[asterisk-biz] case study on switching to Asterisk

Tue Mar 20 17:03:14 MST 2007

I was going to assume that yes, there are Linux people on staff and that they could be taken away to set up and support asterisk. But because I was comparing it to a turnkey solution that most likely is including service as part of the contract, comparing it to a similar contract based asterisk setup makes more sense. However, I guess when starting this I was hoping to eliminate "license" fees from the open source solution, but if I'm using a small company, I think its more realistic to assume they don't have a support department ready to devote man hours to an asterisk system when they were using a turnkey solution before.Thanks for clarifying the handsets, I was considering using SIP phones in the case study, but thought it might be possible to "reuse" some existing equipment. This is also a technology upgrade in this case.I was going to assume that the workers were just as productive as before, but the ROI would come mostly from reduction in operating costs (hopefully). If they don't have any "linux people" on staff, this makes it harder to include some of the open source benefits like, fixing bugs, adding features and the other flexibility that Asterisk would provide over using the Norstar.Thanks for the response Steve, I have more research to do obviously!Subject: RE: [asterisk-biz] case study on switching to AsteriskDate: Tue, 20 Mar 2007 18:59:03 -0500From: stotaro at asteriskhelpdesk.comTo: asterisk-biz at lists.digium.com

For several varying quotes, one could go
to 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

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!

Live Search Maps – find all the local information you
need, right when you need it. Find
it!

_________________________________________________________________
i'm making a difference. Make every IM count for the cause of your choice. Join Now.
http://clk.atdmt.com/MSN/go/msnnkwme0080000001msn/direct/01/?href=http://im.live.com/messenger/im/home/?source=wlmailtagline
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.digium.com/pipermail/asterisk-biz/attachments/20070320/ea9d2c9b/attachment.htm