Dakota, 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. 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. 3. Flexibility again - It really is much more flexible than anything else!! 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. Limitations: 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. 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. 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. 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. ---- Hope these observations help. N -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 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
