[asterisk-users] Cisco vs Asterisk

[J. Oquendo]

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Comments inline

Al lists wrote:
| I agree, No manager gets fired even if a Cisco Call Manager goes south.
| that's not the case with Asterisk.
| With limited experience that i have with both, i hit more bugs using
| Asterisk than a CCM, but this is not relevant to your final answer.

I use both on a managed service provider level and I will say the
following, CCM has more issues nowadays then Asterisk did pre 1.4 and to
be honest, it all depends on your implementations of Asterisk as does
CCM. There are a lot of factors to weigh in here on which of the two is
the cheaper solution, as for the *best* solution, here is a hint... The
best solution is the one that works for you.

| If you can afford CCM, and you can live with less flexibility and
| features, i would choose Cisco.

Flexibility features... Flexibility features are pre-defined in CCM
whereas Asterisk, you build them on your own. Each business and usage of
any of the two PBX's are going to differ across the board so its an
apples and oranges question. I know from fact depending on who you are,
you can get Cisco to bounce on features if your mouth and wallet are big
enough and you know who to talk to.

| If you prefer to have cheaper solution and more features and
| flexibility, Asterisk is good.

Dual edged sword here. You can craft some pretty cool stuff with both
PBX's, with Asterisk obviously being open source allows for this, with
CCM you don't necessarily have to depend on Cisco dragging their feet,
if you're competent enough to do something you will do it on ANY PBX.
Just takes some ingenuity.

| With Cisco, everything is cisco, handsets are designed for Cisco, it
| connects to Exchange much more in depth than even microsoft response
point.
| unlike Asterisk, unfortunately exchange integration is not something you
| may get in close future and that can be a deal breaker for some
| companies, but you dont pay per seat license.
| and so on.
|

One has to understand business in general to understand why companies
with even the geekiest in house tech shops STILL would go with CCM over
Asterisk and this was answered previously so here is my two cents on this...

Company A is a financial powerhouse, they have 30k users spread over 10
offices around the world. Their earnings were 500,000,000.00 a year or
roughly $951.29 every minute. In choosing their PBX they took into
account the cost of the phones, support, business continuity, etc. and
so the story goes...

Now ask yourself in all honesty here... In choosing Cisco, I know for a
fact I can call up Cisco's TAC because I'm paying for it, versus -
hoping my geeky staff can find a fix, wait, let me chime in for
Digium's... Digium guys are great, I've dealt with them in all sorts of
capacity ranging from idle banter with Mark Spencer from time to time.
Can I be certain for my money (where downtime = 951.29 per minute) that
I will be 1) able to have a replacement shipped right now by say a
partner with Digium. If I needed someone ON SITE right now, will Digium
take the necessary steps to accomplish this. Be honest about this
answer, if your tail is on the line as an engineer which will you feel
more secure in choosing.

Business is nothing more then business and managers - even the geekiest
ones - have to place personal preferences aside when it comes to
situations like this (CCM vs. Asterisk). Deploying IP PBX's which we
often manage here is something we do far too many times I'd care to
count in a year. Our choices are based on a lot of factors and we're
huge on Asterisk, but there have been plenty of times we chose not to
deal with issues surrounding Asterisk that have arisen previously. For
example, SoHo company, 10 - 50 users... Right now I would deploy PBXnSIP
over Asterisk whereas for say 100 - 300 I would choose Asterisk.
Anything over the 300 range, I'm leaning towards a vendor I know I can
ream over the phne if I need to.


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