[Asterisk-Users] Another Newbie Question

[Jim Gottlieb]

On 2003-06-27 at 14:24, Chip Mefford (cmefford at avwashington.com) wrote:

> Is anyone actually using * as a primary phone system in
> a small/medium sized business with more than a dozen
> stations and a real receptionist who handles calls?

As impressed as I am with asterisk, and as happy as we are with it as
the basis for our IVR/conferencing application, I don't think it is
ready to replace a real PBX for general office use.

And it doesn't have to because they can work together.  There are a lot
of very reasonably priced systems on the used market.  For example, we
use an Eon Millennium (née ITT 3100) that we picked up fully loaded for
a few thousand dollars, and for VoIP/IVR/ACD/VM we connect to an
asterisk server through its PRI interface.  But the PBX itself provides
the standard features like nice feature phones (available refurbished
for one-third the price of a Cisco 7960), busy lamp / DSS consoles, and
ARS tables, that are nicer than anything you could cobble together
easily with asterisk at this point.