[Asterisk-Users] Asterisk feature list: spreadsheet

[Steven Critchfield]

For some of us, the estimations are dead on. I don't necessarily think
the intended audience was for the telecom newbie. The time involved is
definitely experience related. 

You have proven you aren't ready to administer your own asterisk
machine, please whip out your check book as you will either be paying a
asterisk consultant to fill in your gaps, or you will be paying for a
person to install a PBX that has some other name on it. 
Understand that only people who have invested very significant time into
learning the telecom world and asterisk will be able to turn a profit
with asterisk. Maybe you might want to stop making comments here before
too many of them become archived and your companies name tarnished. If
you continue, we will have to assume you are a troll since you don't
care about your company. 

On Tue, 2004-01-06 at 12:19, John Coll wrote:
> John
> 
> I looked at your spreadsheet with interest.
> 
> You grade each item with an indication of the amount of effort needed to use
> the feature.
> 
> "Level 1 effort is 1-6 hours of development, plus testing.  Level 2 effort
> is 6-20 hours of development, and/or external purchase of tools. S=Standard,
> O=Optional, NA=Not Available"
> 
> This implies to me that items marked as S (standard) will take less than 1
> hour of development effort.
> 
> For a traditional PBX a "Standard feature" can generally be pretty easily
> configured in half an hour or so. As we know that is not the case for
> Asterisk and this therefore seems somewhat disingenuous.
> 
> I see the need and value of a list like this - it is really helpful. However
> in fairness to anyone evaluating Asterisk from the perspective of someone
> who is familiar with a traditional PBX, should one not add a note explaining
> that ...
> 
> "Standard features are likely to take several hours to configure and may
> well only work with certain hardware / software combinations. Concise
> documentation to enable you to rapidly provision many of the features with
> particular hardware is not available."
> 
> I would prefer that potential users are given a balanced and realistic
> expectation of what asterisk offers today on a like-for-like basis and to do
> that there needs to be a clear disclaimer/explanation such as that shown
> above.
> 
> 
> john
> 
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: asterisk-users-admin at lists.digium.com
> [mailto:asterisk-users-admin at lists.digium.com]On Behalf Of John Todd
> Sent: 06 January 2004 14:17
> To: asterisk-users at lists.digium.com
> Subject: [Asterisk-Users] Asterisk feature list: spreadsheet
> 
> 
> http://www.loligo.com/asterisk/misc/Presentations/Asterisk-features-20040106
> .xls
> 
> I had been asked a while ago to put together a short Excel
> spreadsheet listing many of the "common" features of Asterisk as
> compared to a typical PBX.  Many PBX vendors supply an exhaustive
> list of their features, and I figured I'd take as many of the unique
> features as others had offered, and put them together in a big list,
> and then also include some of the features that are unique to
> Asterisk.
> 
> I think this list will be of some use to persons evaluating Asterisk
> against their existing PBX platform, or other vendors of new VoIP
> systems.  Note that I took some liberties with the "standard feature"
> syntax: often, things that seemed _very_ easy for me to do with
> Asterisk's scripting features I listed as "S"tandard, even though it
> would require a few minutes of work.  Other features which seemed to
> be a little more complex, or which would require some web
> programming, I listed with estimates of how much time it would take
> to build them.  I assumed use of Cisco 7960 phones, so some of the
> features which are really deskset options I listed as "S"tandard if I
> were to use 7960 devices.  Caveat emptor for other desksets.
> 
> This is not truly a "comparison", since there are no other columns in
> the spreadsheet.  However, it's good fodder for you to whack your
> VoIP or PBX vendor on the nose with, since they typically will not be
> able to match the feature list.
> 
> Olle: feel free to add to the Wiki, since you asked for this type of list.
> Anyone else: feel free to send me updates in cut/pasteable Excel form
> if you have things you'd like to add to the list.
> 
> JT
> 
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> 
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-- 
Steven Critchfield  <critch at basesys.com>