[Asterisk-Users] Call Manager or Asterisk

[Asterisk]

Hello list.

  No intention to start a flamewar here but I would really like opinions 
from those who know both the Cisco and Asterisk system.  I'm working for 
a company with 15 offices in 11 countries, offices are relatively small 
(3-20 people each) and most of them have a Cisco 1760 Router installed 
with Call manager express (CME) and 1-3 ISDN lines (2-6 simultaneous calls).

  We recently started implementing the Cisco CallManager 4 (CCM4) for 
centralized management of all the offices and the Unity server for voice 
and conferencing options.  We've just finished moving the first office 
from the CME on the 1760 router to the CCM4 which runs on Windows 2000.

  Having setup a 110 phone asterisk system that after configuration works
  flawlessly I have my doubts though.  The web interface to the Call 
Manager is a shame compared to the CLI interface to Cisco IOS devices, 
running it all on Windows 2000 seems to be the wrong way to go. The 
first night when we moved 10 phones into the system the CCM started 
whining over memory even though our hardware should support up to 2500 
phones.  Features and flexibility seems to be missing and since the 
company I'm working for is growing fast I worry about a vendor lock in. 
  I am extremely happy with all other Cisco equipment we use, the Cisco 
7940 phones but with this one product I feel that Cisco is heading down 
the wrong path. Minor changes made have caused us huge headaches which 
with help of an Cisco partner some still are unexplained.  I feel that 
the configuration of the CCM in our situation is overly complicated and 
that asterisk contexts solve problems better and more elegantly than the 
CCMs Calling Search Space, Partitions, Route Groups and so on.

  In the IT department we've been discussing using an asterisk based 
solution instead. It's cheaper, configuration is not complicated when 
you know how to, and it's quite straight forward as well and asterisk 
seems to fit quite well with SIP trunks to our CME devices which would 
then continue to handle the PSTN traffic in each location.  The final 
decision will be made by me.

  We have around 70 Cisco 7940 and 7960 phones in the company all around 
the world, converting them all to the SIP image is a huge task. 
Therefore I would be very grateful if the list could comment on the list 
we've made below and give some general opinions.

   Cisco Call Manager
   Pros:
   Redundancy
   Centralised phone config
   Good support
   Leading edge ( is it ? )

   Cons:
   Windows based
   Expensive
   Hard to configure (in our environment)
   Takes time to solve problems.

   Asterisk
   Pros
   Flexibility
   Cheap
   Text based configuration
   Open source
   Many protocols
   Simple debugging (compared to CCM4)
   variety of softphone solutions
   license policy
   support

   Cons
   Central configuration is harder than in CCM
   Redundancy has to be scripted
   Still hearing that the SIP implementation is not fully complete (is 
this right).


   Some of the points above apply to our solution only, so there might be
   other perspectives to the problem.  However I would be very grateful 
to get some comments, and even if somebody else has a similar setup with 
Asterisk and Cisco CME working together, or Global company with VOIP (we 
have 15 offices in 11 countries quite evenly distributed around the globe.)

Hoping for a good, fair and interesting discussion.

Regards,

Maron