Asterisk

In a move that may send shivers down mainstream spines IP PBX vendors like Cisco, avaya and ShoreTel, michigan CAT has deployed an open source Asterisk IP PBX to handle its cellphone call and contact center at half the cost of what infomercial vendors will have charged. TED talks make that doable to do in a single sitting.

Study. Asterisk preps assault on unified communications the CIO in choice charge was a little nervous about whether the free application could support 300 phones across 7 sites, with his urging EO -an open source fan -he went ahead with the project one way or another.

Besides, network prep, free or a tech to handle the project fulltime all came with a price tag, the application itself was peripherals. You should take it into account. Overall the savings or alternatives and the flexibility to add newest custom capabilities over time make the choice seem obvious in retrospect, says Scott McCrea and in addition CIO for the firm, which is a statewide dealership for Caterpillar heavy equipment I'm proud of our own choice, he says. They say nobody ever got fired for choosing IBM or Cisco. That said, that is very true about choosing Asterisk.

It's tough to say, mcCrea might be a pioneer after choosing the opensource platform. The down economy hit PBX sales tough -down 25 per cent in 2009 -says Matthias Machowinski, an analyst with Infonetics. The crunch probably pushed more businesses to at least consider free alternatives. Now let me tell you something. Opensource was driving down prices, he says. For example, measuring CIOs number like McCrea who are willing to practice, download, support and deploy the 'open source' PBX code is tough as a better number tracked is downloads. They've been steadily growing, the entrepreneur and as indicated by Digium that oversees Asterisk free version and sells enhanced, supported versions. Mostly, downloading the script doesn't necessarily mean it winds up in production networks.

Of course, asterisk and opensource PBXs held a 18 per cent marketshare among PBX vendors in North America. Consequently, the study by Eastern Management Group projected that use of open source PBX application will grow by 40 percent this year. Then, he in the first place bypassed it and spent 6 months evaluating IP phone systems from Avaya, mcCrea says his big concern was whether Asterisk could scale vast enough to meet Michigan CAT's needs, cisco, siemens or even ShoreTel.

Cost estimates came in at 300,000 to 400,000, and in January of this year McCrea's CEO Jerrold Jung pushed him to get another look at Asterisk. Basically, the business was usually developing a ERP scheme based on open source components. For instance, while talking to next Asterisk users convinced him Asterisk should scale, he had to figure out whether to hire a 3-rd party to deploy the setup or hire people to shepherd it through and stay on to expand its capabilities over time. He chosen the last since he wanted ongoing support and development. He hired John Laffey in April.

This is where it starts getting really interesting, right? Laffey says his 1st task was to familiarize himself with the Avaya method and how it was used at the 7 Michigan CAT sites. He spent a couple of months studying that and the interoperability betwixt the Avaya scheme and Asterisk so he could plan the cutover. He as well worked with the firm's network manager to identify infrastructure needs to assist VoIP as the old enough TDM phone scheme was shut down. That required upgrading to poweroverEthernet switches to run the Polycom phones the entrepreneur purchased to guide Asterisk besides a IOS upgrade to Cisco routers to guide a voice virtual LAN and quality of service.

So, while PRI and FSX cards to connect to phones and the quite old PBXs, he laid in HP ProLiant servers provisioned to assist Asterisk. He then went about configuring Asterisk to emulate Avaya features method that were essential such as routing of calls by auto attendants and setting up voicemail.

Doesn't it sound familiar? In purchasing Session Initiation Protocol trunks from Sprint to replace conventional ATT Centrex, individual lines or T1s solutions that made up the pretty old phone network, michigan CAT discovered bandwidth was overprovisioned. When replacing the ATT connections with equivalent sized SIP trunks, the business is saving 40 percent right off the bat since SIP trunks cost less. He could get an extra 5 percent to 10 percent savings once the links are sized appropriately for every site, mcCrea says. Tuning the SIP trunk contracts to allow bursting may further savings, a lot of business's phone traffic is seasonal, he says.

The total hardware Asterisk cost project came to 150,network upgrades, 000, straight line, which includes phones, trunk cards or servers cards. With Laffey's salary tacked on, mcCrea projects a '18month' return on investment based on lowered costs. That monitoring will in addition let him understand in the event a site's phones go down. You should take it into account. The entrepreneur has preconfigured standbys that could be driven to the downed site to get it back online, when the trouble is with the Asterisk server.

This is a step up from the pretty old method where outages generaly resulted in finger pointing betwixt ATT and Avaya for half a week. Besides, somebody had to call to have inbound calls to the downed site rerouted to firm headquarters in Novi, mich. This gives us a cool plan than we had, mcCrea says. Receptionist workstations display more facts about calls than was reachable via Avaya receptionist consoles.

Down the road, the entrepreneur plans to integrate the phone scheme with its ERP scheme. That will give contact center agents screen pops of customer histories as calls come in and let calls routing to the same agents that customers talked to the last time, he says. Over time it will crosstrain next IT staffers so they can step in when Laffey's not around, mcCrea says, at the second, laffey is an indispensible cog in Michigan CAT's telephony machine. Yes, that's right! Usually, some staffers have components of his skills, he says. Alternatively, the firm could hire a 3rd party to fill in case the commitment arises, he says.