asterisk users - Jul 2005 - OT (kinda): Justification for adding Asteriskto the business plan

> 
> The fact that Asterisk is "soft" and you're trying to sell to
> an IT Company..
> 
Just to clarify, we make up the IT company and we'd be selling it to our
customers that may or may not be IT based.  The company does run VoIP but
does not use Asterisk (using VoIP to add additional local lines in different
area codes).

What I'm trying to accomplish is a convo/thread of why IT consultancies
should take on Asterisk in their normal support (or a value-add service).
When I look at VoIP, I see nothing different between setting up and
configuring perl scripts for AGI/* Manager interfaces (system admin
scripting) to plugging the BRI into a Digium card from the old T1 router.
Granted there are some differences in command configurations and might have
to label a wire or two "Voice" instead of "Data" but nothing
earth
shattering.

As for sales, it would be just adding new listings under "Telephones"
in the
yellow pages and adding a few words to brochures/web pages.

-Don

Greetings,

I would encourage you to consider this item VERY carefully as customers 
could get very irritated with Asterisk very quickly.  For some context, 
we just finished a 3 month rollout of Asterisk across 40 handsets and 
three remote locations.  While it works now, it was by far the worst 
project I've been a part of.

Even with excellent technical support (The Voip Connection) there simply 
are issues in the Asterisk world that customers are not ready for.  The 
old "lock-in" model of the telecom world was nasty and monopolistic
and
expensive, but by jove it just worked.  The PSTN is required by law to 
have 5 9's worth of uptime.  What communications technology can you 
point to that has that level of uptime?

If you do not have developers on staff that have; years of experience in 
the telecom world, years of experience with Linux, years of networking 
experience and months of SIP phone experience at their disposal than I 
would encourage you to not offer this service to your customers.  
Because as you've seen from this list ANYTHING and EVERYTHING can, and 
does, go wrong with this technology.

Now that being said, in 5 years, everyone will be doing this, but that 
is 5 years from now.

If I had been given any other choice, and I wasn't, I would have chucked 
Asterisk and paid 3x the price for a Semens/Nortel IP switch in a 
heartbeat.  It would have saved me hours of endless hassles, dozens of 
lost important phone calls, hours of downtime and weeks of nearly rapid 
frustration from my users.  Yes, it was that bad.

However, now that its here, and relatively stable, it works like no 
other telecom technology I've seen or worked near (I'm not that well 
versed on telecom though).

Just my $0.02.

RandyW

/dev/null wrote:
>>The fact that Asterisk is "soft" and you're trying to sell
to
>>an IT Company..
>>
>>    
>>
>
>Just to clarify, we make up the IT company and we'd be selling it to our
>customers that may or may not be IT based.  The company does run VoIP but
>does not use Asterisk (using VoIP to add additional local lines in different
>area codes).
>
>What I'm trying to accomplish is a convo/thread of why IT consultancies
>should take on Asterisk in their normal support (or a value-add service).
>When I look at VoIP, I see nothing different between setting up and
>configuring perl scripts for AGI/* Manager interfaces (system admin
>scripting) to plugging the BRI into a Digium card from the old T1 router.
>Granted there are some differences in command configurations and might have
>to label a wire or two "Voice" instead of "Data" but
nothing earth
>shattering.
>
>As for sales, it would be just adding new listings under
"Telephones" in the
>yellow pages and adding a few words to brochures/web pages.
>
>-Don
>
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>
>  
>

It's all about the testing before rollout.

The problem with the run of the mill IT guy (especially ones involved  
in web sites) they tend to think that testing something means you try  
a few calls and if it works it's all fine.

Testing isn;t beating into them in the same way it is in the telecom  
guys.

There are often unforeseen implications of changing the smallest  
little knob on the system.  Unless you are willing to really think  
about how to make the box fail and try the permutations and  
combinations the end user is always going to be unhappy.

At the end of the day for some incremental income you don;t want to  
take an otherwise happy customer and turn him into a nightmare in the  
search to add a little VOIP.

-bill

On 15-Jul-05, at 8:15 AM, /dev/null wrote:
>>
>> The fact that Asterisk is "soft" and you're trying to
sell to
>> an IT Company..
>>
>>
>
> Just to clarify, we make up the IT company and we'd be selling it  
> to our
> customers that may or may not be IT based.  The company does run  
> VoIP but
> does not use Asterisk (using VoIP to add additional local lines in  
> different
> area codes).
>
> What I'm trying to accomplish is a convo/thread of why IT  
> consultancies
> should take on Asterisk in their normal support (or a value-add  
> service).
> When I look at VoIP, I see nothing different between setting up and
> configuring perl scripts for AGI/* Manager interfaces (system admin
> scripting) to plugging the BRI into a Digium card from the old T1  
> router.
> Granted there are some differences in command configurations and  
> might have
> to label a wire or two "Voice" instead of "Data" but
nothing earth
> shattering.
>
> As for sales, it would be just adding new listings under  
> "Telephones" in the
> yellow pages and adding a few words to brochures/web pages.
>
> -Don
>
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> Asterisk-Users@lists.digium.com
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