Welcome to my second installment of “Writing an RFP for an Open Source IP PBX”… But first let me apologize to my loyal readers, I have let you down… I’ve been caught up in the regular grind of the summer and have neglected OS-VoIP. There’s a lot of interesting things going on in the Open Source VoIP space and I’ve got a long list of things I want to talk about, so get ready for some action here at OS-VoIP! Ok… onto RFP’s…

In my previous post, here, we went over a variety of reasons why Open Source needs to be approached and perceived differently than regular proprietary systems. We also discussed the importance of determining (in detail people!) your own requirements as the very first step in this process.

Part deuce starts with this………

Answer the important questions

Regardless of where you place this information in an RFP, it should always be addressed. The earlier you make these decisions the easier it will be to start off on the right foot when asking vendors to quote you an Open Source IP PBX solution. This is by no way a complete list of questions but these are the important ones.

Do we plan to have a converged or segregated voice and data network?
This is a very important decision and will sometimes dictate the type of phones a vendor recommends as part of your solution. For example, if you are converging the voice and data networks and in turn daisy chaining desktop computers to the phones, you’ll want a phone with a switch, and possibly GigE support should GigE to the desktop be important. Some phones don’t even have a switch so be careful not to make the mistake of converging your networks only to find that the 150 cheap Polycom 320’s you purchased don’t have switches in them! Most network engineers would recommend that the reliable approach to take  is keep your voice and data networks separate but this sometimes carries a greater upfront expense such as running a second ethernet drop to each workstation or purchasing twice as many switches.

On the topic of wiring, I’m going to share a suggestion which some of you might disagree with. Should you ever need new wiring, DO NOT make it a requirement in your RFP that your OS PBX vendor also be required to handle wiring! My opinion – office wiring should be left up to electricians… I’ve always said that any company (specifically in the OS IP PBX world) who does both wiring and Open Source IP PBX’s is going to lack significant skills in one area or the other. Good engineers who really know how to program software like Asterisk sit at their computers all day being programmers… they don’t usually make the best wiring contractors. We live in a world of specialization, companies can either do twice as much half ass’ed, or half as much bad ass! Wiring and software development are just too different for most companies to want to maintain dedicated resources for both. Continue →

Recently Olle E Johansson posted some details about how he managed to get 10,000 simultaneous calls out of a single Asterisk server. As far as I’m aware, this is the largest number of simultaneous calls documented on a single Asterisk based server, so congrats Olle… I hope you enjoy that bottle of wine!

Now who says you can’t get more than 250 calls on a single Asterisk server??? I’ve always known that with the right setup and configuration you could get at least 2,000 calls on a single Asterisk server… but 10,000 is a remarkable milestone. It’s news like this that further validates the significance Asterisk and even other open source VoIP software plays in the world of carrier communications. If I were a company like Cisco or Sonus, I’d pay very close attention to all this.

Now yes, 10,000 calls is a lot.. but it is inevitable and as Asterisk continues to evolve, its ability to handle more and more calls will increase. The maximum number of simultaneous calls which Digium (creators of Asterisk) will support is 250 calls, I really hope that soon they increase this capacity because it really is stifling Asterisk’s growth amongst service providers… but then again, these type of large call loads are not easy to achieve and often require the assistance of those who are extremely well versed in Asterisk.

From reading the post, I did get the feeling that there was a little bit of voodoo involved with reaching this benchmark, but hopefully we’ll see some documentation soon to follow so others can start replicating and testing such a load on large servers.

Most large enterprises would naturally write an RFP for something as critical as their communication systems but also these are the Fortune companies who still haven’t really caught onto the awesomeness of Open Source IP PBX systems, though sooner or later they will and there are some things they should know when writing an RFP specifically for an OS IP PBX. And even if you’re not a Fortune company, you should still write an RFP… honestly, if you’re looking to invest anything over $100K on a phone system, you’d be silly not to have an RFP. Increasingly I’ve found that there is a growing number of large enterprises interested in evaluating an Open Source IP PBX and for those who do, one should understand the differences between an OS IP PBX and a proprietary IP PBX enough to tailor their information in an RFP to fit the realities of an Open Source IP PBX.

I thought I’d write an article about RFP’s for Open Source systems because too few companies write them. The process of writing an RFP can be just as useful in helping a company determine their own specific communication needs as it is for a vendor in determining what those needs are. Most of an RFP, whether for a proprietary or Open Source system, will likely be fairly similar except for a couple key OS VoIP areas which include – interface requirements, redundancy requirements, and management requirements. How you effectively outline your requirements for these three areas will largely dictate what type of Asterisk based IP PBX a vendor will quote for you.

Before I get into specific details about an RFP, I want to make sure that you understand a few important conceptual differences between a proprietary IP PBX and an Open Source IP PBX that will help you understand what you’re getting into. I might bring up these conceptual differences now and again… and I’ll start them with “TIME TO THINK DIFFERENT” just for fun…

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Editors Note: Here’s an interesting piece by Tyler Merritt which I think should generate some good discussions amongst the OS-VoIP community. I personally believe that most Asterisk vendors wouldn’t be in this business if Asterisk wasn’t free, but what I think this article addresses well is the question of “how “free” is Asterisk really for the end user?”

I believe that Asterisk is at a crossroads and has been for some time.  Asterisk stands on the Path of Life for applications and ponders a fork clearly visible: Free or Commercial?  Champions of the Cause of Asterisk on either side of the path cheer for one of the two forks.  Which choice will the application make?  Do the creators, contributors, designers, and dreamers really have a say in the matter?  Is everyone making noise for nothing?

OS-VoIP.com is proud to announce the creation of our OS-VoIP.com Job Board. This Job Board is currently in its BETA 1.0 stage so bear with us while we begin to populate the job board with Open Source VoIP specific jobs. Currently you will find a mix of open source and network engineering jobs.

If you are an employer or recruiter searching for specialists in Open Source VoIP technologies, then OS-VoIP.com invites you to participate in the launch of the OS-VoIP.com Job Board by submitting your Open Source VoIP openings for our job seekers.

If you are a job seeker with skillz in Open Source VoIP technologies then please visit the OS-VOIP.com Job Board regularly!

Good luck and happy hunting!

For those who haven’t heard, Asterisk is an Open Source telephony platform nearly a decade old. It is a software application that can run on Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X. Asterisk provides all of the traditional features of a proprietary PBX system from a company like Nortel or Cisco for a much lower price. You might say the price is on the cold side of ZERO. Of course, it’s easy to say an application costs nothing before you start investing your time to deploy it. But here too Asterisk shines – many different GUI interfaces have been developed by the community to simplify Asterisk installations although the quality of these UI’s can vary significantly. Yet it’s neither cost nor administration that guarantees a future victory for Asterisk in the arms race against the incumbents. Asterisk will win because Asterisk allows for creativity.

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Let me play Devil’s Advocate for a bit. Almost everywhere you look these days, IT professionals are hawking VoIP to business and residential consumers alike. The ILECs are in, the Cable companies are in, and VoIP providers spring up almost over night to provide ever lower per minute charges on phone calls. The benefits of VoIP center around cost, extending existing infrastructure, and extending the fabric of the nebulous Internet. All of these advantages entice unsuspecting business owners and IT professionals alike to jump on the bandwagon of $avings! But this panacea for the ails of America’s aging telephony infrastructure hide a nasty side-effect – a complete and total lack of oversight and standards.

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We’ve talked a lot about enterprise adoption of OS VoIP but businesses are not the only users of this great technology, in fact there’s an untold story about Open Source VoIP and that’s its use within the carrier space. What too many people not in this field don’t know is that carriers are some of the largest users of Open Source VoIP technologies although few carriers will ever admit their use of open source. The reason why many don’t admit its use is the same reason why OS VoIP is slow to penetrate the large enterprise market; that reason being that OS VoIP is still perceived by an uneducated many that Open Source will always be the domain of basement dwelling techno nerds and hobbyists.

Well carriers ARE in fact one of the largest users and most ideal candidates for Open Source VoIP because they’re often the ones with the most to gain from the benefits of this technology- carriers spend squillions of $$$ on telecom infrastructures and thus they have the most to profit by simply replacing existing (and costly) proprietary hardware with Open Source software and COTS hardware. Large chunks of a telecom infrastructure can be replaced by various elements of Open Source Software and since telecom infrastructures are so expensive, theses savings can be astounding. Carriers also tend to have the in-house technical chops needed to work with Open Source software which is a skill few mid-sized businesses have. In fact I’ve found that increasingly carriers are requiring their engineers to be trained and well versed in software just like Asterisk and OpenSER.

One such carrier who not only uses Open Source VoIP everywhere, but embraces and openly acknowledges their use of Open Source is Bandwidth.com. Recently a registered CLEC in all 50 states, Bandwidth.com is growing Flash Gordon style. They’ve managed to top Inc. Magazines fastest growing tech companies 3 years and counting, all while using Open Source software to profitably grow their network and infrastructure at a pace and scale that has reliably kept up with their growing demand.

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Today Nortel announced its acquisition of Pingtel, an Open Source IP PBX software company. This is some pretty big freakin news for OS VoIP… it’s BIG.. it’s HUGE.. it’s really BIG.. and here’s why…

This acquisition marks a milestone for OS VoIP as a technology because it A) shows that Open Source VoIP is a viable business model and B) it reaffirms that Open Source VoIP is finally established enough, reliable enough, and mainstream enough to warrant acceptance by one of the largest proprietary communications manufacturers around. Continue →

Every year InfoWorld releases their Best of Open Source Awards 2008 or BOSSIE for short. It’s pretty much a who’s who in the world of Open Source software. I would consider many of these applications as “safe/I won’t lose my job” Open Source options.

Every single CIO/CTO on this planet should use this list as a go-to point whenever in search of a particular software solution.

There are still people in this world who think Open Source is a load of rubbish and that it’ll never catch on and will never displace larger proprietary solutions. Although this is true for PLENTY of open source projects, that is NOT the case with most of the established open source solutions listed in this blog. It is true, I’ll admit, the open source software below may not perfectly fit your organizational needs, it may not be sexy, and it could require a more technical IT department to implement…… although, at the same time it may not be any of these. But, what Open Source will almost ALWAYS be is more flexible and more cost effective.

When evaluating software solutions, most companies like to put together a selection of at least 3 possible options; 3 software solutions selected from the many, all 3 of which will ultimately be pitted against one another in a battle to the death within a stadium full of IT managers, C-level executives, and vendors. I’ve always thought companies should build a boxing ring in their office just to let potential vendors duke it out with the winner getting the contract. Just think, this probably wasn’t too far from the truth a few hundred years ago plus there would have been the whole impending death thing. But seriously, although this post isn’t really dedicated to OS VoIP (yes Asterisk did come out on top for VoIP), I do want to encourage technology executives to search for possible Open Source solutions whenever evaluating software for your company. If you turn a blind eye to Open Source, you just might be missing out on something that could save your IT budget millions and you’d never know if you didn’t look. So check these out and it’ll be like winning the lottery should you find an Open Source application that DOES meet your technology requirements.

The BOSSIE wards are divided up into these 8 categories. And the winners are…..

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This week I’m using some link bait which discusses a few of the differences between Asterisk and FreeSWITCH. David Greenfield wrote a short blog post discussing one particular case study where FreeSWITCH was used over Asterisk. I wouldn’t say I’m all that crazy-go-nuts over the post but the topic is worth additional discussion since FreeSWITCH and Asterisk are both fantastic pieces of OS telephony software each of which are strong in their own right. This is in no way a comprehensive comparison between the two, but it’s a start.

I think an even better comparison between Asterisk and Freeswitch was written by Anders Brownworth which looks at the differences between the two from a slightly more technical overview. As head of R&D for Bandwidth.com, I’m glad to hear Anders is playing with Open Source software like Asterisk and FreeSWITCH. My last post about Junction Networks discussed the use of OS software in a carrier network, it would be good news for OS-VoIP to learn that a big player like Bandwidth.com also uses OS software somewhere within their infrastructure, and where (they probably do already but won’t admit it like most carriers). Perhaps Mr. Brownworth can shed some light on the topic for another OS-VoIP article???

Most people will agree that Asterisk in its current state has more feature capabilities than FreeSWITCH in its current state. What largely differentiates FreeSWITCH features and Asterisk features is how they operate as you begin to scale a system and the way in which those features and dial plans are managed.

I’m admittedly more biased towards Asterisk because it’s been around longer and well, because my company is a Digium partner, but I’m also not one to ignore new software even if it feels like sleeping on the other side of the bed. That’s the problem with these large stagnant corporate IT infrastructures, it’s that the people in charge of them have largely relied on their proprietary vendors for information about new technology, and have become too comfortable with relying on these folks for the right information. It takes a true IT leader to step out of their comfort zone and see whether there’s a better way of doing things, something other than that which has been spoon fed to them by vendors. A very simple way to prevent this type of comfortable stagnation is to simply read a few select magazines, and/or blogs on a regular basis; just to keep you up to speed with everything. Throw a wrench into the machine; rustle some vendor feathers; go ahead and see what’s new, source some technology solutions from competitors of existing vendors… there’s little to lose- either you find something better or your vendor freaks out enough to offer better pricing, it’s a win win!

Back to FreeSWITCH and Asterisk. Continue →

I just got some tutorial chapters from PackT Publishing’s AsteriskNOW book by Nir Simionovich. Although most OS-VoIP readers aren’t developers, and the ones who are probably rarely use AsteriskNOW, I figured there’s no harm in putting these up even if only a few people find the chapters useful.

Here are the two chapters extracted from the PackT AsteriskNOW book:

Chapter 5 – Tentacles of the PBX — The Calling Rules Tables
Chapter 7 – “For Annoyance, Press 1″ — Voice Menus and IVR

It seems that AsteriskNOW has largely been neglected by Digium ever since they purchased Switchvox. AsteriskNOW was Digium’s first attempt to an easy to use administrative interface to the Asterisk software but once Switchvox came into the picture it seems their engineering resources went away from the AsteriskNOW UI and into the Switchvox UI. This move obviously makes business sense since Switchvox is a real revenue generator for Digium yet I hope they soon re-direct some focus towards the eventual development of a comprehensive OS UI for Asterisk.

To date, there still does not exist (to my knowledge) a suitable Open Source Asterisk UI which I’d feel comfortable implementing in a large scale IP PBX. There are certainly plenty of Asterisk UI flavors but most have been created as a licensed product. In a perfect Wallgreens world, Digium or some other knight in shining armor will engineer an open source UI for administration and a UI for users; one which is reliable regardless of scale or clustering, and one which is Open Source. This would certainly result in the eventual nail in the coffin for many proprietary IP PBX systems. So far the closest I’ve found is Druid by Voiceroute which is still a work in progress.

OS-VoIP is moving up in the world, or so I like to think. OS-VoIP will now be featured in AllTop’s VoIP section as a premium VoIP news resource. I say premium because it sounds better, and because I hear AllTop is selective in the news they serve which means you don’t have to worry about sifting through junk. Special thanks to Guy Kawasaki for realizing the awesomeness of the OS-VoIP world. I really don’t know how many people use AllTop for their cup-a-joe news yet on a single page and, with a single glance, one can get a snapshot of some very reputable VoIP news/blog sites and see what’s going on in the overall VoIP world. You’ll find OS-VoIP.com news right between VoIP News and TMCNET-News. So if you’re like me and get a million Google Alerts for every VoIP related keyword under the sun, perhaps AllTop is what you’ve been looking for, then again, maybe not; I’ll still use Google Alerts to tell me how popular I am… or lack there of.