beelinebill January 25th, 2010

In July 2009, Part 1 and in November 2009, Part 2 of this series was published and I am pleased to say I have finally completed the final part 3.  As a reminder, the three part series includes these three blog posts:

1. Introduction to Open Source Policy for IP Telephony in the Enterprise:  “Open Source Policy for IP Telephony:  Are You Behind or Ahead of the Curve?”
2. Business Analysis of Open Source vs. Traditional Telephony: “The Metrics of Open Source Policy for IP Telephony “
3. Best Practices as applied to implementation of an Open Source IP Telephony solution: “Open Source Policy Meets ROI”

As we enter 2010 with the economy showing signs of partial recovery, open source phone systems and use of open source telephony have skyrocketed as more people consider its value and use for their corporation.

Let’s look at what we have covered thus far:

In part 1, you would have already completed a project plan. This would include decisions for the following elements of the plan:

• Corporate strategy for telephony software acquisition and how Open Source Software (OSS) fits
• Open source alternatives for each component and layer of software have been considered as well as licenses and intellectual property as it applies to your company
• You have nailed down your  process for building your plan, analyzing the alternatives, and trialing the software
• You have decided your support requirements – internal team or outsourced
• You have decided to take the next step beyond selection and building the OSS policy (even if you call it something like a “purchasing or technology acquisition process”)
• You have a plan to determine if your existing or planned IP network is “Voice-ready”

Your highest level of consideration for an Open Source phone system has been made and now it’s time to explore the Business Analysis of Open Source vs. Traditional Telephony. Let’s call it “The Metrics of Open Source Policy for IP Telephony” as we take a more in depth look at how to implement and measure success factors in building and executing an Open Source Policy for your enterprise.

In part 2, you would have chosen which method of acquisition of open source is right for you, maybe you are going to consider a buy vs. build decision and have a final hurdle to clear – the final selection and method to calculate ROI based on your choice.

You would have selected from one of three scenarios to select and build on for your open source solution:

• Scenario 1: Free and open source code in component form (such as Asterisk from source code)
• Scenario 2: Free and open source distributions which bundles component bits such as Linux, a graphical user interface and the telephone software such as Asterisk
• Scenario 3: Open Source-based turnkey Business Phone System and IP PBX that is based on Asterisk

This leaves us to today’s post, part 3: Best Practices as applied to implementation of an Open Source IP Telephony solution: “Open Source Policy Meets ROI”

To accomplish this, we will use case studies, innovation award winning Asterisk-based existing experiences plus ours here at Digium to showcase best practices and how they might work for your business. So buckle up and let’s dive right in! We’ll explore:

• What are best practices when selecting and implementing open source based telephony?
• What are the top ROI metrics for determining and measuring its success on an ongoing basis?
• The final word

Like any business communications system, it takes a champion to run and manage the solution. Open source is no different. Smaller and medium sized businesses usually use a reseller or trusted advisor to help refine business requirements and these occur regardless of solution implemented. Open source has a more technical following to start, but more recently technical skills are no longer required, just simply understanding your business needs.  These lead to “best practices” for any business communications system. Number of users, who gets a desk phone, soft phone and mobile phone, who can call internationally, what do time-based auto-attendant messages and call flows look like, who manages/administers the systems for new moves/adds/changes, and all the basic business phone system information.

Businesses selecting a trusted and proven reseller/integrator will benefit from experience so ask your trusted advisor for references on open source based clients. Learn pitfalls of any VoIp system going in, and you can avoid them.

Next, identify the highest level ROI and cost savings opportunities such as SIP trunking vs. PSTN (typical analog or digital PRI/T1/E1 access). Depending upon your service provider, cost savings and rapid ROI is often connected these days with SIP trunking. Although it’s new and emerging, it is real recurring cost that can be slashed vs. traditional methods typically. Many customers migrate slowly a few trunks at a time until more confidence is built in the newer system.

Other ROI metrics vary depending on your current phone system and the proposed new system. Asterisk open source solutions typically have applications integrated and don’t require multiple dedicated servers for voice mail, IVR, conferencing and if you select turn key solutions from one of the many solutions it’s plug and play plus cost savings.

At the end of the day you save on acquisition costs, save on recurring costs for services and trunks, and maintain unmatched flexibility in achieving your business and budget goals. Open source based solutions also hold hte potential of being the last phone system you ever buy or acquire. Why?  Unlike companies who have recently been bankrupt and get taken over in a fire sale, the source code for genuine open source is always yours. Some of the open source based turn key systems have  proprietary extensions often in the user interface or on patent encumbered add-ons, but it’s part of the end user policy choices.

Here are three different types of ROI award winners from our annual program:

Emdeon Business Systems Emdeon created an Asterisk-based telephone inquiry system for healthcare providers. It is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year and used about 22,000 times a day by 60,000 physicians and hospitals.  The solution met every Maryland cost and availability requirement in a cost-effective manner.

The City of Taguig in the Phillipines Taguig  has Asterisk-based VoIP telephone systems in over 73 sites, and the implementation has already brought a 50% decrease in city costs while doubling city workers’ productivity

The University of Pennsylvania by OneBizTone (Laureldale, PA) Migrated more than 10,000 voicemail users off a discontinued and unsupported legacy voicemail system. Used  Asterisk to develop a highly scalable unified voicemail system.  The new Asterisk-based system was deployed for approximately $2000 versus traditional systems that cost $250,000 plus stored far more hours of messages. All enhancements made to Asterisk as part of this initiative were graciously contributed back to the open source community by the University of Pennsylvania.

- – - -

The final word in having an open source policy is simple. As you look to install a new system, upgrade from an out of warranty system, scale,  whatever your reason for requiring a new solution, add the following to your policy for purchasing and/or your chief financial decision makers:

• Invite at least one open-source based proposal for the solution.

It cannot be any easier. Mandatory (or at least strong urging for) consideration, basically what President Obama has done for all US Government IT software acquisitions. It is a good idea to save money and increase your flexibility – and  you may very well select the “best in class” solution! Happy open source telephony hunting!

• ABE , Asterisk , Asterisk Awards , Channel , Community , Digium , Genuine Asterisk , Open Source , Open Source Policy , Partners
• Comments(1)

Malcolm Davenport January 15th, 2010

If you’ve been following the development of Asterisk carefully, you’ve seen that some changes have been made with respect to Asterisk’s codec support.

Beginning with the 1.6.2 release of Asterisk, pass-through support for Polycom’s Siren 7 (G.722.1) and Siren 14 (G.722.1C) was added. Both of these codecs offer improvements upon the more commonly known and used G.722 codec. G.722 is a 7kHz codec, sampled at 16kHz, that, for Asterisk, operates at 64kbit/s. Siren 7 (G.722.1) offers the same frequency response (7kHz) and sampling rate (16kHz) of regular G.722, but it’s done in half the bandwidth – 32kbit/s, as opposed to G.722’s 64kbit/s. Siren 14 (G.722.1C) is a 14kHz codec, sampled at 32kHz, that, for Asterisk, operates at 48kbit/s. Siren14 thus offers twice the frequency response and sampling rate of G.722 or G.722.1, and does so at 3/4 the bandwidth of G.722 and only 50% more bandwidth than G.722.1.

We’ve recently upgraded Asterisk’s pass-through capability for these two codecs to full codec translation support. Now available on our downloads server are Asterisk 1.6.2 codec translation modules for Polycom’s Siren 7 (G.722.1) and Siren 14 (G.722.1C). Digium has elected to provide these codec modules in binary format, as opposed to source code format, so that users do not have to individually execute licensing agreements with Polycom in order to use them.

Currently we’re aware of a number of endpoints that support Siren7 and Siren14 codecs including the Polycom Soundstation IP 6000 and 7000 model conference phones, the VVX 1500 media phone as well as the latest release of the Zoiper Communicator soft client.

Why does any of this matter? Well, if you’re a PSTN junkie, it doesn’t. But, if you find that you’re making most of your calls in the VoIP world, then it’s going to make those long days on the phone a bit more tolerable. At the very least, you’ll be able to more clearly understand the hold music.

• Digium
• Comments(3)

Malcolm Davenport January 7th, 2010

Digium is pleased to announce the release of version 1.1.6 of its Fax For Asterisk product, a commercial grade FAX add-on module for open source Asterisk.

This release contains a number of significant improvements, including:

* Support for 64-bit Linux installations.

* Reduction in resource consumption, and increase in performance, of T.38 session handling.

* Simplification of session handling during transition from G.711 to T.38 mode.

* Adoption of the latest Asterisk T.38 negotiation API, ensuring interoperability with a wide range of T.38 endpoints.

Version 1.1.6 of Fax For Asterisk is available for immediate download at http://www.digium.com/en/docs/FAX/faa-download.php. Note that because this release uses the very latest T.38 negotiation mechanism in Asterisk, it is not compatible with all released versions of Asterisk. The Fax For Asterisk download selector lists the Asterisk versions supported by this release.

For more information about Fax For Asterisk, please visit the product page.

Thank you for your support!

• Digium
• Comments(2)

beelinebill December 28th, 2009

As we enter our 4th year running Digium Asterisk World (DAW), we continue to receive accolades from attendees, exhibitors, partners and media. Positioned as “All things Asterisk for Business”, DAW is differentiated from Astricon, Digium’s Asterisk Developer and User Conference held in the fall. Another way to consider these events is that DAW is for “the unconverted” and Astricon is for the already converted to open source Asterisk and Asterisk-based solutions. The ecosystem continues to grow and thrive and as Asterisk has matured so have the customer base, partner base, overall channel and consideration as an alternative by most businesses. In our second DAW collocated with IT Expo we now have confirmed with TMC that this was the perfect combination of resellers, users and decision makers to educate on the choice of open source telephony solutions, share best practices and examples, sponsor a conference track and provide a theater for presentations on the exhibit floor as part of the Digium Asterisk World pavilion. As one of the key architects of the initial concept and team member delivering this event, the third year of this event, I will share my top 7 reasons YOU should attend in 2010!

7.  Keynote: Danny Windham, the always entertaining Digium CEO, will be presenting his view on the market disruption of open source along with some interesting and provoking thoughts.

6.  Market Validation Data: The emerging leader in open source telephony market research, Eastern Management Group’s CEO John Malone will be presenting his research and can answer your questions on his methodology and results..

5. Skype for Asterisk: Learn how Skype for Business and Skype for Asterisk are beginning to change business communications. There is a keynote from Christopher Dean of Skype and a conference session presentation by Antonio Varanda, Product Manager in Skype for Business group

4.  Education: Your choice of conference track where you can learn:

* How to sell open source telephony systems (ideal for resellers)

* The dynamic changes in the SIP endpoint world (ideal for users and resellers)

* Case Study: successful mission critical Asterisk-based systems installed (ideal for everyone)

* How to scale Asterisk-based systems (ideal for anyone)

* HD Audio: there are a few sessions exploring new HD capabilities which increase audio quality and facilitate new applications on Asterisk-based systems

3. Live demonstrations: Asterisk ecosystem partners and Digium booth personnel show attendees and decision makers that interoperable solutions exist today to deliver solutions and leveraging the “Everything Asterisk for Business” theme.  See Unified Communications at its finest with Digium’s Switchvox and see many other applications built on open source from the Asterisk ecosystem. Seeing is believing!

2. Building Enterprise Asterisk-based solutions Attendees will meet end users, integrators, resellers, and long time Asterisk experts and talk about building and delivering business class solutions that provide faster ROI and save costs. Learn best practices from others’ experiences in these sessions.

1. Industry Leading event; Miami in winter: Be warm; the weather in Miami usually hits the 70’s in January. Where would you prefer to be?

Please join the excitement in Miami, FL January 20-22, 2010 and meet several open source-based Asterisk solutions providers, the Digium team, successful users, resellers and integrators and see many demonstrations of feature rich and cost savings solutions! To register, click here.

• AstriCon , Digium , Digium Asterisk World , IT Expo East , Open Source , Switchvox , Tradeshows
• Comments(0)

beelinebill November 29th, 2009

In July 2009, Part 1 of this series was published and I am pleased to say I have finally completed part 2.  As a reminder, the three part series includes these three blog posts:

1. Introduction to Open Source Policy for IP Telephony in the Enterprise:  “Open Source Policy for IP Telephony:  Are You Behind or Ahead of the Curve?”
2. Business Analysis of Open Source vs. Traditional Telephony: “The Metrics of Open Source Policy for IP Telephony “
3. Best Practices as applied to implementation of an Open Source IP Telephony solution: “Open Source Policy Meets ROI”

In 2009, we have seen an uptake of adoption of open source telephony software. As discussed previously, industry analysts have started to buy into the fact that most if not all enterprises and even small businesses will adopt a hybrid open source/traditional mix of best-of-breed solution for their businesses. In fact, the methodology of selection should remain the same: ROI and TCO (Return on Investment and Total Cost of Ownership). Business investments and personal investments have similar metrics with the differences being budgets we all have in our respective areas. Each business has its own model for business analysis and making decisions based on their results. In this article, we’ll explore a couple of different perspectives that we know buyers have used in evaluation to adopt open source as their entire or portion of their solution.

In part 1, you would have already completed a project plan. This would include decisions for the following elements of the plan:

• Corporate strategy for telephony software acquisition and how Open Source Software (OSS) fits
• Open source alternatives for each component and layer of software have been considered as well as licenses and intellectual property as it applies to your company
• You have nailed down your  process for building your plan, analyzing the alternatives, and trialing the software
• You have decided your support requirements – internal team or outsourced
• You have decided to take the next step beyond selection and building the OSS policy (even if you call it something like a “purchasing or technology acquisition process”)
• You have a plan to determine if your existing or planned IP network is “Voice-ready”

Your highest level of consideration for an Open Source phone system has been made and now it’s time to explore the Business Analysis of Open Source vs. Traditional Telephony. Let’s call it “The Metrics of Open Source Policy for IP Telephony” as we take a more in depth look at how to implement and measure success factors in building and executing an Open Source Policy for your enterprise.

First we will look at differences from traditional phone system solutions. The types of open source solutions available are as follows:

–        Free and open source code in component form (such as Asterisk from source code)

–        Free and open source distributions which bundles component bits such as Linux, a graphical user interface and the telephone software such as Asterisk

–        Open Source-based turnkey Business Phone System and IP PBX that is based on Asterisk

Your company’s technical skills meter drives this decision. If you hire a consultant, say a “dCAP Certified” consultant (Digium Certified Asterisk Professional) your tolerance meter needs to be well understood for your phone system ongoing management. What does this mean?  If you rely 100% on your consultant to design, install, and maintain your phone system, you will need to be comfortable with that decision. You could use an Asterisk integrator or reseller as your trusted advisor which is as traditional as it gets but has withstood the test of time and proven success. Depending on the technical skills and certification level of the trusted adviser they might understand your requirements and propose any one of the three choices. These are available to everyone – from free software to 100% turn-key commercial open source solutions such as Switchvox. The spectrum is complete. The choice depends on you and your trusted adviser. If your trusted advisor is you, you know your technical skills, your core competency, and your business. This decision process is relatively simple.

Let’s look at three scenarios where each choice makes might make more sense.

Scenario 1: When would you select totally free source code component elements such as Asterisk code?

1. You have a strong technical skill set available to you internally
2. You have the ability to locate the open source projects on the web, analyze requirements, download the raw code. Strong skills in this area could find, download Asterisk, configure it and make phone calls in a half hour. The past couple of years we have speed contests at Astricon to award the fastest Asterisk geeks on the planet doing this. (Our record is under 5 minutes, but your “mileage may vary”.)
3. You have a spare PC/server laying around of decently modern vintage and features
4. You know how to compile code, use command line (no GUI) and know basic networking and telephony.
5. Are adept enough to find and purchase a SIP trunk for your VoIP service and configure on your Asterisk system.
6. Your patience and tolerance for trial and error is high when determining how to associate your requirements with the flexibility and power of the customizable system
7. You love the technical challenge of having an incredibly powerful toolkit to build your phone system

Total cost for this scenario?

–        Software  $0

–        Old PC/Server $0

–        Sip trunk $10-50 per month average based on services

–        Support $0 if you do it yourself; as low $595 annually to purchase an open source subscription from Digium

–        Time

Is this solution scalable?

Without question, the more technical knowledge you have acquired, the larger and more powerful this system can grow with relative ease.  There are Asterisk installations around the world that handle hundreds of thousands of users. For example, see this Integrics case study here as an example of a very large open source system. According to an Eastern Management Group’s recent study, 75% of the systems downloaded and installed are under 50 end points but 12% are over 100 end points. Larger networks of Asterisk-based systems are clustered, coupled with other open source projects such as SIP proxy OpenSIPS and Linux. In the “old” days, support for Asterisk was available only through the online open source community.   Although the Asterisk community is vibrant and large, the required commercial support for enterprise-class organizations on an official basis was not easily available without a sizable contract.  The mission critical system support from Digium has only become recently available in earlier 2009 for any size enterprise or small business.

This solution is ideal for companies that have in-house expertise in Linux, networking, and software integration skills.  There is a staggering amount of code and documentation that is available for no cost to make Asterisk a successful platform under almost any circumstances and operational requirements.  However, there are time costs for your staff, and if you do not have the in-house expertise you will have to budget for consulting time to create these custom, highly specific solutions for your enterprise.

Scenario 2:  When would you select a free and open source distribution which bundles component elements such as Linux, a graphical user interface (GUI) and the telephony software such as Digium’s Asterisk? These “distributions” as they are called are downloaded onto an ISO CD-ROM image which is then inserted into a blank server/PC.  After booting, an all-in-one installer typically formats the hard drive in the machine and installs the image into the system which becomes your IP PBX or telephony system.

What skills do you need for this?

1. Can find the project and distribution on the web
2. Can download an ISO image to your PC/server
3. Can boot server with the new ISO image
4. Can use a GUI to configure the system. If you can purchase a wireless router, configure it and get it up and running, you can use this approach. We have seen AsteriskNOW downloaded, installed and making calls in about 15 minutes but it’s not for everyone!
5. You can support this yourself, using the open source community or purchase an open source subscription as above for any size system virtually anywhere in the world

Total cost for this scenario?

–        Software  $0

–        Old PC/Server $0

–        Sip trunk $10-50 per month average based on services

–        Support $0 if you do it yourself; as low $595 annually to purchase an open source subscription from Digium?

–        Time

(Can you see this trend? Very low cost.)

This option of a pre-compiled and pre-integrated Asterisk system is a good one if your business has few custom needs, and wants to reap the rewards of IP telephony and extensive features without spending significant learning curve time on deploying a custom solution.  This is an extremely rapid solution path choice, and has a virtually all the features that most small businesses require.   For both above scenarios, there are integrators and resellers who build your system from white box servers, standard HP, Dell or IBM servers. They add gateways as necessary, IP phones, select an interoperable SIP trunking or VoIP service provider and can install or send the total solution to you pre-configured and you just plug it in. It is relatively easy to handle moves/add/changes at little to no cost.

Scenario 3: Commercial turnkey IP PBX that is based on open source Asterisk

This approach is similar to traditional solutions, but the basis of open source software means reduced costs and overall lowers TCO.  Let’s look at how you can leverage scenario three using Digium’s own turnkey solution (others similar).

What skills do you need for this scenario?

1. Go directly to the product of interest
2. You download a free version to try it or just either locate a reseller or buy it now
3. It’s turnkey, so no Linux or command line skills necessary
4. Like any phone system, you need to know your dial plan such as how to set up IVR, how to handle messages at times of day, etc. this really applies across all choices, but it’s simpler with GUI (scenario 2) or if the reseller handles it here.

Total cost for this scenario?

–        Download free trial software  $0

–        Can use old PC/Server or purchase pre-configured appliance as your IP PBX and Business Telephony System. Price varies by number of users and the system selected.

–        Sip trunks $10 and up per month per trunk and up based on services; or of course the PSTN connection instead of SIP

–        Support $50 per user per year subscription for commercially supported turnkey Switchvox with years 2 and beyond at as low as $10/year/user

Let’s now assume you have completed part 1 and part 2 of setting your corporate open source policy. This translates to the following decisions:

–        Open Source will be considered for our new Business Phone System

–        We have done an inventory on how we will build, manage and support it

–        We have budgeted resources to complete the procurement process to compare our open source solution with our incumbent proprietary phone system

–        We have completed our “VoIP Ready “ network assessment

–        We have determined whichever way we go we will purchase new servers, either separately or as a turn-key solution

–        We will purchase commercial support from our supplier or reseller

–        We will trial the system solution

The completion of these steps means we have decided to consider open source, we have set a policy for evaluating it and we have set a policy for how we will compare the traditional vs. open source solution beyond cost but to include ROI, TCO over a 3-5 year period, and we have taken an inventory on what we need to complete the task.

In Part 3 of 3, we will cover best practices as applied to your selection of an open source solution and run some calculations for you based on real solutions.

• AsteriskNOW , AstriCon , Community , Digium , Open Source , Open Source Policy , Switchvox , dCAP
• Comments(3)