It is articles like these that truly help out the sales process because they provide the consumer with a no-bull-shit explanation about things they’ll need to consider when purchasing an OS PBX. I think those who understand the technology intricacies are always the best equipped to help consumers make an educated decision about their purchase but unfortunately most sales tools are a product of marketing departments and therefore lack some of the necessary yet less-than-glossy truths behind Open Source telephony. One example is the widely marketed myth that there’s no problem converging voice and data over the same network when all us telephony geeks know that this is typically a last resort for any mid sized organization who requires a stable and secure network.

So anyway, the key points of Davids article are:
> Understand what Open Source means.
> Be sure your VAR knows what they’re doing.
> Don’t skimp on hardware.
> Be careful about being your own OS/VoIP/Linux savvy expert.

On the topic of useful tools to help businesses understand what they’re getting themselves into when purchasing an IP PBX, take a look at this Baseline Mag article by David Strom titled “Is Your Network ready for VoIP?“. There’s lots of good points in here, including why you should re-think converging your voice and data network.

Key players like Digium and Fonality have been going head to head in the SMB arena for a while now. You can’t visit a VoIP discussion about “which IP PBX should I get?” without hearing someone mentioning Asterisk. Digium is making the right moves with their acquisition of Switchvox in Nov. ‘07 and their release of the new AA60 which is ideal for any SMB business plus Trixbox is doing the same with their own appliance. I would argue that neither of these companies have a viable product yet for large enterprises (300+seats), for example the Switchvox software does not support clustering for fail over (they’re working on it). But with Asterisk almost a household name in the SMB IP PBX market, it’s only a matter of time until larger enterprises start to catch on….. and they are. Already many big organizations are using Asterisk to integrate disparate systems and provide communications enabled business processes (CEBP). Companies like Thomas Howe Company have made a living doing some very interesting CEBP projects… look em up. I’m more interested in Asterisks evolution as a full blown IP PBX within big business.

Fortune 1000 companies are already playing with Asterisk but the question is “can Asterisk be deployed to dozens of sites for thousands of users and be just as reliable as my Cisco infrastructure?”.. and answer is “it depends”. There is no question that there are live Asterisk systems supporting tens-of-thousands of users, offering the flexibility, scalability, and cost savings few large enterprises can ignore, but the real problem is that not all Asterisk systems are created equal. In 2008 we are going to see the emergence of key Asterisk implementation firms, not Digium or Fonality, but engineering firms who know how to mold Asterisk into systems that can satisfy the needs of a big business while providing support, maintenance, and administration which are services that must be offered if Asterisk is ever going to give Cisco, Nortel, and Avaya a run for their money.

I’d be interested to hear from this community about ones experience with Asterisk within a larger organizations and how Asterisk was able to satisfy their “big business” demands.