[Asterisk-Users] Distributed organizations - large scale public sector rollout

[Eivind Trondsen]

Hi List

I am working with a pilot project for a Norwegian regional government to
evaluate Asterisk for a large number of sites and users. The goal of the
project is to have a unified VoIP-system to replace the disorganized 
collection of legacy PBX in use today.

By "distributed organization" I mean an organization that consists of 
many, dispersed units, each with it's own existing telephony system, and 
with distinct number series.

The goals of a unified system are several:
- Lower traffic cost through a common backbone between sites and
   a common exit-point to the PSTN (either via IP or legacy lines).
- Lower admin cost through unified, centralized management.
- Added value through rollout of applications (voicemail, conferencing,
   IVR) that become globally available in the system.

My main concern is manageability. From what I have seen of the available
management tools there are none that address the needs of a distributed 
system. They all seems aimed at the SMB market, and don't leverage 
resources such as LDAP directories.

Does anyone have any experience with management tools for Asterisk in a 
similar scenario?

I am also very interrested in getting in touch with people working in 
similar projects. There is a large political element in rolling out Open 
Source telephony on such a scale, and having a network of similar 
projects could be of great value. I hope to be able to post to this list 
on our progress.

Best regards
--
Eivind Trondsen

Wingnut Information Systems
Norway