<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Nov 6, 2008 at 8:29 AM, deva free <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:devafree@yahoo.com">devafree@yahoo.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
<div><div style="font-family: times new roman,new york,times,serif; font-size: 12pt;">Hello all<br><br>I am new here. I am currently doing freelance Asterisk work in Chennai, India.<br><br>I would be glad to hear from the experienced members of our list as to what they define as the best things about adoption of Asterisk instead of proprietary solutions.<br>
<br>I myself list (pitch to prospectives) on freedom from vendor lock-in, features, flexibility and of course cost.<br><br>Regards<br><br>devafree<br>(R.Mahadevan)<br></div><br>
</div><br></blockquote><div><br>I don't focus so much on upfront cost, if they are shopping, they will be aware. <br><br>Besides, sometimes the initial cost is MORE for an Asterisk system compared to a little Toshiba or whatever.<br>
<br>If you price yourself too low, you are just hurting yourself and will be out of business soon enough, which also hurts Open Source as a whole and Asterisk directly. <br><br>I pickup so many customers from guys that do data only stuff and stumble upon Asterisk, think they can make a few bucks on it, but do not understand the intricacies nor best practices of voice and/or VoIP, and they stop doing Asterisk after falling short on several installs, they stop offering Asterisk service, or the customer gets fed up with on going problems and are glad to pay top dollar for what is essentially the life blood of their company.<br>
<br>I focus on ROI, more productivity, lower cost of ownership overall. <br><br>PSSSS, Sometimes an 3com V3000 is a much better fit for a customer than Asterisk. Other customers may be better served with a different non-asterisk based system.<br>
</div></div><br>-- <br>Thanks,<br>Steve Totaro <br>+18887771888 (Toll Free)<br>+12409381212 (Cell)<br>+12024369784 (Skype)<br>