[Asterisk-biz] Enterprise market

[Patrick]

On Fri, 2005-01-14 at 09:28 +0100, Olivier Krief wrote:
> Hello,
>  
> As a new reader of this mailing list, I feel that Asterisk is mostly
> used by IP Telephony Service Providers to serve consumer or business
> markets.
>  
> Do you have proven and successfully experience using Asterisk as an
> Entreprise PBX ?
> What are the main strengths and weaknesses of this software compared
> to commercial ones (from Alcatel, Nortel, Cisco) ?

Welcome Olivier. Whatever you are going to do give Asterisk a shot. It
is definitely worth the try if only to have a cool PBX at home. Let me
throw in my ideas:

Advantages:
* way cheaper than Alcatel, Nortel, Cisco
* way more flexible
* way more features. It can do pretty much anything you want it to do.
  If it doesn't then post a bounty or hire someone from the community to
  code it for you (releasing it back to the community is most
  appreciated)
* way more scalable
* very stable (try keeping Cisco's NT4 box..er..CallManager in the air
  for a decent time (ching, reboot!)
* service contracts/support readily available
* runs on common of the shelf (quality) hardware (COTS)
* interface cards available from different sources
* compatible with many phones
* ready-made end-user solutions available
* dedicated, enthousiastic community willing to help
* from what I can see Digium is 120% committed to evolve Asterisk into
  a major disruptive technology that customers will benefit from. How
  many commercial solutions do you know where the lead developer commits
  code to cvs from a plane: http://www.sineapps.com/news.php?rssid=456

Downside:
* learning curve - negated by the availability of skilled consultants
  who will deliver anything you want
* feature difference between the stable 1.0.3/1.0.4 release and HEAD
  is significant. Imho Asterisk could use a bit more "release often"
* it's Open Source and runs on Linux, FreeBSD etc. Your bosses may not
  like or understand that (no one ever got fired for buying Cisco,
  Microsoft, IBM etc.). It's all in the way you present it...

If you have any more questions also join #asterisk on irc.freenode.net. 

Regards,
Patrick