[Asterisk-biz] Re: [Asterisk-Users] Newbie Question

[Alistair Cunningham]

Jason Becker wrote:
> Hi Alistair,
> 
> Alistair Cunningham wrote:
> 
>> Jason,
>>
>> I'm a bit confused by your response. I stated that you could have a 
>> basic working system in under a day. You then say that with AMP you 
>> can have a basic working system in a few hours. These two statements 
>> don't seem all that different to me, especially when I include time to 
>> get an 
> 
> 
> In a subsequent post I expanded "basic working system" to include 
> voicemail, IVR, etc.
> 
>> The 'couple more days' are for things which a GUI won't help a great 
>> deal with, such as:
>>
>> - Connecting to some existing quirky equipment.
>> - Doing a custom dialplan with macros etc to make phones behave like 
>> the old PBX that management is used to and can't stand to lose the 
>> custom features of.
>> - Ditto for voicemail.
>> - Testing testing testing.
>> - Writing documentation.
>> - Planning the next steps.
>>
>> There's no way you can do all this in a few hours. The testing step 
>> alone should take at least that long, usually more. Custom development 
>> can take anywhere from hours to weeks, depending on what the customer 
>> wants.
> 
> 
> My comments were confined to a "basic working system". It was not my 
> intention to imply that you don't offer your customers value. My point 
> was that AMP allows us and others to satisfy the requirement for a basic 
> working system in short order, thereby freeing up resources to be better 
> spent on items of value like those that you itemized above.

Fair enough; I don't disagree that tools such as AMP help getting the 
initial system installed.

>> For residential use, tools like AMP are ideal, but businesses tend to 
>> be more demanding. They like products that fit in with the way they 
>> work, not products that make them change the way they work. Don't 
>> underestimate the desire of businesses to keep user interfaces the 
>> same when installing a new product. I've installed some systems where 
>> we've added features that mimic a system that was bought in the 1980s 
>> that management loves but can't get support for any more. This is the 
>> market I cater to; I still do small straightforward installations of a 
>> few hours if customers ask, but most customers want more than that.
> 
> 
> Since no two businesses are going to work the same does that mean that 
> each install is custom? I'm surprised that a business would choose that 
> model over _some_ form of standardization. Wouldn't you rather provide 
> these businesses with a certain modicum of standardization (i.e. AMP :-) 
> ) and just maintain the customizations? We need to do a better job of 
> providing customization points in AMP but we're moving in that 
> direction. The latest version includes extensions_custom.conf which is 
> included in extensions.conf for this purpose.

I do encourage standardisation, but fundimentally different customers 
want different things, and I'm not going to tell a customer they can't 
have a feature just because it's non-standard. I'll tell them it's non 
standard, inform them of the costs, both of the original work and the 
increased maintanence, inform them if I see any alternatives, and let 
them choose. Many customers want custom features sufficiently badly that 
they'll accept the costs. I don't blame them. The system is often only a 
  small part of their business, and needs to work with their existing 
procedures and their own customers' expectations that would be much more 
expensive to change.

The way to handle this is, as you say, extract the customisations from 
the main code, then make sure that any changes are well documented.

> AMP satisfies the needs of a majority of small and medium sized 
> businesses. AMP won't work out-of-the-box for everyone and there's no 
> denying that a percentage will desire customization. But it's the ol' 
> 80/20 rule.
 >
> I think we agree in principle, perhaps not on strategy.

Yes, and I think it's a case of us focusing on different segments of the 
market.


Alistair Cunningham,
Integrics Ltd,
Telephony, Database, Unix consulting worldwide
+44 (0)7870 699 479
http://integrics.com/