Asterix/Trixbox support required...

[JElder]

Any companies on here offer installation/development/support for the Asterisk/Trixbox open source phone system?

We are based in Hampshire, and are looking at a possible move away from Avaya.

We'd need a company that can develop the initial system, and then provide ongoing support - the support is important, so I would prefer a company rather than an individual.

Thanks

[OCM Networks]

Hi,

I am sure we can help you. We have been designing and installing asterisk based solutions or the last 21/2 years.

Send me your contact details and I will give you a call.



0845 3737 5910

[cmarks]

I hear you about moving away from Avaya! :)

I could recommend a couple voip providers if you weren't dead set on an OS solution.

[cjd]

You might want to consider a hosted solution as well - remove the need for installation and maintenance :-).

http://www.voipfone.co.uk/switchboard_and_hosted_PBX_services.php

Either way, we can help with SIP trunks (not IAX tho')

[leemason]

I have implemented and supported asterisk systems (both vanilla and custom) for many years now. Please PM me and we can discuss your requirements.

[Simon-M]

I have implemented and supported asterisk systems (both vanilla and custom) for many years now. Please PM me and we can discuss your requirements.

Do you know how to email my voicemails to an email address in Wav or some other audio format?

I have a Asterisk guy but he is stuck on this one. What would you charge if we were to use you to implement it.

Don't ask for logins etc to look because of course I can't give that until we agree on a deal :=)

Simon

[leemason]

I take it you already have voicemail setup? In this case it should be relatively simple. A few lines in /etc/asterisk/voicemail.conf like this for example:

100 =>1234,Office,test@opl.co.uk,,attach=yes|saycid=no|e nvelope=no|delete=no

And then make sure that your Mail Transfer Agent on the server can actually send the e-mails and you should be away.

I see you are in Slough - I am not too far away in SW London. PM me and maybe we can do each other a favour as I am looking for someone to redesign my logo at the moment!!!

[consultant]

Simon,

emailed VM's is a relative 'standard' and I would be worried that he doesnt know this!

Do you know if it is a bespoke Asterisk install or via a package like trixbox, elastix etc?

[cmarks]

As mentioned above, I'd probably hazzard a guess at it being the MTA being at fault (i.e. not setup (correctly) or not installed - or configured as a whole).

[JElder]

Thanks all - I would be interested if anyone had comments about the viability of this kind of open source system as a business comms system - as there is no 'dealer network' it's quite hard to find case studies.

We're not set on Open Source, but in terms of ROI it's hard to beat. There are also so many add-ons and modules (both free and paid) for Asterisk that it gives huge flexibility, but at the cost of complexity.

We've looked into hosted services, but they don't quite have the flexibility we need (although I have to admit they are improving rapidly!) and the costs for a 60+ extension system become prohibitive.

[Simon-M]

I take it you already have voicemail setup? In this case it should be relatively simple. A few lines in /etc/asterisk/voicemail.conf like this for example:

100 =>1234,Office,test@opl.co.uk,,attach=yes|saycid=no|e nvelope=no|delete=no

And then make sure that your Mail Transfer Agent on the server can actually send the e-mails and you should be away.

I see you are in Slough - I am not too far away in SW London. PM me and maybe we can do each other a favour as I am looking for someone to redesign my logo at the moment!!!

As far as I am aware it's a vanila set up direct onto a linux distro. We have 2 outgoing IAX trunks. Incoming is via BT and gradwell.

My man has promised he has it sorted and is going to give it a crack on the 24th. If he does not come through (either way actually) PM me your details and you can give me a price on some other changes we may need in the future.

Re the logo design, PM what you want and I will do you a good deal on it.

Simon

[cjd]

Thanks all - I would be interested if anyone had comments about the viability of this kind of open source system as a business comms system - as there is no 'dealer network' it's quite hard to find case studies.

The open source kit - which mostly means some flavour of Asterisk - it pretty reliable but it does need regular maintenance by a real expert. The problem is there are many DIY * 'experts' and it's hard to find the real ones.

I would say that 60+ extensions is pushing it a bit for Asterisk. Despite those that will argue to the contrary, Asterisk does not scale well and is mostly used by very small businesses - 2-10 seats.


We've looked into hosted services, but they don't quite have the flexibility we need (although I have to admit they are improving rapidly!) and the costs for a 60+ extension system become prohibitive.

Not sure who you've looked at for this but it's not the case for us - our largest single hosted customer has 150+ extensions ;-)

[consultant]

Jonathan,

in this day and age, I truly believe you would be silly not to consider it, or at least a virtual PBX like Voipfones (although I am a little biased towards your own hardware, but using VoIP to the full!).

Maybe a better question to ask is 'why do I want a proprietary system?'

There are a lot of options, from build it yourself to several thousand pound+ enterprise systems. You can administer it yourself or contract (remember, on proprietary systems, a lot/most of the dealer profit comes from the service contract).

For a 60+ system, your biggest cost will be handsets, assuming you want a new set of those, but also remember, you do not necessarily need all singing and dancing phones for most uses (and executives!).

[consultant]

Simon,

it should be a two minute fix, on site or remote!

[leemason]

Simon,

it should be a two minute fix, on site or remote!

I agree. It should be very quick for anyone who knows Asterisk and Linux.

[leemason]

Jonathan,

in this day and age, I truly believe you would be silly not to consider it, or at least a virtual PBX like Voipfones (although I am a little biased towards your own hardware, but using VoIP to the full!).

Maybe a better question to ask is 'why do I want a proprietary system?'

There are a lot of options, from build it yourself to several thousand pound+ enterprise systems. You can administer it yourself or contract (remember, on proprietary systems, a lot/most of the dealer profit comes from the service contract).

For a 60+ system, your biggest cost will be handsets, assuming you want a new set of those, but also remember, you do not necessarily need all singing and dancing phones for most uses (and executives!).

I agree totally. I have implemented both Asterisk system and proprietory systems from companies like Mitel, Nortel, and Ericsson. Asterisk is brilliant to setup and does pretty much everything that most people would want from a phone system, and there are always low cost addons to expand functionality where needed.

What really gets me about most of the proprietory systems is that you always, at some point, hit the brick wall of what the phone system provider gives you. You either do it their way or no way. Also they all st*ff their customers for additional "mobules". For example, on a Nortel CS1000 Music on Hold is "an extra cost option"... Music on Hold!!!!!! If you have an Ericsson Solidus eCare contact centre announcing position in queue was until very recently an optional addon as well as they forced you to buy the Text To Speech module.

Asterisk WILL scale, BUT you need to know what you are doing for large implementations. But this applies to any proprietory system as well.

[cjd]

Asterisk WILL scale, BUT you need to know what you are doing for large implementations.

It sure does - it'll scale to 10s of thousands of users. But you do need to know what you're doing; to the extent that you need to re-write most of it ;-)

I'd say that if you could find a real expert who could install Asterisk properly and keep it running and up to date day to day, it would work very well - but it's a non-trivial job.

[leemason]

It sure does - it'll scale to 10s of thousands of users. But you do need to know what you're doing; to the extent that you need to re-write most of it ;-)

I'd say that if you could find a real expert who could install Asterisk properly and keep it running and up to date day to day, it would work very well - but it's a non-trivial job.

I'm not really talking about 10s of thousands of users. You would need a hugh organisation for that. I was more thinking of scaling from 10's to about 1000 users which is enough for most people.

And yes, keeping any large telephone system going is a full time job. I have been standing in recently for a telecoms manager who is on paternity leave (an Ericsson MX-ONE system with about 1,000 users plus a 70 user contact centre) and that is a full time job!

Most of the smaller Asterisk systems that I have installed and supported just run... The biggest problem I have on such sites in the desktop PC systems. The phones just work - which is the way that it should be.

[cjd]

I'm not really talking about 10s of thousands of users. You would need a hugh organisation for that. I was more thinking of scaling from 10's to about 1000 users which is enough for most people.

Agreed.

I'm out of date on non-hosted * installations but I doubt there many 1000 user systems around - that would be quite a challenge. From memory, we crashed and burned at about half that when we were starting out 5 years ago and it took us nearly 18 months to re-engineer the whole thing so that we could scale smoothly and still stay up all day everyday.

I know that some well known companies are using multiple instances of independant asterisk boxes rather than attempt a truly scaleable platform.

We don't have much * left in our network but anytime we have to touch what is still there we have to draw a deep breath and gulp twice.

It's quite odd that a huge proportion of the new industry was not invented by the old one. (Even including Skype.)

[leemason]

Agreed.

I'm out of date on non-hosted * installations but I doubt there many 1000 user systems around - that would be quite a challenge. From memory, we crashed and burned at about half that when we were starting out 5 years ago and it took us nearly 18 months to re-engineer the whole thing so that we could scale smoothly and still stay up all day everyday.

I know that some well known companies are using multiple instances of independant asterisk boxes rather than attempt a truly scaleable platform.

We don't have much * left in our network but anytime we have to touch what is still there we have to draw a deep breath and gulp twice.

It's quite odd that a huge proportion of the new industry was not invented by the old one. (Even including Skype.)

I think that the challenges of setting yourself up as a telecoms provider are at a very much more difficult level that a standard company IP PBX so I can appreciate your experiences.

I don't really see it as odd that there is a split like there is between the new industry and the old. The old telecoms industry, from top to bottom, has a completely wrong and proprietory outlook. This does not fit well in the new world where it is expected that things should be much more open. The old companies are changing slowly. I spoke to a telecoms designer for one of the large companies in Germany a while back and he actually told me that when they are prototyping projects they will very often use Asterisk to emulate functionality that their own PBX cannot do.

Most manufacurers will now say that their PBX supports SIP. This basic statement is true but when you try to use a basic SIP phone you soon find that their implementation is again very proprietory. You can dial numbers and talk to people but forget about setting up keys to access voicemail and other functions. Only THEIR handsets can do that...

[OCM Networks]

Have to say that the larger the system the quicker the ROI of an asterisk based system.

We have clients with 50+ phones and muti-site and the sytems are stabe and productive.

Its important to realise that their are mutiple flavours of asterisk and all are different.

Most clients consider VoiP and asterisk because of the potential call savings and quick ROI ( which is true ) but its the features and flexibility which bring true value to the business.

So what are your drivers ? tell us abit more please

[leemason]

OCM, Couldn't agree more. Even if you use Asterisk as a replacement for a standard telephone system using ISDN-30 lines it still makes sense from a functionality point of view. If you start to look at proprietory systems which can provide the more advanced Asterisk funtionality you soon start to rack up very large costs for all of the optional modules that you have to purchase.

One small example: In a contact centre scenario you have to play messages to callers (welcome, IVR, comfort messages). With most systems you have to purchase a license based on the number of concurrent messages you want to play. If you don't have enough licenses the system cannot select and play the media resource. With Asterisk you can play as many messages at once as you like (within reason for the hardware platform of course).