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.