[asterisk-biz] Suggestion for an Asterisk Product/Service Database

[Gmail - PC]

Several interesting thoughts in your comments:

First unlike the proprietary  IP-PBX vendors, most of the companies doing
Asterisk development are smaller. That's both a blessing and a curse.
Blessing, because they can be as innovative as they want, and the platform
allows - which is pretty innovative. And a curse because they are hampered
by budgets that make them less effective at sales/marketing and promotion.

Where the proprietary vendors have specialized sales/marketing and promotion
teams, have mapped customers into segments each with tuned product stories
(and possibly feature sets) most of us haven't got the resources to do that.

It behoves us to turn our disadvantages (size, regional focus etc) into
strengths. That's playing to the diversity of the product available in the
community and  potentially identifying partnerships to build strengths in
specific areas etc. That where a product and service database comes in
handy - by making it easy for us to find products and services (basted on
Asterisk) that mean we win another Asterisk customer because of innovation
and feature richness - not cost.

And you're 100% correct - Digium shouldn't direct product development - but
it helps them and us if it's easy to know what's available. Sure you could
use Google - but I'd hope that we can share stuff before it's released, or
know the developer because we've commented on similar threads. That makes it
easier to take someone's product and recommend (as an adjunct to our own of
course) to a customer.

Peter




-----Original Message-----
From: asterisk-biz-bounces at lists.digium.com
[mailto:asterisk-biz-bounces at lists.digium.com]On Behalf Of C. Savinovich
Sent: Wednesday, December 06, 2006 7:59 PM
To: Commercial and Business-Oriented Asterisk Discussion
Subject: Re: [asterisk-biz] Suggestion for an Asterisk Product/ Service
Database



   It is the market that creates the products and services, and it is
the market that eventually defines the outcome of a technology.
Uniquivocally, the best choice is always taken.  I Don't think Digium,
as good a company as it may be, should bear any responsibilities on
product direction.  What if someone in this forum has better ideas?

   What we have is a problem with forum etiquette.  We don't respect
each other.  Talking about our new products and services is like
throwing it to the lions.  Every product announced/discussed that is
incubated by forum members is critized sometimes for reasons so minimal
as the mail server of the poster (well, gmail/hotmail/yahoo addressess
do look terrible, but you get my point :) ).  The only posts that cause
possitive reactions are when someone asks for a consultant or a
provider.  Sometimes I wonder if it is that some people hate to see
others come out with products that compete with theirs.

CS