beelinebill July 6th, 2009

Having been involved for a few years now with open source and VoIP/IP Telephony, I have debated the value proposition of open source software, business aspects of open source, challenges on both the supply and the demand side and today offer this first of a three part series as a tool in helping businesses make decisions on not if, but when and how open source might be considered and adopted in their enterprise.

We will split this topic into three episodes:

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”

The Gartner Group stated recently, “Businesses need a policy for their use of open source software (OSS)!” Gartner further states only 31% of businesses have a formal policy in place. Gartner, who does follow open source and has recognized Digium for the past 3 years in their Corporate Telephony Magic Quadrant for Asterisk, the world’s leading open source IP Telephony and PBX software, also states that by the end of 2009, 100% of all enterprises in North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific regions will utilize open source.

If Gartner is correct in that 69% of the companies are without a formal process, let’s apply the concept to IP Telephony to help facilitate the benefits of open source to more companies which include lower cost of acquisition, lower cost of ownership, extreme flexibility to adapt the software for use in business and elimination of strong-armed vendor lock in. With the economy challenges and budget constraints, enterprises can do themselves a favor and take a very close look at open source telephony.

If you are a small business, more than likely you may not need to worry about an open source policy. You have a business to run and you can leverage open source by purchasing a low cost but very powerful turnkey system such as Switchvox. If you are a mid-to-large sized enterprise however, you may want to consider open source and building a policy to manage the process from procurement to turn-up!

So let’s explore how to get started if you have not already. If you are an executive or IT decision maker asking yourself the question, “Should I consider open source telephony?” or “Do we have a formal procurement policy to support exploring open source telephony?” you are not alone – remember, 69% of companies are right there with you!

The project plan should consider:

Basic business elements:

• What is your corporate strategy for telephony software acquisition and how might OSS fit into it?
• What are your open source alternatives for each component and layer of software?
• What is your process for building the plan, analyzing the alternatives, and trialing the software?
• Does your software support open standards and what are the open source licenses involved?
• How do we guarantee intellectual property is covered and our enterprise will not be exposed?
• How will you be supported? Do you have 24/7 mission critical enterprise class support available?
• How much does it cost (OSS is free) to procure, implement, and support the solution?
• Does your enterprise have to build an internal support team?
• What goes into the project plan from a security and ongoing support perspective?
• How do we build the OSS policy?

Network Elements:

• All VoIP deployments require the same treatment, open source or proprietary: Is the network “Voice-ready?” There are no differences between networks for open source based vs. proprietary systems.

End Point Management:

• Virtually any SIP phone works with open source; some phones are more tightly integrated than others
• Some end points are automatically discovered and provisioned making open source easy to use

Trial Run:

The final question? How does the enterprise manage this entire process?

There are a few very good resources to read to get started. My favorite does not explicitly address IP Telephony, but does cover the process to use to build the overall plan. This is an excellent article written by Stormy Peters, Executive Director of the GNOME Foundation and a passionate evangelist for open source software. Her article that explains open source best practices and policy can be found here and are generic in nature applying to all open source projects.

Open Source products that today are in most enterprises include Linux operating systems, Apache web servers, MySQL data bases, SugarCRM sales force automation tools and many many others covering virtually every application in the enterprise.

Next time we will explore the Business Analysis of Open Source vs. Traditional Telephony: “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.

• Digium , Open Source , Open Source Policy
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