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Ask Slashdot: Open Communications Set-Up For Small Office?
New submitter earthwormgaz writes "I've started at a small company and our phone system is crusty, old, and awful. We've got email hosted elsewhere on POP/IMAP, and we've got no groupware. The server here is Windows small business whatever-it-is and Exchange isn't set up, but I've put CentOS on it in a VM, and I'd like to do everything using open standards and open source where possible. I've been looking at SOGO, and these phones. What are my chances of getting all this stuff working together? What other suggestions have people got a for a small office and communications?"
if you're starting a business, just about the last thing you should be doing is worrying about is being sysadmin for your phone system - let alone doing so according to the "right" political principles and hoping you can get it to work together. Call your local phone company, get setup with them or some other turnkey provider and turn your attention towards your business.
If you don't mind paying for a product (and don't want to use Google Apps), take a look at Zimbra:
http://www.zimbra.com/products/index.html
It has an Outlook plugin so your Windows users will be happy, and it speaks Activesync, so any smartphone should be able to sync email contacts and calendar with it.
I haven't used Zimbra for a few years, but last time I used it it worked quite well -- much easier to set up and administer than Exchange, and cheaper too.
I've had good luck with PBX in a flash. You can run it on a small atom server for small numbers of people: http://pbxinaflash.net/
It works well with the Cisco SPA series phones: http://www.cedarpc.com/cgi-bin/commerce.cgi?preadd=action&key=24600
You can use things like SugarCRM and OpenFire with it. Share documents with MSOffice and a Subversion repository (you can probably even install SVN on the phone server). That's really all you should need to start a small company -- you don't have to think big yet, and when you do you should pay someone else to worry about it so that you can do the important stuff that goes with running a company.
...aaaand when Google changes its terms, or discontinues the product, you are well and truly hammered. Which Google definitely does do from time to time, and you can't predict when they'll decide they've had enough of supporting some chunk-o-freeware they cobbled up. Look at the wreckage they made out of Google base -- terrible, terrible support, and now they're converting to a "paid" model, which means that the product data you upload to them that they get to place ads all over... you now get to pay for. And there's plenty more like that.
Do NOT put your data "in the cloud." That's the very worst thing you can do. If you have a business, YOU should be in 100% control of your data and your backups.
The tech you use for documents should be chosen (1) so that you own the applications and (2) so that you can interchange any documents with others that you need to (color separations? Probably Photoshop. Writers and editors? Probably Word. Spreadsheets? Probably Excel. etc.)
You need a database? PostgreSQL or MySql (and I'd definitely go with the former... the latter has been, shall we say, "compromised.")
Just keep it to real applications that run under a real OS that you expect to be supported for some time. It will not be the least bit amusing to get that "end of life" notice from Microsoft or Apple or Ubuntu or whomever.
So many people here are assuming they understand your requirements better than you do, and those are the ones who could successfully parse TFS.
I run an opensource stack in-house because I need to customize what it does for my needs. None of the hosted products would work for me, and software freedom isn't something I throw under the bus for short-term gain. Currently it's a postfix/MailScanner/SpamAssassin/sqlgrey/dovecot/sasl/davical/asterisk/freepbx stack, but I've also never seen Sogo before, so thanks for linking that. I've been meaning to integrate Fumambol/SyncML and that does it built-in, so cool.
The other product I've considered is formerly-BBS-software Citadel, but I'm sufficiently suspicious of monolithic software to have not tried it out in production (the Unix way seems better). Sogo does more, though, so that raises the activation energy a bit.
On the phones side, I'm looking to replace the FreePBX system because it's increasingly buggy as new versions come out. There was a good interview with the 2600Hz folks on FLOSS Weekly recently about Kazoo. Their docs are very targeted towards a cloud-hosted version, which is fine, but I also haven't put in the energy yet to do a local install without docs. But it's on my very short-term list.
They seem to be headed in the right direction at least. Intergrating Sogo with Kazoo might be a nice direction and it doesn't seem like either community would be adverse.
Grandstream phones have the best bang for the buck, but aren't always quirk-free. That said, with a few tweaks they're very reliable and very cheap compared to Avaya. Their better models also embed linux, so I like to support them with my cash for doing so.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
The last time i worked in an office, there was no phone on my desk. If my boss wanted me, he IMed me.
You need to really be concerned about the following:
1.) Provisioning the equipment. I don't know how "small" a small office is, but this is going to spiral out of control quickly if you don't have an elegant way to setup handsets and make changes.
2.) Your change from circuit switched to packets. There are a lot of discussion points here, but the biggest you need to be aware of is latency is king. You might have a really slick p2p setup with OpenSWAN on 2 high bandwidth, cheap DSL or cable connections, but the jitter will kill you.
3.) How does your voice come in? If you are under contract and you have a PRI or some TDM circuit, you have to consider how you will interface that, and the cards you will need, or the SIP gateway you'll buy are not cheap.
4.) Who is going to manage the call routes, system secuity. I'm well versed with Asterisk, and you'll not find an all inclusive interface unless you go the Digium SwitchVOX route. If you don't pay close attention to security up front, you will experience toll fraud pronto.
5.) Handset support. What are you going to do for replacement parts, who is going to setup all the buttons, etc.
6.) Codecs. Some of the best are not free, i.e. G729. Just about any handset you get will support G711, but 12 bits of fidelity at 64k/sec each way (plur overheard for UDP/RTP) is not that great.
7.) Voice prompts, auto attendants, voicemail, etc.
8.) Status/BLF lights on phones. There isn't really a standardized way to do this, but SIP's Subscribe/Notify is used by some, I think Aastra.
9.) Key system habits. You won't be able to "pick up Line 2".
If I haven't scared you out of it yet, Aastra and Snom make excellent, RFC 3261 compliant handsets, Asterisk is a lot better than it used to be, and there are some alterntives you might find interesting like FreeSwitch or YXA.
Good luck.
mov ah, 4ch
int 21h
are radio frequency transmitting/receiving communication devices using digitized packet switching, which simulate copper-wire based telephone service but fails due to the lack of true full duplex and high latency.
For those of you who are too young to remember talking on a 20th century circuit-switching copper landline telephone system, I will describe the experience: it was like talking to another person in real life. You talk and they talk, sometimes simultaneously, and both parties could hear and understand everything... in real time.
I also remember gas was 95 cents a gallon back in 1995. Now get off my lawn.
Get everybody a cheap mobile phone with a business plan or agree to pay $50/month if they use their own phone (most people will). Move your email, calendar and documents to Google Apps or similar. And then focus on your real business.
If you've already purchased and using (albeit only barely) Microsoft SBS, take advantage of Exchange before you spend any more money on a new system, otherwise you're just wasting money. Exchange works quite well, obvious straight-forward connectivity with the Outlook client. Administering Exchange isn't the end of the world, and is actually quite easy in an SBS environment. I would suggest setting up an alternate internal smart-host (smart-relay) so that you don't have to expose the Exchange server directly to the internet. Courier MTA works VERY well (and is the exact setup we have internet->courier->exchange).
Setting up a Jabber IM server internally is easy as well, otherwise use Google Apps and have your email domain hosted there and just use Google Talk with the various AV plugins.
Setting up Switchvox (Asterisk) is a purchase, but I 2nd the comment by others to find you a local phone service retailer and let them deal with phone integration. If you do decide on a hosted solution for email and voice (voip) then make sure you don't skimp on the internet connectivity. I worked at a place previously convinced VOIP was the way to go, but management would cringe every time you talked about capacity of the external connection and the need to upgrade.
Just my 2cents...
think before you write, it'll save me moderator points.
First off Exchange is the most complicated and evil thing ms has ever made next to sharepoint. You dont need it! Here is why?
You dont just install it. The product actually alters AD itself at the schema level! So lets say you forget to raise the forest level in your domain as you just installed Server 2003. I bet you nooobs didnt know Server 2003 runs as Server 2000 forest and domain by default?! Somethin non win admins commonly make.
Oops just reinstall right? Nope AD has now been corrupted at the schema level and all users cant receive email anymore. Not even a tape backup can save you. Now imagine you have it working? How can people send you email? You get a ton of error messages when installing your cas outlook on the web about it not having a certificate?! Oh now you to create a Sans certificate. Now you need to register your web server so people can email you. What? You have to create a freaking IIS server too??
http://saveie6.com/
> Has no one forked MySql yet?
Yes. The original author. Michael "Monty" Widenius. He named his first database after his oldest daughter My, the new one after the second daughter Maria.
http://mariadb.org/
Ignorance killed the cat. Curiosity was framed.
The problem with the "keep your data and apps where you can see them" approach is that the TCO is horrendous.
Yeah, Google's cloud applications suck. That's due to Google ADHD issues, not the fact that it's cloud hosted. Tell me you've never been screwed over by a traditional application whose publisher lost interest in it.
It's perfectly true that some cloud applications are too immature and not ready to replace their traditional counterparts. Office applications (word processors, spreadsheets, etc.) are certainly there, at least for serious users. But the best CRM and HR solutions are cloud-based, and have been for some time. And the companies behind them are here to stay.