[asterisk-biz] case study on switching to Asterisk

[Steve Totaro]

For several varying quotes, one could go to www.buyerzone.com
<http://www.buyerzone.com/>  and put in exactly what you specified.  You
will get several vendors proposing different systems, prices, and most
importantly, service contracts.  It does cost each vendor about $25
dollars to buy your "lead" so be aware that you are costing them money
by doing this.  Whether or not that is ethical, is your decision.  I am
just pointing out that "one could do it".  Make sure to include that you
need a conference bridge that can handle unlimited callers, also
unlimited voicemail ports, support SIP, and also consider scaling.  That
should freak them out.

 

Does "whatever" company have people on staff that know Linux and have
time to learn and support Asterisk?  What is the cost of taking them
from what they usually would be doing to work on the Asterisk system?

 

I would suggest going with SIP phones and a four port FXO board.  You
could run both systems side by side until you are ready to cut over and
then just switch your four POTs lines.  

 

Most proprietary systems use digital sets so you cannot use a mutiport
FXS board.  I have used proprietary handset gateways such as Citel and
my person experience was very very poor.  

 

How much ROI is going to depend on increased worker productivity which
is fairly hard to figure out and also ongoing average costs of MACs
(cost of Moves Adds Changes) as well as support contracts.  

 

Thanks,
Steve Totaro
http://www.asteriskhelpdesk.com
KB3OPB
  

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From: asterisk-biz-bounces at lists.digium.com
[mailto:asterisk-biz-bounces at lists.digium.com] On Behalf Of Byron Pile
Sent: Tuesday, March 20, 2007 5:28 PM
To: asterisk-biz at lists.digium.com
Subject: [asterisk-biz] case study on switching to Asterisk

 

I thought the biz list was most appropriate for this. Hope I'm not
wrong!

I'm trying to write a term paper on adopting an open source solution
over a commercial solution and comparing the cost. Specifically if a
legacy system is in use already,  when will the initial investment of
hardware for an asterisk based system  pay off against the licensing
fees of a proprietary system. After reading a good chunk of the free
Asterisk book "Asterisk:The Future of Telephony" I think that Asterisk
is an excellent topic for the paper. 

I'm new to telephony stuff so bear with me if my questions are a bit
dumb, I've tried to do quite a bit of research and reading before
posting to the mail lists.  So my idea was to use the fake company
"whatever" and they have 15 telephones and are currently using a
Norstar ICS with 4 incoming lines and 15 internal lines and I would like
to switch this over to an asterisk based system.

The reason for choosing the Norstar as this is a turnkey solution
provided by a large local telecom so I will be able to get some pricing
information for them fairly easily and I think it does what a 15
telephone small office might need...I'm open to a better suggestion if
the Norstar is a poor choice.

My quick questions are...is it possible that the handsets being used
with a Norstar could be converted and used with the Asterisk system? (a
bit of asset recovery)

A system consisting of a suitable linux server running Asterisk and a
Digium TDM2441B PCI Card 16FXS / 4FXO  would be a suitable replacement
and could deliver the same performance/functions as the Norstar system?

I'm going to try and be as thorough as possible in assessing the costs
in switching to this system. The most obvious being some new hardware,
but also, downtime, training, support costs, contract penalties (if
there are any) etc....But this is a term paper and a highly hypothetical
situation. And I know my questions are a bit general, but the paper will
probably be kept quite general. I hope I can learn more about this cool
app!

Thanks!

 

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