[asterisk-users] Asterisk concurrent calls count

[Tilghman Lesher]

On Saturday 17 May 2008 17:43:51 Steve Totaro wrote:
> On Sat, May 17, 2008 at 5:36 PM, Jay R. Ashworth <jra at baylink.com> wrote:
> > On Sat, May 17, 2008 at 08:51:04AM -0400, Steve Totaro wrote:
> >> It is about the money, like it or not.  You are going to an Avaya type
> >> licensing scheme, everything is charged per port.  The box is capable
> >> of doing more but you turn it off until you get more money.  It's like
> >> the Definity G3s I have worked with.  The box can do everything but
> >> until you pony up, it is not activated.
> >
> > Yeah, and if you cut a jumper on a VAX11/780, it went twice as fast.
> >
> > So *what*, Steve?  Are they not allowed to make money?
>
> Sure they are allowed to make money but don't lie and say it is not
> about the money, "It is about support".  Yeah supporting the company's
> cash flow.

If that were all it was about, then you could call sales and get an infinite
number of licenses for a particular machine.  Go ahead and try it.  Call them.
There is a hard upper limit on the number of licenses they will sell for a
single machine, because any more is not supportable.

They may say, "Let us call you back on that," because the next thing they're
going to do is consult with Engineering and Support and find out if that is
doable.  The maximum number of calls that you can buy for a single machine
is really about what is supportable (because if we sell more, and it doesn't
work, it's going to cost us in support time, on the phone, and possibly ending
up with a customer refund, because what (hypothetically) was sold was not
supportable).

Yes, the various tiers below that absolute limit is about money; it's about
charging based upon what we think it will cost us to support that number
of users, should something go wrong, and the customer needs to call in.  And
yes, there's a bit of profit margin in there.  I don't completely understand
the formula, and I don't pretend to.  However, to say that the maximum number
of supportable users on a platform is about making money is just completely
wrong.  The maximum number is about avoiding a situation where we would
lose money.

> I can express my opinion and I did.  Maybe Digium will take notice,
> maybe they won't.
>
> Maybe next they will charge $250 for "conference bridge" capabilities.
>  It's a joke to cripple things that can be enabled by flicking a
> switch.  Your system comes with eight ports of VM but for another $250
> we can give you 12......

I wasn't aware that you were a customer of either Switchvox or Business
Edition.  Last I checked, the open source version that you use is not
constrained in that way (and it isn't likely to be constrained in the future,
either).  The whole reason that Business Edition exists is because some
customers demand professional support for Asterisk, and paying for that
support costs money.  That's all.  Business Edition does not significantly
differ from the open source version -- the only reason we put a license
code on it is to ensure that when people call in for support, they have
essentially already prepaid for that support.

-- 
Tilghman