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

Steven Critchfield critch at basesys.com
Wed Nov 5 10:34:56 MST 2003


On Wed, 2003-11-05 at 10:16, Gavin Hamill wrote:
> 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.

You would be surprised at how quickly you can pick up on how things are
done in a well coded C project. I assume if you are doing php/perl, you
probably are at least passingly familiar with a linux system and can
pick up some easy debugging skills.

> > 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.

Our concerns where only about them being a small company and you have to
understand our implementation is over a year old. I think we purchased
parts before the official FCC certs where in. This all said, we where
cutting it close to being on the very cutting edge of what was released.
You are now coming into it after Digium has grown and released a few
more products. We no longer have these kinds of fears, but 18-24 months
ago would have been a little different.

Another reason why we may have thought about it was simply the fact that
we also are a really small shop that occasionally have to worry about
how business will fair.
-- 
Steven Critchfield  <critch at basesys.com>




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