asterisk users - Dec 2005 - Asterisk vs Nortel, Northstar and Mitel

Not sure I completely agree with all of these.
> Looking at it objectively, Asterisk has many benefits over 
> traditional PBX systems, yet you should be aware of some of 
> the limitations.
> 
> Benefits:
> 1. Open source / low-cost of ownership / operates on cheap PC 
> hardware. You get voicemail, IVR, hunt-groups etc. without 
> additional fees. Last I checked those are all expensive 
> add-ons in the Nortel world. There aren't expensive licenses 
> per user/handset either. 
You get what you pay for, yes it operates on cheap hardware, but if you
go that route you risk loss whatever system you run.  
> 2. Flexibility - you can configure Asterisk to handle calls 
> to a microscopic degree of precision. This is just not 
> possible with traditional PBX systems which are inherently 
> proprietary. Asterisk also makes it easier to present data to 
> callers from CRM, Billing, Order Tracking systems etc. using 
> text-to-speech, automated-speech recognition and/or DTMF recognition. 
I would have to agree mostly...  The Definity ECS we have also has a
level of detail and ability that is close to (and in some areas exceeds)
Asterisk.  Of course that's a 24000 handset capable system so I would
hope it does :)
> 3. Flexibility again - It really is much more flexible than 
> anything else!!
If you consider cost yes, otherwise you have to take a strong look at
some of the VoIP offerings out there.  I don't want to sound like a huge
Avaya fan, but their newer IP stuff is being designed from a whole new
perspective.
> 4. Supports multiple VoIP protocols - SIP, IAX, H323, (and skinny to a
> degree) and supports connection of a broad spectrum of third 
> party handsets
> - e.g. Cisco, Siemens, Sipura, etc. IAX is a proprietary 
> protocol for Asterisk but it has some benefits over SIP 
> (supposedly - my experience has been a little different) and 
> perhaps more importantly is gaining popularity among VoIP 
> service providers.
This I love about it.  I use Atcom AT320 phones here for home users with
cable/DSL and only have to have one firewall port open for them, its
beautiful in its simplicity.  Internally we use Polycoms running SIP and
Ciscos.... Plus a few ATAs and softphones running whatever the user
prefers!
> 1. Digium PSTN interface boards are not as cheap as they 
> could be and haven't been around long enough for us to have 
> meaningful data on how reliable they are.
I agree they havent been around that long, however I have never spent
more then $600 on a single port T1 card and that's both cheaper then the
ones for my traditional PBX and other manifacturers I have seen.  They
have to make a profit, and I cant see that sort of card with this small
a market compared to other devices being able to come down much more...
> 2. Complexity. Asterisk is powerful but it is complicated - 
> which is it You will need to spend a few weeks solidly 
> learning about Asterisk and playing with it in a test 
> environment before even thinking about trying to install it 
> in a production environment. Clearly your time has a cost to 
> your employer - thus this may be perceived as problem with 
> Asterisk. You can of course buy in the services of an 
> Asterisk consultant to help set things up - but ideally you 
> want to have someone on site with some degree of knowledge 
> about Asterisk's capabilities. If your business has basic 
> telephony requirements, doesn't need fancy features and wants 
> to minimize the need for on-site technical expertise to 
> support Asterisk, then a Mitel/Nortel solution MIGHT make 
> sense. IMHO - the present level of complexity/flexibility is 
> the biggest strength and weakness to Asterisk.
Agree 100%, however its not alone here....  I have an Avaya Definity, a
Nortel and a Vodavi switch in this company to run...  In the end the
Avaya is "slightly" easier to manage then Asterisk but not much, and
both are FAR easier then the other two.

That said, Asterisk is the glue that bonds them, in that each one is
connected to an Asterisk server with a T1 card and we have 4 digit
dialing throughout our enterprise because of it, over IAX trunks.
> 3. Asterisk is a work in progress. Yes it's pretty stables 
> and yes it's being used in very large production systems from 
> what one hears on this list. However it's a moving target 
> with new releases appearing frequently.
> On a positive note that's great if you want new features and 
> bug fixes - but it can also be a pain if you want a nice 
> stable, low-maintenance system.
"stable, low-maintenance"  I wish my Avaya Voicemail was....  The
Audix
LX is the worst thing they have ever made.  My Vodavi system is a piece
of crap that makes me want to go postal every time I try and get it to
do the simplest thing....  Last software "upgrade" they sent us
disabled
all of the Hold/Mute etc... Buttons on the handsets!

> 4. Cost savings aren't necessarily as great at they first 
> seem. You ideally want to have redundancy on your Asterisk 
> set up. To support 75 users you probably want to have a 
> couple of decent Dual-proc Pentium Xeon servers.
> Sure you can build these cheap - but if your company is like 
> mine you'll probably buy from Dell/HP etc. which can make 
> that a not-insignificant investment. Then you'll need 2x PSTN 
> interface cards for each machine.
> Depending on your PSTN lines there this can cost anywhere 
> from $800 - $3000 per card. So overall you can be talking 
> perhaps upwards of $10,000 for the hardware to support your 
> asterisk installation. Handsets would obviously cost more 
> though you have the flexibility to choose any pretty SIP/IAX 
> handsets you like.
Here is where Asterisk won out over the other vendors....  We use Dell
Poweredge servers for the Asterisk machines, not cheap machines and very
reliable.  I built the entire system here, attached it to our Definity
and had a VoIP system running for HALF of the cost of the 1 single board
needed to enable these functions in the Definity (a Medpro board).  All
the Medpro would have gotten me is trunking on H323 too, if I wanted to
add more I would have had to get a media server and all manner of things
added just to serve handsets.  Our quote was over $30,000 for the whole
lot!  So far I have three sites connected with trunks over existing
links (one is actually a VPN over the Internet), redundant servers at
each location, a growing group of users at home and across the country
with IP Phones..... All for less then half of that.  Handsets from Atcom
are $60 when we buy them direct from China, heck the Polycoms bought are
usually cheaper then the handsets for our PBX systems.

As always its horses for courses on where the savings can be made.
Instead of an average of 5 intermeshed calls going over the public
networks and costing us upwards of 3 cents a minute, we have those calls
routed across IP now.  Users in Ohio can just pickup and dial a user in
Utah as though they were in the next cube.  3 of our developers work
entirely from home now and never come into the office (their previous
offices were not good work environments).  We have hired people across
the country and sent them phones, so now they too are part of the 4
digit dial.  Least cost routing is running out of our Canadian facility
so that calls to Canada from any other facility route OUT of our Toronto
switch saving us a packet.  

In my world I see no point in going pure IP, Asterisk has a long way to
go before it could be anything like my Definity in reliability and
stability etc... But it was a huge cost saver, opened a whole new world
of abilities for our employees and made us unite as one company.  To us
its been worth its weight in gold.

-Jonathan




> 
> ----
> Hope these observations help. 
> 
> N
> 
> 
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: asterisk-users-bounces@lists.digium.com
> [mailto:asterisk-users-bounces@lists.digium.com] On Behalf Of Dakota
> Sent: Tuesday, December 06, 2005 5:30 PM
> To: Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion
> Subject: [Asterisk-Users] Asterisk vs Nortel, Northstar and Mitel
> 
> How does Asterisk compare to Nortel, NorthStar and Mitel PBX systems?
> For a medium size company not growing past 75 extensions, 
> would you recommend Asterisk? 
> 
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> 
> 
> 
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The other thing I'll say about my PBX is that there is no comparison between
my Nortel i2004 and any  SIP phone I've seen.  Yes, the cost is slightly
more, but for an instrument that I interact with constantly - there is no
SIP device to compare.  I know there will be eventually, but not now!

-----Original Message-----
From: O'Connor, Jonathan [mailto:Jonathan.OConnor@inoveris.com] 
Sent: Friday, December 09, 2005 10:37 AM
To: Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion
Subject: RE: [Asterisk-Users] Asterisk vs Nortel, Northstar and Mitel

Not sure I completely agree with all of these.
> Looking at it objectively, Asterisk has many benefits over traditional 
> PBX systems, yet you should be aware of some of the limitations.
> 
> Benefits:
> 1. Open source / low-cost of ownership / operates on cheap PC 
> hardware. You get voicemail, IVR, hunt-groups etc. without additional 
> fees. Last I checked those are all expensive add-ons in the Nortel 
> world. There aren't expensive licenses per user/handset either.
You get what you pay for, yes it operates on cheap hardware, but if you go
that route you risk loss whatever system you run.  
> 2. Flexibility - you can configure Asterisk to handle calls to a 
> microscopic degree of precision. This is just not possible with 
> traditional PBX systems which are inherently proprietary. Asterisk 
> also makes it easier to present data to callers from CRM, Billing, 
> Order Tracking systems etc. using text-to-speech, automated-speech 
> recognition and/or DTMF recognition.
I would have to agree mostly...  The Definity ECS we have also has a level
of detail and ability that is close to (and in some areas exceeds) Asterisk.
Of course that's a 24000 handset capable system so I would hope it does :)
> 3. Flexibility again - It really is much more flexible than anything 
> else!!
If you consider cost yes, otherwise you have to take a strong look at some
of the VoIP offerings out there.  I don't want to sound like a huge Avaya
fan, but their newer IP stuff is being designed from a whole new
perspective.
> 4. Supports multiple VoIP protocols - SIP, IAX, H323, (and skinny to a
> degree) and supports connection of a broad spectrum of third party 
> handsets
> - e.g. Cisco, Siemens, Sipura, etc. IAX is a proprietary protocol for 
> Asterisk but it has some benefits over SIP (supposedly - my experience 
> has been a little different) and perhaps more importantly is gaining 
> popularity among VoIP service providers.
This I love about it.  I use Atcom AT320 phones here for home users with
cable/DSL and only have to have one firewall port open for them, its
beautiful in its simplicity.  Internally we use Polycoms running SIP and
Ciscos.... Plus a few ATAs and softphones running whatever the user prefers!
> 1. Digium PSTN interface boards are not as cheap as they could be and 
> haven't been around long enough for us to have meaningful data on how 
> reliable they are.
I agree they havent been around that long, however I have never spent more
then $600 on a single port T1 card and that's both cheaper then the ones for
my traditional PBX and other manifacturers I have seen.  They have to make a
profit, and I cant see that sort of card with this small a market compared
to other devices being able to come down much more...
> 2. Complexity. Asterisk is powerful but it is complicated - which is 
> it You will need to spend a few weeks solidly learning about Asterisk 
> and playing with it in a test environment before even thinking about 
> trying to install it in a production environment. Clearly your time 
> has a cost to your employer - thus this may be perceived as problem 
> with Asterisk. You can of course buy in the services of an Asterisk 
> consultant to help set things up - but ideally you want to have 
> someone on site with some degree of knowledge about Asterisk's 
> capabilities. If your business has basic telephony requirements, 
> doesn't need fancy features and wants to minimize the need for on-site 
> technical expertise to support Asterisk, then a Mitel/Nortel solution 
> MIGHT make sense. IMHO - the present level of complexity/flexibility 
> is the biggest strength and weakness to Asterisk.
Agree 100%, however its not alone here....  I have an Avaya Definity, a
Nortel and a Vodavi switch in this company to run...  In the end the Avaya
is "slightly" easier to manage then Asterisk but not much, and both
are FAR
easier then the other two.

That said, Asterisk is the glue that bonds them, in that each one is
connected to an Asterisk server with a T1 card and we have 4 digit dialing
throughout our enterprise because of it, over IAX trunks.
> 3. Asterisk is a work in progress. Yes it's pretty stables and yes 
> it's being used in very large production systems from what one hears 
> on this list. However it's a moving target with new releases appearing 
> frequently.
> On a positive note that's great if you want new features and bug fixes 
> - but it can also be a pain if you want a nice stable, low-maintenance 
> system.
"stable, low-maintenance"  I wish my Avaya Voicemail was....  The
Audix LX
is the worst thing they have ever made.  My Vodavi system is a piece of crap
that makes me want to go postal every time I try and get it to do the
simplest thing....  Last software "upgrade" they sent us disabled all
of the
Hold/Mute etc... Buttons on the handsets!

> 4. Cost savings aren't necessarily as great at they first seem. You 
> ideally want to have redundancy on your Asterisk set up. To support 75 
> users you probably want to have a couple of decent Dual-proc Pentium 
> Xeon servers.
> Sure you can build these cheap - but if your company is like mine 
> you'll probably buy from Dell/HP etc. which can make that a 
> not-insignificant investment. Then you'll need 2x PSTN interface cards 
> for each machine.
> Depending on your PSTN lines there this can cost anywhere from $800 - 
> $3000 per card. So overall you can be talking perhaps upwards of 
> $10,000 for the hardware to support your asterisk installation. 
> Handsets would obviously cost more though you have the flexibility to 
> choose any pretty SIP/IAX handsets you like.
Here is where Asterisk won out over the other vendors....  We use Dell
Poweredge servers for the Asterisk machines, not cheap machines and very
reliable.  I built the entire system here, attached it to our Definity and
had a VoIP system running for HALF of the cost of the 1 single board needed
to enable these functions in the Definity (a Medpro board).  All the Medpro
would have gotten me is trunking on H323 too, if I wanted to add more I
would have had to get a media server and all manner of things added just to
serve handsets.  Our quote was over $30,000 for the whole lot!  So far I
have three sites connected with trunks over existing links (one is actually
a VPN over the Internet), redundant servers at each location, a growing
group of users at home and across the country with IP Phones..... All for
less then half of that.  Handsets from Atcom are $60 when we buy them direct
from China, heck the Polycoms bought are usually cheaper then the handsets
for our PBX systems.

As always its horses for courses on where the savings can be made.
Instead of an average of 5 intermeshed calls going over the public networks
and costing us upwards of 3 cents a minute, we have those calls routed
across IP now.  Users in Ohio can just pickup and dial a user in Utah as
though they were in the next cube.  3 of our developers work entirely from
home now and never come into the office (their previous offices were not
good work environments).  We have hired people across the country and sent
them phones, so now they too are part of the 4 digit dial.  Least cost
routing is running out of our Canadian facility so that calls to Canada from
any other facility route OUT of our Toronto switch saving us a packet.  

In my world I see no point in going pure IP, Asterisk has a long way to go
before it could be anything like my Definity in reliability and stability
etc... But it was a huge cost saver, opened a whole new world of abilities
for our employees and made us unite as one company.  To us its been worth
its weight in gold.

-Jonathan




> 
> ----
> Hope these observations help. 
> 
> N
> 
> 
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: asterisk-users-bounces@lists.digium.com
> [mailto:asterisk-users-bounces@lists.digium.com] On Behalf Of Dakota
> Sent: Tuesday, December 06, 2005 5:30 PM
> To: Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion
> Subject: [Asterisk-Users] Asterisk vs Nortel, Northstar and Mitel
> 
> How does Asterisk compare to Nortel, NorthStar and Mitel PBX systems?
> For a medium size company not growing past 75 extensions, would you 
> recommend Asterisk?
> 
> _______________________________________________
> --Bandwidth and Colocation provided by Easynews.com --
> 
> Asterisk-Users mailing list
> To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit:
>    http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
> 
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> --Bandwidth and Colocation provided by Easynews.com --
> 
> Asterisk-Users mailing list
> To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit:
>    http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
> 
_______________________________________________
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FWIW, we have replaced a Mitel 3300 with Asterisk - 170 users, mixed SIP/IAX
and cell (GSM gateway). The feature set that Asterisk brings to the table is
as good as or (more often) far better than the 3300 at a far, far cheaper
cost. I am doing stuff that my users quite frankly find amazing, and does
not have a direct equivalent in the Mitel world, for example, a single DID
for each user that is the extension number, the cell number, and the fax
number. I can project the extension locally, remotely through SIP/IAX or
remotely through the PSTN. Can't do that with a 3300. 

Because Asterisk exposes a standard API, and uses PSTN and VoIP standards,
the potential applications are only limited by your imagination. Some
vendors can do something along these lines, most can't. Some only dream of
the stuff that is possible with Asterisk. 

Personally, I find Asterisk way easier to configure than the 3300. Setting
up an extension in the 3300 with a DID is an exercise in frustration. Say
what you will about a monolithic extensions.conf, it's still light years
better than the 3300. Under Asterisk, I can have an extension running with a
DID in under 5 minutes. On the Mitel, takes us a couple of hours. 

As to reliability, scalability, and quality, here is the downside of
Asterisk and where the 3300 (and any other traditional PBX) wins, hands
down. It is *so* easy to create a lousy Asterisk install that just plain
won't work. It is exceedingly hard to create a stable and scalable Asterisk
install. Because there are so many variables involved that draw from many
disciplines (Linux admin, Linux coding, network admin, telephony,
general-purpose hardware hands on experience, I could go on) that you have
to have great IT judo in order to make it work the way you want. A 3300, by
contrast is dead simple: Take the system out of the box, rack it up, plug
everything in, start adding extensions (but there the frustration begins !
). If you can get Asterisk to behave in this manner in anything other than a
simple SOHO or test scenario then, sir, my hat's off to you. 

Support is also an interesting study in contrasts with either side has it's
strengths and weaknesses. An issue with a Mitel box, for example, is either
documented to death and dealt with in short order or is outright ignored
with Mitel protesting that the issue doesn't exist in the first place.
Issues with Asterisk, you are very much on your own and you better damn well
know what you are doing because formal docs are loosey-goosey and Asterisk
itself is such a moving target (although, kudos to ADP they have done an
amazing job so far). On the other hand, you post to this list and 9 times
out of 10 you will get a response, such was the case I had last week with a
vexing Dial() problem and I posted it to the list, and got an authoritative
answer that worked perfectly in 10 minutes, far faster than calling up Mitel
support and waiting in queue. This underscores the passion of the people who
use Asterisk. You will *not* find that same kind of passion when you call up
Mitel and talk to support (assuming you even get to talk to a person)

To mitigate Asterisk-specific issues in a roll out, it is best to go in baby
steps and test, test, test. The guy that does an Asterisk roll out along the
lines of: "OK the Asterisk box is up, today your are using your Meridian,
tomorrow you are using Asterisk" is either a genius or a fool. 


My 2c

-----Original Message-----
From: Dakota [mailto:dthurn@tstt.net.tt]
Sent: Tuesday, December 06, 2005 6:30 PM
To: Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion
Subject: [Asterisk-Users] Asterisk vs Nortel, Northstar and Mitel

How does Asterisk compare to Nortel, NorthStar and Mitel PBX systems?
For a medium size company not growing past 75 extensions, would you
recommend Asterisk?

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To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit:
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