[asterisk-users] A Suggestion To Asterisk Appliance Developers

[Michael Graves]

On Fri, 22 Aug 2008 13:23:09 +0200, Johansson Olle E wrote:

>21 aug 2008 kl. 16.47 skrev <mgraves at mstvp.com> <mgraves at mstvp.com>:
>
>> Yesterday I blogged a post about some ideas that I think will help
>> Asterisk appliances further penetrate SMB/SOHO sites in ways that are
>> not presently being addressed.
>
>I would prefer if you mailed the content too. After all this is a  
>mailing list. Clicking on the link
>just to see what the topic is is something that most readers won't do.  
>And it doesn't benefit the
>archives either. YOu can add a link, but just saying "Hey, I blogged  
>something interesting"
>without saying anything about the topic is not very helpful.
>
>Just some friendly advice if you really want a discussion. Of course,  
>I clicked, read and commented ;-)

My appologies. I'm mindful of not posting inappropriately to mailing
lists. Many thanks to those who read to, and the few who saw fit to
comment.

My premise is very simple. Any Asterisk Appliance in a small business
stands a good change of being core infrastructure. If it has hooks to
extend its reach easily into aspects of the business just beyond the
basic telephony/UC sphere then it may be dramatically more valuable to
the end user.

In my particular case I have some nice Polycom and Aastra desk phones.
I'd like to leverage the XHTML browsers in those phones to serve some
utility functions, like opening an electric door release, electric
gate, etc. I don't see why this sort of thing needs to be as difficult
as it is presently.

It seems that at the moment such matters are wholly DIY, or at best
left to a consultant. This takes them out of the sphere of possibility
of a large number of smaller installations, and therefore reduces the
potential utility of the PBX. That seems a waste.

The appliance approach is supposed to make things easier for end user
sites. I think that we should take a broad view of that, and not focus
solely on the telephony aspect. Consider the device a possible solution
to a variety of business needs. Of course, there are limits. I'd never
suggest a production Asterisk box be used as a file server beyond
provisioning phones.

Michael

Michael
--
Michael Graves
mgraves<at>mstvp.com
http://blog.mgraves.org
o713-861-4005
c713-201-1262
sip:mjgraves at pixelpower.onsip.com
skype mjgraves