[Asterisk-Users] Seeking Beta testers for enterprise mystery service

[John Todd]

A company where I work is building an enterprise-grade infrastructure 
system which enhances the usefulness of VoIP systems on the public 
Internet.  We're looking for a few enterprises which are running 
Asterisk who would be interested in being Beta customers for our 
pre-rollout testing.  In exchange for being a Beta customer, you 
would be entitled to free service through December 2005.

You profile should be something like this:

Mandatory:
   1) Have more than 20 users at your largest location (the more, the better)
   2) Use Asterisk and have a good understanding of the system

Strongly Preferred:
   3) Regularly communicate using PSTN with at least one other firm 
that has an Asterisk, Cisco, Avaya or SER VoIP system in place.

Being a member of the Beta has very little risk. The service is 
transparent to end-users. And, it will not change the way your system 
works in any significant way, and seamless transition to PSTN used as 
backup.  We will include very extensive (though fairly small) 
configuration file examples from which you can develop the methods 
and dialplan necessary.  There are no patches required to Asterisk if 
you are running STABLE or CVS-HEAD.

If you have an interest, please send a reply to jtodd at loligo.com for 
addition to our list.  We may not take everyone that volunteers, but 
we'll read every submission and consider it in a round-table here.

Information we need:

   Company Name
   Company Address
   Industry Type
   Your name
   Your email address
   Your telephone number
   How many end station users are there on your local Asterisk system
   How many end station users are there in your organization in total
   What other VoIP equipment do you own or operate
   How many other companies do your users regularly communicate with 
who also run SIP VoIP system (or even better, Asterisk)

--------------------------
FAQ

1) What is this system, exactly?
   I can't go into too many specifics.  The product is still at the 
stage of testing, and past experience has shown that public release 
of details immediately puts the product into the public spotlight. 
We're not yet ready for the wide-scale community to know what's 
behind the curtain, so an NDA is required before detailed 
functionality is provided.

2) Who is it for?
   It's for any large-to-medium enterprise, ITSP, or non-profit (.edu, 
NGO's, etc.) organization that has a large volume of calls and is 
willing to experiment with new methods to make their VoIP (SIP) 
platform more functional, secure, and cost-effective.

3) How much will it cost?
    It's still too early to be asking that question.  ;-)  We expect 
versions of the system to be affordable by any enterprise that is 
implementing an iPBX-type platform, and there is almost certainly 
going to be a free featureset that is generally available.

4) Why Asterisk?
   Asterisk represents a very interesting community because:

   a) Asterisk users tend to be more knowledgeable about VoIP 
protocols and operations than users of vendor-specific platforms, 
since they (by definition) are self-supporting.

   b) Asterisk configurations lend themselves to self-documenting and 
small configurations, so implementation is rapid (we've tested with 
most of the major iPBX platforms, and they work too, but require a 
lot more hand-holding or expertise to configure.)

   c) Asterisk administrators tend to be more fearless when trying new 
technologies, partly because of their self-supporting nature (nothing 
is a mystery in open source) and also because of the community 
"personality" in general.

   d) Asterisk administrators tend to have experience giving 
well-documented feedback, which is our reason for the test.

5) What Avaya, Cisco and other platforms are supported?

   a) Avaya Converged Communications Server 3.x
   b) Cisco Call Manager 4.1.x, IOS Gateway
   c) SIP Express Router (SER) Version 0.8.11 or later


[I submitted this to -biz a while ago, but the response rate was very 
slim.  I've determined that this is within the -users "charter", 
since while this is a commercial effort, the service being offered is 
free and will potentially be useful to many of the people on the 
list.  While the beta period is in effect, there will be a limited 
subscription capability, but there currently is the intention to open 
this up to all interested parties after the product has been 
thoroughly tested.]