Hello Chuck,
I am wondering if anyone has responded to your call for a mutual business partnership group. I know that Simon put forward the same request. Please let me know if you are doing anything about it. I am sure that a circle of trust can be formed to meet the demands. Some sort of regulation in pricing, and implementations would just be amazing. Also, the team members can take turns and volunteer to object or suggest real business cases brought forth by members. I am not sure about sharing profits and making another telecom company out of this but I do agree with all other points you mentioned. It would be a great asset to TAUG to have some connections to big telcos just like Simon said. If things do take off I think several co-host locations can be formed aroung GTA to serve the business needs of the group and to bring down the costs for customers. I would very much like to join such a group. Please let me know if there are other people still interested in the idea. Thanks, BruceDate: Thu, 5 Apr 2007 22:50:42 -0400From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]: RE: [on-asterisk] Cisco 1700 and Most expensive Asterisk Platform. This is interesting… it touches on a major point of failure of Asterisk that I keep commenting on and maybe this is a major opportunity for those on the list. I wonder if anyone would be interested in having a group of “Certified Asterisk Implementers” in the Toronto area (or something of that sort)… or as someone reacted to this idea before “like an Asterisk Co-Op”)? There are so many problems here… Telecom companies are “stable”, in the sense that if they implement a standard Nortel solution and go belly up, there will always be another vendor there to pick up the business. For Asterisk, there really is nothing there… Unfortunately, as I’m sure everyone knows, telecom providers will get whatever they can for each implementation. I’m looking right now at helping a company that got suckered into a $100,000 hardware investment and a 5 year contract worth about $500,000. This could easily have been done with $50,000 first year and much less each year after using Asterisk. So there lies the rub… Asterisk is undefined. No marketing, no boundaries, nothings…. Clearly (at least to me) what is needed, is an organization that can put in certain standards for example: 1. Mandatory Peer review of solutions by all participants. 2. Standardization on parts (or at least solutions) so there is continuity 3. Standardization of consulting rates, quotes, etc… 4. Standardization of service providers for T1s, VoIP trunks, etc… might also get discounts from providers. 5. Standardization of recurring revenues (maintenance, price per minute calls) 6. Employment Pooling – A pool of commited people to work with to do implementations (so it isn’t “lone gun” solutions”) 7. Tight integration with enterprise solutions (Enterprise class CRM, Email Systems (Outlook/Exchange), Instant Messaging) 8. Implementation Documentation Standards & Archives 9. Unified Support System 10. Revenue Share for all people involved in implementations, support, etc.. 11. Datacentre Standardization / Pricing 12. I’m sure there are 10,000 other reasons… What I am seeing is the deregulation of telecom, hardware implementation costs dropping, per user license fees still entrenched… Asterisk has nothing but opportunity but no one is competing with bell on $500,000 implementations. Right now, it’s all still just an ant on a mountain… and no offence, there isn’t anything major nothing happening to make that stop. You can see small, non-community attempts to do this kind of stuff, with Trixbox, etc… Maybe I have my head in the clouds and I know it would be a major under taking… Asterisk itself was… anyone care to join me? Regards, Chuck From: Reza - Asterisk Enthusiast [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: April-05-07 10:25 PM To: TAUG Subject: Re: [on-asterisk] Cisco 1700 and Most expensive Asterisk Platform. Good points Dave! So in this particular case, who ever the carrier is -- is responsible for the T1 and Cisco upto the demarc. If that's flaky, then the entire thing is flaky. Who ever deployed the system and has given warranty for the products -- are responsible for tech support & professional services. Assuming this Cisco 1700 is provisioned by the T1 carrier -- it makes sense to put in another router behind the Cisco - but if it were me, I'd choose some higher end router with QoS behind the Cisco - to provide priority over the VoIP packets versus internet surfing and email. This was not the case in this particular case. If it were me, I'd provide all brand new equipment vs. refurb for the price tag of $25,000 :). Cheers! Reza. ----- Original Message ----- From: Dave Donovan To: [email protected] Sent: Thursday, April 05, 2007 7:47 PM Subject: Re: [on-asterisk] Cisco 1700 and Most expensive Asterisk Platform. I can't say specifically for this case, but as for the Cisco box, I've seen this type of thing before. Say, for instance, the carrier mandates that the edge (demarc) device be a Cisco box of their choosing for management purposes. They can often ask the client to pay for this. Client doesn't have access to manage it so they put a Linksys box on it to take the single IP they're given by the provider and NAT it. As for the price of the box, that seems a bit high. I guess you're really looking at a $200 machine with, what, $1000 (retail) worth of cards in it, and 8 x $250 for high end phones. If the installer used Bell's roughly 100% markup on hardware, you're looking at no more than $6000 for hardware. Depending on how complex the professional services were, how many changes the client made along the way etc, you'd have you decide whether the rest is justified. Professional services can be a big chunk of these projects. That's my take on it, for what it's worth. Dave On 4/5/07, Reza - Asterisk Enthusiast < [EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Now you are talking :). Yes, the $25,000 dollar question is why the * box did not have a T1 card in the first place, if in fact the folks are thinking to expand into greater work force. Cheers! ----- Original Message ----- From: Peng Li To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [email protected] Sent: Thursday, April 05, 2007 6:24 PM Subject: Re: [on-asterisk] Cisco 1700 and Most expensive Asterisk Platform. it's an interesting one. why dont' they just use a T1 in the * box? tks peng On 4/5/07, Mark Borg <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Perhaps this was 'for future capacity' and /or the needs changed mid-way through the install... or this person is some wicked kind of sales type... it would have been interesting to hear the pitch to the client. On Thu April 5 2007 17:02:04 Reza - Asterisk Enthusiast wrote: > Nope. Not at all... T1, CSU/DSU, Cisco1700, Linksys, Refurb P3 w/512 > MBRam, 8x SIP phones. > > Cheers! > Reza. > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: Peng Li > To: Reza - Asterisk Enthusiast > Cc: TAUG > Sent: Thursday, April 05, 2007 4:48 PM > Subject: Re: [on-asterisk] Cisco 1700 and Most expensive Asterisk > Platform. > > > HI Reza, > > Do you mean that Cisco 1700 runs an Asterisk with a P3 chip inside as a > submodule? > > tks > peng > > > On 4/5/07, Reza - Asterisk Enthusiast <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Can anyone advise me why one would want to use a Cisco 1700 connected > to a T1 -- in a fairly new implementation and billed the client $1500 for > the 1700? And if you were the conslutant, why would you want to connect > a $50 Linksys router to the 1700 in the first place? > > I've been called in as an expert witness to give my unbiased analysis, > and I have my theories. However I also want to accompany my opinion with > other Asterisk & Cisco veterans here before I'm called to testify as an > independent/neutral party. > > Adds to the interesting twist I've seen one of the MOST EXPENSIVE > asterisk machines running on a P3 machine (never mind the configurations) > -- which has 2, 4 port Digium Cards -- sold for $25,000+ fairly recently. > Heck if I sold a P3 for that much, I'd make sure the client got customer > service ABOVE AND BEYOND! > > Cheers! > Reza. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] _________________________________________________________________ Explore the seven wonders of the world http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=7+wonders+world&mkt=en-US&form=QBRE
