[asterisk-biz] RE: Bottom end of the market for an Asterisk PBX ?

Wed Jul 5 05:47:50 MST 2006

Bottom End of the market is as always one of two basic strategies:

1. Keep the capital costs low and minimising the time burden to be able to 
produce the necessary volumes, 'or'

2. Find those customers with niche requirements or willing to pay for 
quality.

What is doubtless becoming popular is hosted solutions and with three-four 
users and a DSL line you are away. Interestingly from our experience the 
market seems to support 10 USD - 50 USD per month, per user.

With a ratio of 1:7 you can typically support 800+ users on the same server 
for under 4000 USD investment (or 5 USD per customer for the hardware).

Of course, if you are using well designed software this should take you a 
few minutes to set up each IPPBX, the trunk settings for the service 
provider should be simple click and drop and the phones will auto-configure 
when the customer attaches them to their network. This allows you to 
concentrate on more sales.

As previous writers mention, it is the handsets that can inflict most 
damage. There are however now good handsets available for 90 USD if you shop 
around.

For onsite installations, outlay cost is going to go up. As always, the 
customer must feel reassured that what they are buying they will be able to 
use now and in the future. Vanilla Asterisk cannot achieve this. Again the 
software interface needs to be simple enough to reassure the customer of 
this. If you achieve this you are less into a price war. It is also worth 
looking at purpose built hardware for 16 users and under. If it looks like 
an purpose built appliance you will again have a lot easier job selling the 
solution.

For niche customers be sure the Interface you use is able to handle the many 
permutations the more niche customers may require.

(of course there is a plug here and you may wish to look at 
www.bicomsystems.com where we provide complete turn-key solutions, software 
and hardware appliance that work with Asterisk)

Steve {at] bicomsystems [dot} com

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Curt Shaffer" <cshaffer at gmail.com>
To: "'Commercial and Business-Oriented Asterisk Discussion'" 
<asterisk-biz at lists.digium.com>
Sent: Tuesday, July 04, 2006 12:50 PM
Subject: RE: [asterisk-biz] RE: Bottom end of the market for an Asterisk PBX 
?

>I would have to agree here as well. Just because you can install * on a 
>good
> cheap system does not mean that you want to. I really think if Asterisk is
> going to be a competitor in the VoIP market we really need to make sure it
> shines. We can not just be "throwing" together a system that will get the
> job done. We need to plan these installs, give good quality phones and
> provide redundancy if possible. When was the last time the company's
> POTS/PRI lines went down? When they pick up the phone they expect, and
> rightfully so, for it to work. I all too often hear people getting by with
> just the essentials and I would bet that there are a lot of unhappy
> customers out there with it. I know of a few personally where the company
> now has a bad taste in their mouth about VoIP because some "Asterisk Guru"
> came in and saved them thousands on their phone system. What they were 
> left
> with was choppy quality because of lack of QoS and horrible echo. And IP
> termination, which was supposed to save them money, was sub par and down a
> lot. Lack of needed configuration and bad choice of providers? Probaby, 
> but
> they ditched the system and dubbed VoIP as a technology that is not ready
> for prime time. This really gets me going....arg!
>
>>From what I have seen and been selling is features. Even to small
> businesses. Yes you will get a system that is a little cheaper than Avaya,
> Cisco or 3Com, although this is getting not to be the case with items such
> as Avaya's new phone that acts like a small PBX. Yes you MAY be able to 
> save
> some money on long distance with LCR. But, this IVR will allow you to 
> field
> phone calls via the phone system and provide customers with valuable
> information without a person spending time on the phone with them. This 
> find
> me follow me will make sure someone can always reach you. This 
> conferencing
> will save you on expensive bridges and hosted solutions. This XML app on
> your phone will allow your employees to log into your time card app. This
> system will integrate your voicemail and email into the same inbox. This 
> is
> all about convergence! Anyone can beat the cost of a traditional PBX these
> days, yes even Cisco with their new Call Manager Express! You need to make
> the customer feel, and you won't be lying, that they need a full system 
> and
> to invest in this. Show them the real money savings! Even a high end
> Asterisk system is cheaper then most of the others.  I'll get off my soap
> box for now. I just hate when people make probably the least important
> things about Asterisk the most important and vis a vis.
>
> Someone mentioned a model like hosting. I think if your customers are 
> really
> concerned about pricing of the system, despite your good sales tactics, 
> then
> this may be the best idea. At that point you can provide the redundancy 
> they
> need and maintain everything on your end. The only problem I see here is 
> you
> want to make absolutely sure that you are not the cause of failure. This
> would mean clustering, this would mean battery backup with generator back 
> up
> on that. This would be a reliable high speed connection for both you and
> them, think about what the phone company does to make sure you have dial
> tone even when the power is out! What about E911! You don't want to be
> responsible for a person dying(like happened near here in Maryland,USA). 
> But
> it could be done. I do believe with the architecture that should be built 
> on
> this model, it would take some time to get your return on investment but 
> if
> this is where most of your clients would like to be then it may be worth 
> it.
>
>
> Just my 2 cents.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: asterisk-biz-bounces at lists.digium.com
> [mailto:asterisk-biz-bounces at lists.digium.com] On Behalf Of C F
> Sent: Monday, July 03, 2006 11:34 PM
> To: Commercial and Business-Oriented Asterisk Discussion
> Subject: Re: [asterisk-biz] RE: Bottom end of the market for an Asterisk 
> PBX
> ?
>
> Yeah sure think again. There is no way that you can sell a system with
> 5 phones for $1500.00 just the phones (at around $160 per phone for a
> decent business phone) will cost you $800.00.
> You think ppl buy these things like they buy bread? think again.
>
> On 7/3/06, Nikolai Manek <manek at nikotel.com> wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> You want to charge $5000 for a small biz Asterisk server? Yes, you
>> definitely need to rethink your strategy. I would rather think that $1500
> is
>> the absolute maximum. For very small companies (5-15) you can put a
> Asterisk
>> on a Linksys router with Linux. I think there are some projects you can
>> Google up who are doing it. And then your customers will figure out very
>> quick that they can get your PBX for a couple hundred bucks including
>> service from someone. Why don't you set up some Astersik servers yourself
>> and offer hosted Asterisk? This way you can charge a monthly fee, your
>> customers don't have the headache of running their own server and you 
>> will
>> make over time your $5000 without overcharging people (which is IMHO not
> the
>> way to do business). You might want to google around and see what other
>> people are charging. But my educated guess would be that a small business
> is
>> very much willing to pay let's say $20 per seat per month and have their
>> service hosted with you. On top you are selling the minutes at approx. 
>> 55%
>> margin in the UK for international calls and probably 70% for domestic
>> calls. Then you can make money and your customers are very happy too. You
>> can bill the service with our new Asterisk billing solution (it's free)
>> (www.remwave.com) which will be released by the end of the week or any
> other
>> billing platform. I am also thinking that a hosted solution is better for
>> your business bottom line since it will enable you to have a consistent
>> revenue stream.
>>
>> Best
>>
>> Nikolai Manek
>> http://www.remwave.com
>>
>>
>> On 7/3/06 6:30 PM, "asterisk-biz-request at lists.digium.com"
>> <asterisk-biz-request at lists.digium.com> wrote:
>>
>> > Bottom end of the market for an Asterisk PBX ?
>>
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