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Cisco VoIP Ditched for Open-Source Asterisk
An anonymous reader writes "Sam Houston State University (SHSU) is moving 6,000 users off a Cisco VoIP platform to an open-source VoIP network based on Asterisk. One big driver, of course, is cost. From the article: 'We thought that it will be more cost effective in the long run to go with an open source solution, because of the massive amounts of licensing fees required to keep the Cisco CallManager network up and running,' says Aaron Daniel, senior voice analyst at SHSU."
I've just released FreePBX 2.1.2, which is a major security upgrade from 2.1.1. Not really relevant to this article, except that they both deal with Asterisk.
(For those that don't know, FreePBX is the only open source GUI for configuration and management of Asterisk. www.freepbx.org)
--RobSchlock Mercenary.
Seems like the majority of Asterisk support has been for SIP phones. Some support for SCCP phones such as the 7910. Be nice if more low end phone support was available. Overall, Asterisk seems much nice than CCM and does not rely on a OS/Application installation.
I consult for a small Asterisk host, Lylix.net, and our customers couldn't be happier. It's a bitch to configure (hence we can charge $$$ for the service) but I'll be damned if it isn't a solid piece of FOSS, much like Apache. My hats are off to the Asterisk guys, it's likely to become one of the most important FOSS projects in the next 5 years or so.
From the article:
"While Asterisk and the SIP protocol lack some of the more extensive features on the Cisco CallManager..."
This may be true for vanilla Asterisk, but there is an extensive community adding a wide range of additional features and services to Asterisk. For example, <plug>our Enswitch product</plug> provides a layer of billing and commercial services on top of Asterisk and SIP Express Router. Having work extensively with both Asterisk and CCM, I would claim that with Asterisk plus all the applications that work with it already surpasses the features of CCM, and Asterisk has the momentum behind it. Over the next few years, CCM will fall further behind, and before long Asterisk will be the dominant telephony platform in the same way Apache is the dominant web server platform now.
My company sells Asterisk solutions to business clients and we're very happy with it. Once you figure out what you're doing the sky is the limit when it comes to configuration. My only issue with Asterisk is the voicemail subsystem. If Digium would put some time into that I would be the happiest person alive. Tom
This is not an attempt to troll or anything. But this doesn't seem like to me as a major blow to Cisco. Universities and Corporate and Government user are a much larger sectors at large compared to universities. And dont tell the College recruiters this the rest of the world doesn't follow what universities do. for the following reasons.
Universities have cheap skilled labor. A slew of talented kids/young adults who are willing towork for free or near minimum wage, but when they leave to the real world they will be demanding $35,000 and up a year for the same job. This is the reason why many Open Source projects work and save money in Universities but when a Corporation gets it, it becomes a money pot. Because for a company it is cheaper to call Cisco and pay them $1000 for a fix to their problems then having a team of 10 people at your company taking a day to fix the problem because they do not have the answer sitting right in front of them or able to contact the engineer who created it. vs. a University where this 10 people 8 bucks an hour are much cheaper then calling Cisco for help.
Universities are allowed to experiment almost by charter. If something goes wrong this screw all the people who are not getting phone service. You will have wait until we fix the problem, it is not like we are loosing money with the phones down for a couple of hours. Private companies loose money when their communication are done so they want Cisco to come and fix it right away and they better know what they are doing. Being an Education facility it is allowed to experiment in different products while Companies find better value in using what they know works.
Liberal University vs. Conservative Corporations, basically means if it not exactly what we want we keep on trying and trying until we get it right (perhaps making it worse in the process) or If it does what we need we hold on to it until we find the perfect solution (which guarantees that they are going to use a product they don't like for a long time)
This is why Open Source is popular in Universities but in Corporate and government use they need to work a little harder to get acceptance.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
That's totally incorrect. OEJ (a leading developer) has taken Asterisk several times to SIP Interoperability Testing meetings, and has acted very proactively to fix perceived or real incompatibilities.
I just did a quick search of the Digium bugtracker, and I didn't see any 'SIP Incompatibilty' bugs there apart from an issue with sipgate.de.
I honestly think you're trolling, or you have no concept of how FOSS works. If there's a bug, you fix it, and if you can't fix it, you report it and someone who can fix it, will.
--Rob
Schlock Mercenary.
You forgot a question mark in your post correcting him - that's an even more bonehead error.
His message was adequately communicated - you don't need to be annoying and correct him. If you were adding clarity to his post, it would be one thing, but you are just nit-picking. Add something to the conversation or go the hell away.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
There is some irony to this story - the expensive part of any phone system is (hold your breath) the phones. I will point out that the SHSU could pick an open standard protocol and move the phones from one system to another. Try that with Microsoft Office Communicator some time - you can't. I noticed that this story is under the Linux category and - I will point out that Cisco Call Manager 5.0 runs on linux and can run SIP to phones (as well as many other protocols).
Now, I know Asterix fairly well, Cisco fairly well, open source VoIP fairly well (as the joke goes I wrote the O'Reilly book), and SIP really really well. As was pointed out in Mark Spencer's Keynote at VON last week, the SIP stack in Asterix certainly has some room for improvement. And given SHSU does not seem to have any intention to support the development of Asterix by buying a support contract from Digium, I sure hope they are doing something to make sure that Asterix get the support that they will need it to have to stay relevant.
It's the support. Company A spends a large amount of money buying (say, Microsoft/Cisco/whatever) and at the same time takes out an expensive support contract. Company B uses FOSS.
Something goes wrong. Company A gets on the phone, and they have an engineer on-site within the hour, and the problem is fixed within 3 hours. Total cost? Loss of 3 hours business + SLA payouts.
Company B runs around for a bit trying to figure out what the hell it might have been, before flash-hiring a bunch of software consultants (thing $$$) to try and figure out what the problem is. These consultants probably resort to asking the question as to what went wrong on the FOSS's community forum. Problem eventually gets solved in 3 days. Total cost? Company B goes out of business.
FOSS is fantastic, but big corporates don't have time for it. They can't afford to have downtime (total significance depends on what business they're in, but in the business I work for, you lose a minute's worth of data, people buy from your competitor) and so buy the only thing on the market that comes with a decent support contract. This just happens to be stuff that's expensive in the first place (Windows etc).
As has been mentioned earlier, Universities are fine. If their phones/IT goes down, they don't lose money. Business is not like that.
There is nothing interesting going on at my blog
I just deployed an Asterisk phone system powering ~140 wired Polycom phones and ~70 wireless phones covering 31 acres. Here are some tips from what I learned in this process:
.), getting the users to think about the dial plan and having them understand their satisfaction with the results is directly related to trying to get it right. When we distributed the phones to each desk, the boxes were labeled and sorted on the pallet this helped save a huge amount of time and allowed us to have the furniture installers help setup phones if we wanted too. Staging the phones: pre-configuring them, having the boxes labeled and sorted on the pallet was well worth doing. The wireless phones we signed out to the employees with some other stuff like work shirts. Having the right vendor to walk us through the process was critical.
1. Pick a capable vendor for each job you outsource. I looked at Asterisk and decided it is too technical for a Asterisk newbie to build a production system, so I called Digium and they referred me to a dCAP certified Asterisk consultant in my area. Knowing Asterisk is one thing, but knowing how to pull off a great install is more than that. Our vendor developed a workbook that covers many parts of a successful deployment, such as reviewing the network (gear, configs, wiring plant), getting the users (names, current extentions, locations .
2. Pilot your install before you deploy it. The environment I was choosing Asterisk for is an automall. Phones are a big part of the business (as with many) and setting expectations is important. We formed a phone users group to have them decide how we wanted to route calls (dial plan), the idea was to get them involved because it is really theirs to use. Some departments were easy and some were not. Sales was essentially create a call groups for the differnt brands we sell and have the operators transfer them to the appropriate group. Service was much more complicated, but having live operators helps a ton. Parts was easy as well, but all of that needs some serious consideration. Knowing you will get it wrong and tweaking it on the fly will happen, do it and move on.
3. We picked Polycom phones and that turned out to be a great choice, the 601's have six "programmable" buttons and great sound quality (handset and speakerphone). The Polycoms have a two port switch built-in and will trunk with the network switch which means the second port on the phone can be a differnt vlan than the phone. So we have them plugged in/wired like this: [network-switch]---[phone]---[computer]. The phones run Cisco CDP, when the switch detects the phone (via CDP) it assigns the phone as a trunk device and allows you to choose what vlan the phone will be on and what vlan the computer port on the phone will be on. Also you can have a differnet vlan if you were to plug the PC directly into the switch. The setup works well and I could go on and on about QoS, edge marking of traffic and PoE issues but I will stop.
4. The FOP (Flash Operator Panel) is a cool thing, but we had to do some customizing for our needs. We looked at Fonalitys HUD, but FOP works great. You can see which phones are ringing, have voice mail (whether it is new or old), transfer calls by drag and drop, monitor the inbound queues and really not have to touch the phone to work the system as an operator. Nicholas, the guy that wrote FOP is an invaluable resource. He was willing to help and has done a great job. I am asking our vendor and am going to make sure he gets paid in some way.
5. Wireless WiFi phones (OUCH): We chose the Hitachi IPC-5000 and Meru Networks for the AP's. Okay I was getting a little cutting edge here, but hey why not?! Lessons:
Meru Networks ROCKS!! They figured out the roaming WiFi thing for sure!
Hitachi IPC-5000's to be determined: it look like either the phones have a high failure rate or we have a bad batch or something. Also it looks like they aren't nearly as durable as say a cell phone/mobile phone (which is VER
Which distro does Linus use?
Back in the day, well before software was as complex and complicated as it is today, software was just stuff that came with the computers that were sold. Software itself wasn't the "product." But since Microsoft decided to expand their market beyond hardware makers to consumers and wrote that letter about software piracy, the world changed.
How is this relevant? Again, software is the product. In this case, Cisco and its licensing fees. Most people think of Cisco as a hardware product. While I know it's just a computer with software code that routes information around, it's still, in the minds of many, a hardware product that serves its purposes. But when you are talking about "license fees" you start to think of it differently... more like software. Cisco screwed itself, I think, by moving away from its perception as a reliable hardware product maker. Now you buy their hardware and license the software. It makes people want to shop around more and since the Asterisk product is OSS, well the choice starts to become one of how much money to spend.
It's unfortunate, but seems to be a potentially strong indication of what OSS is doing and why there is such resistance to it, where it comes from and what forms it takes. Looking at it from this perspective shows a nice angle to why software patents are such an important weapon in the software product world.