On Jun 27, 2008, at 6:31 PM, DJA wrote:
The existing office currently has 4 XP Home workstations, which will need to be upgraded to XP Pro (if available) in order to attach to the MS Domain Server, and one Mac running OS X (can OS X now write NTFS?).
OS X cannot natively write NTFS (though it can with FUSE, just like Linux), but that's not an issue if you're connecting to a file server. OS X talks SMB just fine.
I'd like to steer him towards a more cost-effective FOSS solution if one exists. Obviously, the hardware costs are going to be about the same regardless of the software chosen. He has no IT staff (other than me once in a while for the usual issues), and I don't know what kind of admin is required by the MS server. And there is no included out-of-warranty service contract with the quoted package (which appears to be lease-to-own).
First, upon reading the OpenServer website, it appears the "Standard Edition" of the product is intended to integrate with an existing PBX and assumes the customer has one. If this guy is starting from scratch, you may need to look at the SIP edition.
That said, this is just a "Unified Communications" server which is a fancy way of saying VoIP phones, voicemail and fax that integrates with your email (and maybe instant messaging and things like website live-chat or "call me now" buttons). More generally, it's just technology taking advantage of what happens when suddenly the telephone system is digital, thanks to VoIP.
And yes, of course FOSS has something to offer. As Tracy said, Asterisk is generally the go-to answer. But Asterisk is really more of a toolkit... you're not going to 'yum install' it and suddenly have it doing everything above. The software cost is zero, but you're going to spend a good amount of time configuring it to do what you want.
That may not be a bad option, but there are other alternatives. One would be to consider one of the Switchvox (http://www.switchvox.com/) solutions, which are appliances based on Asterisk and tied in with some online support. The other would be to give up the idea of hosting VoIP internally at all and instead outsource the 5 lines to an ISP like Speakeasy (http://www.speakeasy.net/promos/phoneservice/) or Covad (http://www.covad.com/services/voip/index.html).
-- Joshua Penix http://www.binarytribe.com Binary Tribe Linux Integration Services & Network Consulting -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
