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.
<br><br>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.
<br><br>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.
<br><br>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.<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Jan 23, 2008 11:57 PM, Ken D'Ambrosio <
<a href="mailto:ken@jots.org">ken@jots.org</a>> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">Hi, all. I've done some Asterisk recelling, but recently got roped into a
<br>Sr. SysAdmin position. Our PBX is c. 1823, and -- well, as pretty much<br>all circuit-based systems do, it sucks. It sucks to administer, moves<br>suck... you know the drill. So, I'd love change to an Asterisk system.
<br>My boss, who loves to spend money for no particular reason, wants to go<br>proprietary, though. So I'm going to have to try to sell him. I figured<br>one place to start would be some of the really cool applications that
<br>Asterisk has that -- generally, at least -- don't require licensing. Some<br>of my favorites are follow-me, meetme, voicemail-to-e-mail and<br>fax-to-e-mail. What are some of your favorite features/applications, be
<br>ith native or third-party?<br><br>Thanks,<br><br>-Ken<br><br><br>--<br>This message has been scanned for viruses and<br>dangerous content by MailScanner, and is<br>believed to be clean.<br><br><br>_______________________________________________
<br>-- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by <a href="http://www.api-digital.com" target="_blank">http://www.api-digital.com</a> --<br><br>asterisk-users mailing list<br>To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit:<br> <a href="http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users" target="_blank">
http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users</a><br></blockquote></div><br>