[Asterisk-Users] Reasons why I shouldn't use Asterisk?

[Gavin Hamill]

On Wed, 2003-11-05 at 15:31, Steven Critchfield wrote:
> > the only Con I can think of is 'Relatively few installations
> > worldwide'
> 
> Your listed con is only a con if you have to point to others failures to
> cover your own. It is lemming thinking.

Hm, it's only a con because I can't think of anything else, to be honest
:) The call centre is our lifeblood at the moment, so whilst I
personally am confident that Asterisk can perform the task more reliably
and more adaptably than our current PBX, the fact that not many other
people (that I know of) are using the software is a significant factor
in the risk assessment.

Our mgmt are reasonably open and forward, but with something as core to
the business as the phones, I expect they will show a more conservative
side.

It's a pleasant boost to my case that our current proprietary PBX has
been dogged with problems.

> > Can anyone think of any others?
> 
> If your company has a few decent programmers with a good knowledge of
> open source software and software debugging, the few access of the
> source code is the greatest PRO. 

Alas, we're a web shop, so the coding talent extends only to Perl/PHP.
Perfect for AGI scripting, but not a lot of use if we find issues in the
Asterisk core.

> I think the only Con we could think up when we initially deployed was
> our question of the longevity of the Digium company. 

Interesting - something I'd not even considered simply because new
products appear all the time, and I haven't heard a bad word said about
them to date.

> I'd say the only other cons you could list are really in driver support
> areas right now, but knowing that those are moving targets and can
> potentially be fixed or avoided lowers those risks. 

<nod>

Cheers,
Gavin.