[asterisk-users] Softphone that supports central provisioning?

[Gordon Henderson]

On Sat, 21 Apr 2007, Philipp Kempgen wrote:

> Tim Panton wrote:
>> What's your objection to a softphone in java ?

> Java is slow and the interface is always ugly and doesn't fit
> into the window manager etc. you are used to. :-P I never understood
> why I would use Java to write software when I could use C(++) or
> when a script language would do.  The simple fact that people have
> 2 or 3 GHz doesn't mean that I have to burn them for nothing.
> The only point may be portability.

FWIW: I've been trialling the Mexuar Java phone over the past few days, 
and I feel that I have to say that what you've just written really doesn't 
apply. So what if you have to burn the cpu and need a 2GHz processor?

Here the the output from top on my desktop when it's running:

   PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND
  5211 gordon    15   0  272m  31m  14m S  5.3  4.2   0:03.59 java_vm

CPU details from /proc/cpuinfo:

   model name      : AMD Athlon(TM) XP 2200+
   cpu MHz         : 1800.231
   cache size      : 256 KB

So it's hardly a new processor, and 5% usage is nothing.

So Java is far from slow these days.

As for the interface - it's as ugly as you care to write a web-page round 
it. Mexuars own one looks "pretty good" to me, and it's 100% customisable. 
The workhorse is very cleverly hidden behind a standard web-page and 
javascript interface, so it's you who writes the interface and javascript 
shim to interface to the java applet, not the vendor (unless you pay them, 
I guess ;-)

You made the point of portability - a big plus for me. My desktop is 
Linux, but I work with people who have Mac and Win desktops. Having 
something that looks the same and acts the same over all platforms is a 
boon (principle of least surprise) Finally, Java is doing what it was 
always meant to do, and people are starting to understand this too.

(and I'm not personally a fan of Java either and I was skeptical when I 
saw this, but it does exactly what it says on the tin when used in this 
manner)

> Do I miss something?

I think you're missing a great opportunity.

And one other thing - you don't have to write anything other than some web 
page in html and javascript - Mexua have written the hard bits for you, 
and licensing costs are on-par with getting a custom idefisk or x-lite.

Remote provisioning of this in an office (or in home offices if you 
out-house your agents) can be trivially done by having the web server 
serve up different pages for each client. Something easy to do on IP 
address, or based on the agents login to the web system, you can customse 
the front-end, so no call buttons are visible, or no dial window. All the 
agent does is wait for the phone to ring and hit the answer button. (sucks 
to be an agent though ;-)

Gordon