[asterisk-biz] Open Proposal

[Zac Amsler]

I am in the Chicago area and would be interested in this.

Cheers,

/Zac
Zac Amsler
zamsler at cshsi.com

Robert Roach wrote:
> This letter is addressed to all the businesses like mine that are 
> developing, deploying and supporting Asterisk based PBX systems for 
> the small to medium size business market.
>
> I believe that we are starting to see a need for a formal organization 
> that is focused exclusively on supporting our business model.
>
> Our customers have specific needs, both from a product and business 
> perspective, that present unique challenges to us and differentiates 
> us from companies deploying Asterisk for call centers and independent 
> consultants.
>
> IMO, it is our common focus and background that not only presents 
> challenges, but gives us an opportunity to leverage our common 
> interests to build a stronger product.
>
> In addition, I'll suggest that the majority of us are, by virtue of 
> working in relative isolation from one another, on the whole 
> duplicating a lot of effort in terms of product development, sales and 
> marketing and human resources.
>
> In short, there must be a way for us to combine our resources, apply 
> the virtues of Open Source Development to our business model and 
> thereby realize the common goals of lowering business costs, speeding 
> product development, increasing quality and last but not least, 
> providing a global support organization to provide a fall back to both 
> our customers and ourselves.
>
> A bit of background: Last June I attended Astricon in Madrid and 
> floated the idea of an Asterisk Business Consortium - A group of like 
> minded companies across the globe, sharing a common business goal and 
> working together to share resources. At the time, I met with a 
> decidedly mixed response to the idea. Most people were choosing the 
> go-it-alone strategy. Speaking to Digium about it, they are focused – 
> rightly so – on growing their own business. However, based on what I 
> have read recently on this list – notably Michael's recent request for 
> a 24x7 help desk - it seems that the time has come to make a more 
> formal proposal to the community at large.
>
>
> My proposal is to create an organization comprised of member companies 
> to address the following issues:
>
> 1. Business Related
>
> a. Customer Support - Need for 24x7x365 support for Asterisk 
> installations.
>
> b. Continuation 'Insurance'- Provide an umbrella organization to give 
> your customers the assurance that they are not necessarily relying on 
> you as the single source for future support/upgrade of the system.
>
> c. Boiler plate contracts – In as much is practical – develop 
> 'standard' contracts to offer customers.
>
> d. Marketing – Sharing the development of marketing materials e.g. 
> data sheets, FAQs, etc
>
>
> 2. Technical
>
> a. Standardization of 3^rd party application integration to the 
> Asterisk platform (Jive IM Server, AsterFAX, Sugar CRM integration, 
> etc). We would all benefit from having a coordinated effort in this 
> area reducing duplication of effort.
>
> b. Internal development of Asterisk related applications – In order to 
> fill voids in functionality, we can again make a coordinated effort to 
> build the applications we need. IMO, relying on third party 
> proprietary applications for critical features introduces an element 
> of risk into our product based on the viability of the 3^rd party's 
> business. Additionally, you don't have direct control over the 
> development time line or features.
>
> c. 'Standardized' extended functionality for dial plans – For example, 
> a speed dial implementation or password protected extensions – As this 
> is not supported natively in Asterisk – it is implemented in any of a 
> variety of ways by each of us. Difficult for a 3rd party to 
> troubleshoot and again working in silos duplicating effort.
>
>
> Near Term Tangible Benefits.
>
> I can think of several, but two specific examples spring to mind.
>
> First, our business is based in South East Asia, but some of our 
> customers have offices in the US. We would like to have a reliable 
> partner to service the remote offices. As each new customer presents 
> their own unique scenario, building relationships with other Asterisk 
> support companies on the fly on a one-off basis is just too time 
> consuming and potentially risky.
>
> Second, our company has developed a GUI for business users that is 
> specifically NOT a graphical representation of the Asterisk dial plan, 
> but is rather a user centric application giving them desktop SMS 
> features, call forwarding customization, extension password protection 
> etc in a format which does not require any knowledge of how a dial 
> plan is configured. I know that others out there have done the same. 
> If we had coordinated our efforts from the outset we would likely have 
> saved time, have a more robust and feature full application. It is 
> still early in the deployment cycle for Asterisk overall and we can 
> still capture some of these benefits.
>
>
> How would this work?
>
> I think most everyone would agree that the above goals are laudable, 
> but just how can you get everyone to agree on how it should be 
> implemented is the tough part. I have a rough draft of ideas on how to 
> execute this, but at this stage, I'd like to get some reactions from 
> all of you to see if this is something worth pursuing.
>
>
> Regards,
>
> Rob
>
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