Hello list. No intention to start a flamewar here but I would really like opinions from those who know both the Cisco and Asterisk system. I'm working for a company with 15 offices in 11 countries, offices are relatively small (3-20 people each) and most of them have a Cisco 1760 Router installed with Call manager express (CME) and 1-3 ISDN lines (2-6 simultaneous calls). We recently started implementing the Cisco CallManager 4 (CCM4) for centralized management of all the offices and the Unity server for voice and conferencing options. We've just finished moving the first office from the CME on the 1760 router to the CCM4 which runs on Windows 2000. Having setup a 110 phone asterisk system that after configuration works flawlessly I have my doubts though. The web interface to the Call Manager is a shame compared to the CLI interface to Cisco IOS devices, running it all on Windows 2000 seems to be the wrong way to go. The first night when we moved 10 phones into the system the CCM started whining over memory even though our hardware should support up to 2500 phones. Features and flexibility seems to be missing and since the company I'm working for is growing fast I worry about a vendor lock in. I am extremely happy with all other Cisco equipment we use, the Cisco 7940 phones but with this one product I feel that Cisco is heading down the wrong path. Minor changes made have caused us huge headaches which with help of an Cisco partner some still are unexplained. I feel that the configuration of the CCM in our situation is overly complicated and that asterisk contexts solve problems better and more elegantly than the CCMs Calling Search Space, Partitions, Route Groups and so on. In the IT department we've been discussing using an asterisk based solution instead. It's cheaper, configuration is not complicated when you know how to, and it's quite straight forward as well and asterisk seems to fit quite well with SIP trunks to our CME devices which would then continue to handle the PSTN traffic in each location. The final decision will be made by me. We have around 70 Cisco 7940 and 7960 phones in the company all around the world, converting them all to the SIP image is a huge task. Therefore I would be very grateful if the list could comment on the list we've made below and give some general opinions. Cisco Call Manager Pros: Redundancy Centralised phone config Good support Leading edge ( is it ? ) Cons: Windows based Expensive Hard to configure (in our environment) Takes time to solve problems. Asterisk Pros Flexibility Cheap Text based configuration Open source Many protocols Simple debugging (compared to CCM4) variety of softphone solutions license policy support Cons Central configuration is harder than in CCM Redundancy has to be scripted Still hearing that the SIP implementation is not fully complete (is this right). Some of the points above apply to our solution only, so there might be other perspectives to the problem. However I would be very grateful to get some comments, and even if somebody else has a similar setup with Asterisk and Cisco CME working together, or Global company with VOIP (we have 15 offices in 11 countries quite evenly distributed around the globe.) Hoping for a good, fair and interesting discussion. Regards, Maron
I threw out a hundred person Call Manager system for Asterisk. Not to start a flame war but Asterisk is orders of magnitude better than Call Manager. Give Cisco credit. They brilliantly marketed a weak telephone system to network managers who did not know much about telephony. Their routers and phones are expensive but high quality. Their phone system is just expensive. It's very self-serving to say so but I'll bet you could throw out all your Call Manager gear, replace it with Asterisk, and have a more robust and full-featured system for less than the incremental budget than finishing your Call Manager deployment would cost. We'll be happy to talk in depth off list. William Boehlke Signate, LLC www.signate.com -----Original Message----- From: asterisk-users-bounces@lists.digium.com [mailto:asterisk-users-bounces@lists.digium.com] On Behalf Of Asterisk Sent: Wednesday, January 12, 2005 9:37 AM To: asterisk-users@lists.digium.com Subject: [Asterisk-Users] Call Manager or Asterisk Hello list. No intention to start a flamewar here but I would really like opinions from those who know both the Cisco and Asterisk system. I'm working for a company with 15 offices in 11 countries, offices are relatively small (3-20 people each) and most of them have a Cisco 1760 Router installed with Call manager express (CME) and 1-3 ISDN lines (2-6 simultaneous calls). We recently started implementing the Cisco CallManager 4 (CCM4) for centralized management of all the offices and the Unity server for voice and conferencing options. We've just finished moving the first office from the CME on the 1760 router to the CCM4 which runs on Windows 2000. Having setup a 110 phone asterisk system that after configuration works flawlessly I have my doubts though. The web interface to the Call Manager is a shame compared to the CLI interface to Cisco IOS devices, running it all on Windows 2000 seems to be the wrong way to go. The first night when we moved 10 phones into the system the CCM started whining over memory even though our hardware should support up to 2500 phones. Features and flexibility seems to be missing and since the company I'm working for is growing fast I worry about a vendor lock in. I am extremely happy with all other Cisco equipment we use, the Cisco 7940 phones but with this one product I feel that Cisco is heading down the wrong path. Minor changes made have caused us huge headaches which with help of an Cisco partner some still are unexplained. I feel that the configuration of the CCM in our situation is overly complicated and that asterisk contexts solve problems better and more elegantly than the CCMs Calling Search Space, Partitions, Route Groups and so on. In the IT department we've been discussing using an asterisk based solution instead. It's cheaper, configuration is not complicated when you know how to, and it's quite straight forward as well and asterisk seems to fit quite well with SIP trunks to our CME devices which would then continue to handle the PSTN traffic in each location. The final decision will be made by me. We have around 70 Cisco 7940 and 7960 phones in the company all around the world, converting them all to the SIP image is a huge task. Therefore I would be very grateful if the list could comment on the list we've made below and give some general opinions. Cisco Call Manager Pros: Redundancy Centralised phone config Good support Leading edge ( is it ? ) Cons: Windows based Expensive Hard to configure (in our environment) Takes time to solve problems. Asterisk Pros Flexibility Cheap Text based configuration Open source Many protocols Simple debugging (compared to CCM4) variety of softphone solutions license policy support Cons Central configuration is harder than in CCM Redundancy has to be scripted Still hearing that the SIP implementation is not fully complete (is this right). Some of the points above apply to our solution only, so there might be other perspectives to the problem. However I would be very grateful to get some comments, and even if somebody else has a similar setup with Asterisk and Cisco CME working together, or Global company with VOIP (we have 15 offices in 11 countries quite evenly distributed around the globe.) Hoping for a good, fair and interesting discussion. Regards, Maron _______________________________________________ Asterisk-Users mailing list Asterisk-Users@lists.digium.com http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
We are a CCM4 shop similar to your (dozen offices, central management), and I play with * to be familiar with the options available. Your pros/cons are pretty accurate. A few points though- CCM5 will run on a unix-like platform. SIP support is initital and for trunking only. While the web management is not optimal, it does permit us to allow our helpdesk staff to perform moves/adds/changes with no fear that they'll screw up the critical gateway/dialplan configuration. I suspect that as RealTime matures this will change. Good support is relative. I've found excellent engineers and less than excellent. Troubleshooting is a major pain, as is the fact that the different components of the Cisco platform are on different development cycles. To get support for one new feature might mean upgrading half a dozen unrelated components, then chasing the bugs through half a dozen different support orginizations. So it comes down to what you company can afford and the experience of the staff assigned to support it. I can manage either, but the bulk of my coworkers could not manage * and I have much better things to do with my time to manage day to day phone operations. Before anyone takes this as an * flame, it is not. If I had the development skills, or could convince the powers to be to assign a couple web developers to me, I'd contribute the changes I think would help simplify day to day operations. Dan -----Original Message----- From: asterisk-users-bounces@lists.digium.com [mailto:asterisk-users-bounces@lists.digium.com] On Behalf Of Asterisk Sent: Wednesday, January 12, 2005 9:37 AM To: asterisk-users@lists.digium.com Subject: [Asterisk-Users] Call Manager or Asterisk Hello list. No intention to start a flamewar here but I would really like opinions from those who know both the Cisco and Asterisk system. I'm working for a company with 15 offices in 11 countries, offices are relatively small (3-20 people each) and most of them have a Cisco 1760 Router installed with Call manager express (CME) and 1-3 ISDN lines (2-6 simultaneous calls). Cisco Call Manager Pros: Redundancy Centralised phone config Good support Leading edge ( is it ? ) Cons: Windows based Expensive Hard to configure (in our environment) Takes time to solve problems. Asterisk Pros Flexibility Cheap Text based configuration Open source Many protocols Simple debugging (compared to CCM4) variety of softphone solutions license policy support Cons Central configuration is harder than in CCM Redundancy has to be scripted Still hearing that the SIP implementation is not fully complete (is this right). Some of the points above apply to our solution only, so there might be other perspectives to the problem. However I would be very grateful to get some comments, and even if somebody else has a similar setup with Asterisk and Cisco CME working together, or Global company with VOIP (we have 15 offices in 11 countries quite evenly distributed around the globe.) Hoping for a good, fair and interesting discussion. Regards, Maron _______________________________________________ Asterisk-Users mailing list Asterisk-Users@lists.digium.com http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users