Below is an excerpt from a Customer who is trying to decide whether to go the open source route, via Asterisk. We have heard Pros and Cons on Asterisk, and would be interested in hearing opinions on it. Please post comments in the forum.

Hi everybody,

Right now my company is looking to upgrade our Definity system. They are actually thinking of getting asterisk. I really like Avaya because of their reliability, but i need info on AVAYA vs Asterisk. I don´t doubt that asterisk is a good product, but for what I've read here, it's not going to work for us.

Thanks

Dan

Asterisk is a software based PBX that is an open-source solution. It is, however sponsored by Digium.

Licensing is free. It has a very strong feature set, including things like enhanced conferencing, Unified Messaging, 'vectoring', etc.

However, it is EXTREMELY difficult to configure. All of its configuration is done via plain-text files (think, system.ini or win.ini from Windows 3.1 days). All features are configured this way. While there are some 3rd party tools used to help configure the system, they are very limited in their implementation, and are often confusing if you are not already experienced with Asterisk.

Asterisk, because it is a software solution based on a PC platform is very limited in its scalability. If you plan to use anything other than IP phones, you will need either VoIP Adapters, Digium PCI boards. These board can become rather expensive, are are fairly limited in what they can do. They have some which support T1/E1, or support Analog stations/trunks. Asterisk does not support hardware based media processors (such as the MedPro/Crossfire for the Avaya), so their ability to handle large amounts voip traffic is limited to your processing power on your server.

Some simple and expected features of the Avaya solution are not available, such as Busy Lamp Indicators, Centralized Station Programming, or agent/call-center applications are unavailable. This is more of an issue with the SIP protocol than the Asterisk solution itself.

The complexitiy of the configuration, coupled with the scalability issues would make it a very hard-sell to a company who is already invested in Avaya. Personally, I use Asterisk at home, and find it very useful. I've also implemented it off the back of an Avaya switch for Voicemail/UM or it's conference bridge. (I do have to say, the VM/Conference Bridge is on par with Avaya's solution, again minus the configuration aspect).