[asterisk-users] Your "favorite" Asterisk application.

[arkda]

I recently went through the same thing. My company was paying huge amounts
of money for voice PRIs at several locations, ongoing PBX support to a third
party, and huge amounts of money for a teleconference bridge to yet another
third party. I was bored one weekend so I implemented Asterisk. Before I
knew it, it had usurped my companies telecon bridge provider and I was
rolling it out across the enterprise.

Thus far we're looking at a 75% cost savings, not to mention a unified
telephony solution (four digit dialing throughout the company, IVRs,
Asterisk to Exchange Unified Messaging, etc.). I haven't even finalized all
the applications yet and it already has so many more applications and
expanded functionality over our old phone system it's amazing.

In my mind, it's this simple: if you go with a proprietary solution, you're
relying on a 'black box' solution. That means if something goes wrong,
breaks, or needs a change rapidly, you're totally dependent on the vendor.
In critical environments, this is a no-no. It's amazing how many people
simply ignore their phone and take it for granted, but if it goes down it's
an emergency of epic proportions. Recapturing telephony as a critical
business service that's provided as any other data service is important for
just about any environment in my mind.

My advice would be to simply stand it up and demo it. My company is
notoriously Microsoft centric, but when they actually see/hear Asterisk,
it's hard to ignore the value.

On Jan 23, 2008 11:57 PM, Ken D'Ambrosio <ken at jots.org> wrote:

> Hi, all.  I've done some Asterisk recelling, but recently got roped into a
> Sr. SysAdmin position.  Our PBX is c. 1823, and -- well, as pretty much
> all circuit-based systems do, it sucks.  It sucks to administer, moves
> suck... you know the drill.  So, I'd love change to an Asterisk system.
> My boss, who loves to spend money for no particular reason, wants to go
> proprietary, though.  So I'm going to have to try to sell him.  I figured
> one place to start would be some of the really cool applications that
> Asterisk has that -- generally, at least -- don't require licensing.  Some
> of my favorites are follow-me, meetme, voicemail-to-e-mail and
> fax-to-e-mail.  What are some of your favorite features/applications, be
> ith native or third-party?
>
> Thanks,
>
> -Ken
>
>
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