The bottom line is that you will save money or at the very least, over
the course of a year or two, break even. Considering some proposals I
did on NEC IPK systems several years ago, an eight port conference
bridge card was $5,000, another $5,000 for an eight port VoIP card MGCP,
$3,000 for a four port voicemail card, add some other feature and you
get the point. Also, support contracts were something to the tune of $4
per port per month, that includes all ports (concurrent voicemail access
+ phones + PSTN + conference bridges). So lets say that "whatever"
company has 4 FXO, 16 FXS, and 4 voicemail, that is a total of 24 ports
X $4 = $96/mo X 12mo = $1,152 and that only included very specific limits.
This is all free in Asterisk. You could purchase a Switchvox (or some
other turnkey) system pretty cheaply, have all of those costly add-on
features included, they offer support via SSH and over the phone, and
with IP, MACs are a breeze. A low level A+ tech can do it, unlike a
traditional system where a telephone guy has to come out with a butt
set, toner, and punch down tool. Most proprietary systems are not
exactly easy to program even in a "Turnkey" solution.
You have many variables to look at but I think that your paper will be a
very interesting look into a paradigm shift.
Thanks,
Steve
Byron Pile wrote:
I was going to assume that yes, there are Linux people on staff and
that they could be taken away to set up and support asterisk. But
because I was comparing it to a turnkey solution that most likely is
including service as part of the contract, comparing it to a similar
contract based asterisk setup makes more sense. However, I guess when
starting this I was hoping to eliminate "license" fees from the open
source solution, but if I'm using a small company, I think its more
realistic to assume they don't have a support department ready to
devote man hours to an asterisk system when they were using a turnkey
solution before.
Thanks for clarifying the handsets, I was considering using SIP phones
in the case study, but thought it might be possible to "reuse" some
existing equipment. This is also a technology upgrade in this case.
I was going to assume that the workers were just as productive as
before, but the ROI would come mostly from reduction in operating
costs (hopefully). If they don't have any "linux people" on staff,
this makes it harder to include some of the open source benefits like,
fixing bugs, adding features and the other flexibility that Asterisk
would provide over using the Norstar.
Thanks for the response Steve, I have more research to do obviously!
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: RE: [asterisk-biz] case study on switching to Asterisk
Date: Tue, 20 Mar 2007 18:59:03 -0500
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [email protected]
For several varying quotes, one could go to www.buyerzone.com
<http://www.buyerzone.com/> and put in exactly what you
specified. You will get several vendors proposing different
systems, prices, and most importantly, service contracts. It does
cost each vendor about $25 dollars to buy your “lead” so be aware
that you are costing them money by doing this. Whether or not
that is ethical, is your decision. I am just pointing out that
“one could do it”. Make sure to include that you need a
conference bridge that can handle unlimited callers, also
unlimited voicemail ports, support SIP, and also consider
scaling. That should freak them out.
Does “whatever” company have people on staff that know Linux and
have time to learn and support Asterisk? What is the cost of
taking them from what they usually would be doing to work on the
Asterisk system?
I would suggest going with SIP phones and a four port FXO board.
You could run both systems side by side until you are ready to cut
over and then just switch your four POTs lines.
Most proprietary systems use digital sets so you cannot use a
mutiport FXS board. I have used proprietary handset gateways such
as Citel and my person experience was very very poor.
How much ROI is going to depend on increased worker productivity
which is fairly hard to figure out and also ongoing average costs
of MACs (cost of Moves Adds Changes) as well as support contracts.
Thanks,
Steve Totaro
http://www.asteriskhelpdesk.com
KB3OPB
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*From:* [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] *On Behalf Of
*Byron Pile
*Sent:* Tuesday, March 20, 2007 5:28 PM
*To:* [email protected]
*Subject:* [asterisk-biz] case study on switching to Asterisk
I thought the biz list was most appropriate for this. Hope I'm not
wrong!
I'm trying to write a term paper on adopting an open source
solution over a commercial solution and comparing the cost.
Specifically if a legacy system is in use already, when will the
initial investment of hardware for an asterisk based system pay
off against the licensing fees of a proprietary system. After
reading a good chunk of the free Asterisk book "Asterisk:The
Future of Telephony" I think that Asterisk is an excellent topic
for the paper.
I'm new to telephony stuff so bear with me if my questions are a
bit dumb, I've tried to do quite a bit of research and reading
before posting to the mail lists. So my idea was to use the fake
company "whatever" and they have 15 telephones and are currently
using a Norstar ICS with 4 incoming lines and 15 internal lines
and I would like to switch this over to an asterisk based system.
The reason for choosing the Norstar as this is a turnkey solution
provided by a large local telecom so I will be able to get some
pricing information for them fairly easily and I think it does
what a 15 telephone small office might need...I'm open to a better
suggestion if the Norstar is a poor choice.
My quick questions are...is it possible that the handsets being
used with a Norstar could be converted and used with the Asterisk
system? (a bit of asset recovery)
A system consisting of a suitable linux server running Asterisk
and a Digium TDM2441B PCI Card 16FXS / 4FXO would be a suitable
replacement and could deliver the same performance/functions as
the Norstar system?
I'm going to try and be as thorough as possible in assessing the
costs in switching to this system. The most obvious being some new
hardware, but also, downtime, training, support costs, contract
penalties (if there are any) etc....But this is a term paper and a
highly hypothetical situation. And I know my questions are a bit
general, but the paper will probably be kept quite general. I hope
I can learn more about this cool app!
Thanks!
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