The Asterisk that Saved Christmas
The economy and its current unsettling state has forced a number of local Utah businesses to cut expenses and explore new ways of doing business. As an IT consultant, I have been working more and more with the Open Source PBX called Asterisk. Asterisk is piece of software that allows business owners to set up or integrate a VOIP phone system using new or existing equipment. Cutting cost and improving ROI is the number one reason that small to medium sized businesses are using or should consider implementing an Asterisk phone system. The term “Open” means that there is no cost or annual licensing fee associated with implementing the software. Aside from eliminating the up front cost and licensing issues, an Asterisk phone system will improve ROI by avoiding vendor lock-in while allowing a completely customizable deployment of your PBX.
The most appealing part about Asterisk in general is that its VOIP features will allow business to run their data and phone connections on the same physical infrastructure. In other words you can run all of you phone and internet through the same cables, switches and routers. Today many Internet Service Provider’s are also providing integrated T1′s which include internet and phone coming in on over one line. While an integrated T1 is typically more expensive than a standard T1 line it is less expensive than running separate services to your business from different providers, and in addition many integrated T1 service providers have the ability to connect your long distance calls to other VOIP trunks absolutely free of charge. Free long distance to other in-network VOIP trunks is a tremendous benefit for any small or medium sized business looking to cut costs. Most phone companies are already using packet transfer to transmit long distance connections anyway. In addition to cutting long distance cost you can completely eliminate any remote branch calling even if your remote branch is on the other side of the world by using SIP, IAX2 or DUNDI peering.
Most vendors typically supply the necessary PBX software to host your local phone services at a hefty initial cost that comes with the expensive and dreaded annual licensing fee. Asterisk is completely open meaning that you can use and modify the software completely free of charge without ever paying any kind of licensing fee. It is important to note that Asterisk is a highly customizable application that does not come out of the box and ready to use. Although Asterisk can be confusing and difficult for end users to configure, chances are that there are a large number of IT consultants in your area that will aid in the most daunting part of the asterisk configuration. The best part about working with a local consultant is that you can have a custom deployment of your own phone system and you won’t be working over the phone with your vendor or the reseller for hours trying to set up their PBX.
Vendor lock-in… the words alone makes me cringe. I think about being on hold with someone from India whose English is difficult to understand. I hate the idea of paying a company an annual fee to use their product that only they are qualified to configure. The fact is that once the consumer is locked into a product the chances of any them changing services after all the setup costs and headache is almost zero and the proprietary vendors know this and take full advantage as they cut their costs by providing limited support and add enormous fees for special or emergency services. Depending on where you live it may not be easy to find Asterisk consultants in your area, but the popularity of VOIP has created a high demand for more and more consultants to use and support Asterisk.
Finally the absolute best reason that any small or medium sized business should strongly consider using Asterisk is that the software is completely customizable and scalable to any level. Proprietary software companies always keep their source code completely secret and guard it with blood, sweat and tears to ensure their business practices. Asterisk allows anyone complete access to the programming code that makes Asterisk work. What this means to small business owners is that if you have a bug with your voicemail setup or if you need to modify the way that your PBX interacts with your incoming faxes all you have to do is pop the hood and tinker with the configuration files, although typically you want a consultant to do the tinkering, but you get the idea. Asterisk is the most scalable product available, is currently being used by many call centers, including IBM, and it is deployable in many different languages.
The benefits from a financial perspective alone clearly outweigh any costs. VOIP is an extremely new and exciting technology designed to help businesses with efficiency and Asterisk is helping many small to medium businesses access this technology at an affordable cost. In our current economy affordability is a necessity and any small to medium sized business owner should seriously look at Asterisk as their next phone implementation.
A Support “House”
For those of you who don’t know, I work for a company in tech support dealing with customers who have issues with their tax software. I know what you’re thinking, and yes, it probably is the most exciting job from sea to sea. The other day I was talking to one of my co-workers about how the customers are always lying to us. I don’t know if they think that lying to us will get us to give them a top level of support or if they are completely ignorant.
Example, I asked a customer if they were running the application on Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7 or gave him the option if he didn’t know. Now, the easy answer is “I don’t know”, because I would just walk him through the process of looking up his OS. The customer gave the wrong answer and said he was on XP. After about 20 minutes of troubleshooting and setting up remote tools I logged in to find that, surprise, he was using a Windows 7 computer which was not supported. From the beginning the easy answer would have been “not supported” which means it won’t work which would have saved 20 minuets of time. The amazing thing is that knew all along that it was Windows 7, but just wanted to get that top level support to get his software running. The important lesson here is always assume that the customer is lying.
I was thinking someone should make a whole TV series about it, but then I was watching TV last night and realized that they already have… House. A whole TV show about patients lying to their doctor as he is trying to fix their very severe and life threatening problems. Then I realized, “Oh wait we do have that person where I work.” We’ll just call him Math McNeeley. Math is extremely smart and good at what he does, even if he doesn’t really know the answer to something he has a way of explaining it to make you feel like he just gave you a valid answer. He has the ability to talk around things and then give you 3 or 4 plausible scenarios that could be the answer to your question. The first thing I really remember about Math was that he was speaking to a customer, trying to tell them that they were lying. I really don’t remember if he actually used the words “I think you are lying,” but the jist of the argument was crystal clear. He selectively chooses his words like “I don’t believe that,” or “That’s not right”. I often find myself imagining some of my customers having the same conversation with Math.
“Yes Math, I can’t get my software to work.”
“Well are you using Windows XP, Windows Vista, or Windows 7?”
“Windows XP”
“Well that can’t be right, I don’t believe that. Are you sure you aren’t on Windows 7? Let’s check real quick.”
The other thing about Math is that much like his TV counterpart, he doesn’t like to talk to people outside his inner circle of doctors. He is always wearing earphones or pretending to be on the phone just to avoid talking to people. Sometimes I find myself poking him in the shoulder to get his attention. My life as an episode of House is astoundingly accurate, and, short of the addiction to pain killers I think we have our cast. The premise used in House is pretty widespread I’m sure, but if FOX ever decides to air the I.T. version of House, I hope that I’ll get at least a small percentage for finding the star… nothing huge, only like 8 million.