incorporate a certain amount of VoIP) with ongoing support and
maintenance costs of L4k per annum. We are offering then consultancy at the
moment completing scope and design work including costing of purchase,
installing and configuring the Asterisk solution at a fraction of the cost
of proprietary.

Bottom line is........We are progressively marketing the use of Asterisk and
consultancy across the UK, Europe and hopefully beyond. Because we are only
a small organisation we are looking for like minded technically experienced
organisations and individuals with the right skill sets to work on
collaborative projects.

This list is a great forum for open and free exchange of views. However, for
those looking for the business advantage collaboration seems the way to go.
We would be interested to hear from anyone with views on such collaboration
on future projects.

Anyone interested, drop me a mail.

Cheers and Wassail
Allan Allsopp
smecommunitiesonline
mob: 07754 231 882
allan.allsopp at sme-online.net
www.sme-online.net

-----Original Message-----
From: asterisk-biz-bounces at lists.digium.com
[mailto:asterisk-biz-bounces at lists.digium.com]On Behalf Of Alex Pui
Sent: 17 February 2005 08:34
To: jim at vanmeggelen.ca; 'Commercial and Business-Oriented Asterisk
Discussion'; 'Mike Dent'
Subject: RE: [Asterisk-biz] Asterisk for small businesses.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Alex

-----Original Message-----
From: asterisk-biz-bounces at lists.digium.com
[mailto:asterisk-biz-bounces at lists.digium.com] On Behalf Of Jim Van Meggelen
Sent: February 17, 2005 12:08 AM
To: 'Mike Dent'; 'Commercial and Business-Oriented Asterisk Discussion'
Subject: RE: [Asterisk-biz] Asterisk for small businesses.

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:

http://tim.oreilly.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
jim at vanmeggelen.ca

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